2010 Recipients

Ana Storey,Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles
Category: Direct Representation, Legal Services Family Law Attorney

Linda Puls McGuire, Attorney at Law
Category: Pro Bono Work (Private Attorney)

Ana Storey

Ana has worked diligently as a dedicated legal services family law attorney since May 2000. She is passionate and thorough in all that she does.

Currently, Ana serves as the Managing Attorney of the West Office of LAFLA, overseeing the needs of approximately 25 attorneys, paralegals, and support staff. She supervises LAFLA's Family Law Unit as well as LAFLA's Consumer Unit.

Ana's management role involves juggling many commitments, not least of which is ensuring that the Family Law and Consumer Units comply with all of the complex requirements of the CalWORKs grant. In addition, Ana works to ensure LAFLA's compliance with other grants, such as those from the
Department of Justice and the Family Development Network contracts. Yet, in spite of her multiple management commitments, Ana remains a role model to the attorneys she supervises by maintaining an active caseload and by advising clients on the frontline in the downtown Los Angeles and Long Beach Domestic Violence Clinics. During her LAFLA career, Ana has worked on four family law appeals, successfully obtaining highly favorable results in both a domestic violence case and a guardianship case.

Ana's work in the Los Angeles-area family law community is extensive. She coordinates the Family Law Coalition, a group of attorneys working with low-income clients in the Los Angeles area, to ensure that the group is knowledgeable about relevant changes in the law or changes in the court's delivery of services to clients. Under Ana's stewardship, this group has also actively looked for ways to improve access for clients through the use of interpreters, fee waiver issues, or access to files. She also serves on the Pro Per Provider Committee and the Domestic Violence Planning Group, both in Los Angeles. She is co-chair of the L.A. Domestic Violence Council's System Improvement Committee, and she serves on LAAC's Family Law Conference Board (where she has also been a speaker). Ana also provided oral and
written comments to the Elkins Taskforce on behalf of LAFLA. She was recognized by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children with an Award of Merit in 2007. She has also been recognized by her colleagues for this incredible body of work.

Linda Puls McGuire

Linda has been a consistent and essential volunteer with Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles's Domestic Violence Clinic since 1999. Her extensive knowledge of court procedures, applicable law, and the pragmatics of the domestic violence clinic has become indispensable to help hundreds of clients.

Her commitment to serving the poor extends far past the walls of LAFLA's domestic violence/family law clinic. In addition to the estimated 4,500 hours she has donated to the clients of LAFLA's Santa Monica domestic violence/family law clinic, she has also volunteered at the Harriet Buhai Center, for which she received one of their Distinguished Service Awards in 2003.

Everyone who works with Linda comments on her kindness and compassion, as well as her unflappable tranquility in the face of chaos. She always greets her clients with a sincere smile and patient understanding, and often inspires them to return after the conclusion of their cases in order to personally update her on the outcomes. She gives them information on the dynamics of domestic violence since so many of the clients do not recognize themselves as abused. She spends hours making sure they know about all the social services they can access in order to ensure more long-term success.

A mother of two children under the age of four, Linda commutes nearly an hour to volunteer three mornings a week with LAFLA and has taken the initiative to recruit, train, and mentor new volunteers. By doing so, Linda has not only allowed LAFLA to better serve its clients, but also created a positive impression on individuals who now contemplate a career in public interest.