CBJ - September 2011 #09. Loren Miller winner Sid Wolinsky sees no end to his long public interest career.

• Author: By Diane Curtis Staff Writer

California Bar Journal

2011.

CBJ - September 2011 #09.

Loren Miller winner Sid Wolinsky sees no end to his long public interest career

The California LawyerSeptember 2011Loren Miller winner Sid Wolinsky sees no end to his long public interest careerBy Diane CurtisStaff WriterWhen Sid Wolinsky took a job as an entertainment industry lawyer in Beverly Hills after earning his law degree at Yale, it was "solely as a second choice."

"I went to law school because I wanted to make a contribution," Wolinsky recalls. But no do-good-and-change-the-world offers presented themselves at the time. "There was very little opportunity to do what we now call public interest law," says the 75-year-old Wolinsky. He worked at the Beverly Hills firm for six years - until he was made partner - and then he quit. And his career ever since has been finding - or, more accurately, creating - those public interest law opportunities.

In the past 43 years, Wolinsky has founded or co-founded the San Francisco Neighborhood Legal Assistance Foundation, Public Advocates, the Disability Rights Clinical Legal Education Program and Disability Rights Advocates in Oakland, Hungary and New York. He has been involved, most often as chief litigator, in major class action cases gaining access and service for Kaiser patients with disabilities, creating low-income housing in San Francisco, eliminating the high school exit exam for learning-disabled students, achieving equal funding in California education through the landmark Serrano v. Priest decision that also won attorneys' fees for public interest lawyers and, most recently, winning a requirement for closed-captioning at all Cinemark first-run theaters.

Litigation, he says, "is a very intense experience, and when done on behalf of a good cause, it's one of the most satisfying professional things a lawyer can do."

For those and other such efforts and successes over five decades, Wolinsky has been named the recipient of the 2011 Loren Miller Legal Services Award, given annually to a lawyer who has demonstrated long-term commitment to legal services and who has personally done significant work in extending legal services to the poor. The award, which will be presented at the State Bar Annual Meeting in Long Beach this month, is named after the late Loren Miller, an African American lawyer and judge who was a leader in...