Serving up justice

Delighting foodies and justice supporters alike
Credo Restaurant’s unique way of helping nonprofits.

OneJustice supports a statewide network of nonprofits, law schools, law firms, and businesses that provide life-changing legal help to hundreds of thousands of Californians facing legal barriers to basic necessities. You – like everyone in our network – are an essential part of this collective effort!

Each month we give another example of how “It Takes a Network,” featuring an interview with member of the OneJustice community. This month we touched base with Jason Eriksen, Sales Manager at Merchants Exchange Productions (which includes Credo Restaurant, the Julia Morgan Ballroom, One Leidesdorff, and the Merchants Exchange Club.)

Every July for the last three years, Credo Restaurant has provided incredible support to OneJustice through their innovative “Credo Community Partners” Program. With a month full of a special OneJustice menu item and a justice cocktail, plus support for multiple justice happy hours and special events, Credo’s support helps OneJustice raise public awareness about the need for equal access to justice and to raise funds for projects that bring life-changing legal help to Californians in need. We are so grateful for their support – so we sat down with Jason to talk a bit about Credo and why the restaurant has developed this unique way to support nonprofits.

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Jason, thank you to so much to everyone at Credo and Merchant Exchange Productions for three years of amazing support for OneJustice and a whole host of wonderful nonprofits. Would you tell us a little bit about Credo Restaurant and what makes it unique?

Credo was opened in January 2010 by Clint and Janet Reilly. Credo is the Latin and Italian word for “I believe.” When guests walk in, they will see the walls of Credo are covered in quotes from eclectic figures throughout history with what they believe in. From Bush to Obama, Richard Pryor to Mother Teresa, the quotes from these famous people are just part of the charm that Credo embodies. The table tops are a sustainable design composed entirely of scrap wood created by acclaimed Dutch designer Piet Hein Eek. The found scrap wood illustrates the organic ideas cleverly positioned on the walls.

Credo’s menu has a focus on modern Italian food with a California fusion. We believe in authentic local ingredients, creative preparation and gracious hospitality. A sophisticated bar with unique libations makes Credo’s bar a fun happy hour spot in San Francisco’s Financial District. The menu is great for both “foodies” and families.

Credo Restaurant has developed a wonderful way of supporting nonprofits – the Community Partners Program. Can you tell us a bit about the program?

Our owners, Clint and Janet Reilly, have always been extremely philanthropic in their personal and professional life. Credo was a new outlet for them to give back to the community, and the Community Partners Program was initiated shortly after the restaurant opened in 2010. We select a quality nonprofit organization every month to highlight through our word of mouth and social media. We select one day out of the month as the “Take Over Night” where 20% of the dinner sales during that night are donated back to the organization. We also have a signature cocktail and appetizer that is served throughout the month, and $2 of each signature appetizer or cocktail are donated back to the nonprofit. We place a brief article cut-out on each table that explains the goal of the organization, usually with staggering statistics that catch your eye. The Community Partners Program allows the nonprofit organization to add another voice to educate the masses about the issues they focus on.

Jason Eriksen and Lauren Razaghifar of Merchant Exchange Productions present OneJustice executive Julia Wilson with the July 2013 Community Partnership donation.

Jason Eriksen and Lauren Razaghifar of Merchant Exchange Productions present OneJustice executive Julia Wilson with the July 2013 Credo Community Partners Program donation.

And why did you select OneJustice as a participant in the Community Partners Program for the last three years?

With so many nonprofits in the Bay Area, we have to find organizations that match our company’s overall philanthropic goals. The fight OneJustice supports to eliminate obstacles that hinder people from obtaining justice is exactly the caliber of nonprofit we enjoy highlighting as a Credo Community Partner. The Bay Area needs more organizations with the passion that the OneJustice staff and network portray.

Last July, Credo served a very special cocktail to benefit OneJustice during our Community Partners month – the Legal Lampone. What is the recipe for a Legal Lampone, for the folks in the OneJustice network who would like to try it again?

Sure thing! The ingredients for a Legal Lampone are:

Raspberry-infused cachaca (a distilled spirit made from sugarcane juice, this is the most popular distilled alcoholic beverage in Brazil!)
Campari
Lemon simple syrup

As you know, the OneJustice network is full of foodies, so what are YOUR favorite items on the Credo menu right now?

