Gary Blasi: Eclectic Career Marks Loren Miller Award Winner
| Publication year | 2013 |
| Pages | 01 |
Amy Yarbrough Staff Writer
Gary Blasi’s legal career began, quite curiously, over a bag of carrots.
Blasi was waiting in line to buy vegetables at a food co-op in Echo Park in 1971, when a friend asked if he was interested in becoming a lawyer through California’s legal apprenticeship program, training with him and several others under a practicing attorney rather than law school.
Though not entirely sold on the lawyer idea, Blasi decided to give it a go, spending his days studying law under the guidance of an attorney at the Echo Park Community Law Office and his nights working in an orange juice factory. But things quickly became interesting, and Blasi volunteered to help with the criminal defense of Vietnam vet and anti-war activist Ronald Kovic following his arrest during a protest at President Richard Nixon’s re-election campaign headquarters in Los Angeles.
Now, more than 40 years later, the 67-year-old Blasi remains passionate about the law and committed to social justice. He has built a resume that would make any aspiring poverty lawyer swoon. On Oct. 11, the UCLA Law School professor will be recognized with the 2013 Loren Miller Legal Services Award for his many contributions as a lawyer and a teacher.
Given during the State Bar’s annual meeting, the Loren Miller award recognizes attorneys who have made a longtime commitment to legal services and done outstanding legal work to benefit the poor.
Catherine E. Lhamon, director of impact litigation for Public Counsel in LA, wrote in a letter supporting Blasi’s nomination that Blasi helped shape the doctrine she and other poverty lawyers now rely on and continues to train young lawyers to follow in his footsteps. When she was a young lawyer new to trial-level litigation, it was Blasi who taught her how to write a complaint, she said.
“Gary has achieved unparalleled success on behalf of the neediest and least powerful populations, ” Lhamon wrote. “He well deserves his iconic status in the legal community.”
Born in Pratt, Kansas, Blasi spent his childhood attending more than a dozen schools in Kansas, Oklahoma and Colorado. His dad was a migrant oilfield worker. He received his bachelor’s degree from the University of Oklahoma, graduating with high honors, and was awarded a full, four-year fellowship to Harvard to study political science.
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