Appetizer: Burrata w. Tuscan Honey, Sea Salt & Crostini
Salad: Arugula w. Frisee, Asian Pears, Almonds & Pecorino Monteporo
Pasta: Orecchiette w. Sausage, Onions, Gyspsy Pepper Tomato Ragu & Fresh Garbanzo Beans
Pizze: Spicy Pork Sausage, Tomato, Fontina, Parmesan and Dandelion Greens
Entrée: Lamb Shank w. EVOO Mashed Potatoes, Sauteed Spinach & Marsala Jus
Dessert: Bittersweet Chocolate Cake with Vanilla Crema

[Editor’s note: YUM! For those of you in the Bay Area, Credo is open Monday to Friday 11:00 am-10:00 pm, Saturday 5:30 pm-10:00 pm and closed Sunday.]

And mark your calendars now for July 17, 2014! OneJustice is thrilled that our annual Opening Doors to Justice event will take place again at the gorgeous Julia Morgan Ballroom – yet another piece of this terrific collaboration between OneJustice and the team at Credo and Merchant Exchange Productions!

A huge and heartfelt thank you to Jason and everyone at Credo and Merchant Exchange Productions for the Credo Community Partners Program and their years of support for OneJustice!

To believe is power. Justice is power. This is justice.

Sometimes you get to be part of something really special.

That’s what happened when Mr. Salazar invited me into his home.

Last October, something really special happened to me. I drove in the early morning from my home in Pacifica to a small town in the Central Valley – Firebaugh, California. And there, I met Mr. Florentino Salazar, who invited me into his home.

Mr. Salazar in the Dave Brick Film for OneJustice

Click on the image above to view the 3-minute film Dave Brick created about the power of legal services.

You see, a couple of months earlier, OneJustice won an amazing contest run by Dave Brick of Brick Films. Dave is an incredibly talented filmmaker (you can see his work on his website) – and he decided to provide a free film to a nonprofit as a way of giving back. After 47 contest submissions and thousands of votes cast for the finalists, OneJustice was the contest winner – and the recipient of Dave’s generosity with his time, energy and expertise. Working with Dave, we all decided that the best possible idea was a film that could be used by the entire legal services sector to relate the power of our work – through the lens of one client’s experience. And with OneJustice’s focus on reaching isolated areas of the state, and Dave’s prior work for CRLA and PolicyLink documenting the needs of small unincorporated communities in rural areas, it was a no-brainer that we would focus on the Central Valley.

And so we worked with Chris Schneider and the dedicated team at Central California Legal Services, who introduced us to Mr. Salazar. He agreed to meet with me, to hear more about the film idea, so I trundled off to Firebaugh.

And had my heart broken wide open. As we sat around his kitchen table, Mr. Salazar was incredibly open with me about his experience. He had worked his entire life to provide for his family. Like many low-wage workers, they lived one pay period away from truly hard times. And then came medical problems, surgery, and trouble making ends meet – followed by a terrible experience with a loan modification company whose unlawful practices brought Mr. Salazar and his family to the brink of losing their home. Somehow they miraculously made it to Central California Legal Services – who stepped in, saved the home, and ultimately won an injunction that prohibited the company from continuing their illegal and predatory behavior.

Now I know that this story is repeated hundreds and thousands of times throughout California. Legal services attorneys work miracles in family’s lives every day. But sitting in Mr. Salazar’s modest and immaculate home, meeting his wife, sons and family members, hearing him describe the attorneys at Central California Legal Services as angels who came into his life – it reminded me what an honor and a privilege it is to do this work.

And so it seems particularly right to share this film with you all on Martin Luther King Jr. day. Because I think Dr. King would have agreed with Mr. Salazar that “To believe is power. Justice is power. This is justice.”

(Click here or on the image above to watch the film.)

Making Joe Biden proud

Creating Impact in Los Angeles

A new lawyer’s reflection on launching an ambitious new pro bono project

What’s a Leslie Knope-type to do after law school graduation? For me, as my 3L year at Loyola Law School began, I was hoping to land a fellowship and start a public interest career in Los Angeles.

Luckily for me, some wonderful people over at the Association of Pro Bono Counsel were looking for someone to work on a brand-new project working with domestic violence survivors in Los Angeles at the same time. Through fate, and a dash of speedy emailing, I was able to get an interview for this new position, armed with little more information than I’ve spelled out here. And I think they mentioned something about Joe Biden. After a few hours of incessant email refreshing; a quick application period; and a bit more waiting, I found out I’d received a Loyola Fellowship to coordinate the Los Angeles Project of a nationwide program, IMPACT.

LA City Attorney Mike Feuer opens yesterday’s IMPACT LA launch clinic.

From there, it was a whirlwind of bar studies and life changes. A few months later, I found myself in the Los Angeles office of OneJustice, hoping I was the only one who thought I had no idea what I was doing. My friends all gave me time-tested 20-something advice, “fake it ’til you make it.” After just a few months of working with the fabulous OneJustice team and the great folks from APBCo, I know I’m incredibly lucky to be here and that I have a remarkable opportunity to make a real difference in people’s lives.

My role as the Loyola Law School Post Graduate Public Interest Law Fellow is to coordinate the IMPACT LA Project. IMPACT is a nationwide project that was formed in response to a meeting between ABPCo members and Vice President Joe Biden. The APBCo IMPACT (“Involving More Pro Bono Attorneys in Our Communities Together”) Project is taking root in eight urban centers, including Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area. The objective of the IMPACT Project is to design innovative and sustainable new solutions that will increase access to free legal services by utilizing pro bono volunteers.

Here in LA, our project is a monthly clinic that provides free wrap-around legal services to survivors of domestic violence in South LA at the Jenesse Center, a leading domestic violence shelter and support center. At the clinics, volunteer attorneys from Los Angeles APBCo-member law firms provide free legal assistance in the areas of housing, immigration, and public benefits. And just yesterday, with the help of the LA City Attorney, Mike Feuer, we kicked off 2014 decisively.

Volunteer attorneys from Latham & Watkins and Morrison & Foerster staffed the IMPACT LA launch clinic yesterday working with supervising attorneys from Public Counsel and Neighborhood Legal Services of Los Angeles County.

At our official IMPACT LA launch clinic yesterday, eight volunteer attorneys from Morrison & Foerster and Latham & Watkins gathered at the Jenesse Center to give generously of their time and energy. During the clinic, the volunteers met with and advised six women, working closely with two supervising legal services attorneys from Neighborhood Legal Services of Los Angeles County and Public Counsel.

And this was just the beginning. We will now be running monthly clinics at the Jenesse Center, staffed by a rotation of pro bono attorneys from law firms and supervised by a partnership of local legal services nonprofits.

For me, the most impressive thing about last Friday’s clinic was the outpouring of support from volunteers for survivors of domestic violence. It’s an issue that can be difficult to talk about for many. However, my experience with the clinic has been that all of our volunteers are compassionate people who enjoy the opportunity to provide these services to women in the city that we all share.

And most importantly, the women who receive the services are able to better understand their situations and take control of their own lives. And that is what makes my job so worthwhile. Well, that and being able to imagine that somewhere out there, Vice President Biden is proud of me.

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Kelsey Williams is a Loyola Law School Post-Graduate Public Interest Law Fellow at OneJustice and runs IMPACT LA in Southern California. During law school, Kelsey spent one summer working in the Students’ Rights Project at the ACLU of Southern California and her second summer working with foster youth at Public Counsel. Kelsey is loving running IMPACT LA, learning more about the needs of domestic violence survivors, and devising ways for IMPACT LA to meet them. If your law firm or corporate legal department is interested in volunteering for an IMPACT LA clinic, please email Kelsey at kwilliams@one-justice.org.

A little trivial pursuit . . . January justice contest

Seriously – it’s National Trivia Day

Most of the time we think our work is anything but trivial.

But in honor of National Trivia Day, our January justice contest is exactly that!

True confessions – the first justice contest of the year always feels like a lot of pressure. Like we’re setting the tone for an entire year, so it had better be great!

And then we found out that today is National Trivia Day. Yep, even though that sounds like its very own April Fool’s joke – this is completely serious.

(Well, it’s not soooooooo serious. And it’s actually also National Spaghetti Day – but even the hyper-creative OneJustice staff team couldn’t find a way to turn noodles into a justice contest!)

And then we realized that we have to celebrate this amazing holiday – OneJustice style. How could we pass up this opportunity to share a tidbit of OneJustice trivia with you?

So here is the January justice contest. Like December’s contest, it’s another guessing game – this time about the upcoming February 1st Public Interest/Public Sector Career Fair, affectionately known by law students and nonprofit legal organizations alike as “PI/PS Day.” (And if you want to know more about PI/PS Day, read last month’s great blog post by Program Manager Kim Irish, check out the OneJustice website here, or watch the video at the end of this post.)

So, here is the number to guess to win our January 2014 Justice Contest (drum roll please……)

How many INTERVIEWS took place during PI/PS Day 2013?

You can win this nifty water bottle! Post today!

Some background factoids to help you calibrate your guesses:

PI/PS Day brings together law students from nine Northern California law schools with public interest employers from all over the state, for the largest public interest law career fair on the west coast.
Most of the day consists of employers interviewing law students for summer internships or post-graduate public interest positions.
In 2012, over 100 public interest employers participated in PI/PS Day.
In 2013, 635 law students attended PI/PS Day.

And you know the routine by now: post your guesses in comments to this blog post, or on our facebook or LinkedIn pages, or tweet it to @OneJusticeOrg using hashtag #OneJusticecontest. All guesses must be posted before Monday January 13th, you may post more than one guess, and the guess closest to the correct number wins this nifty OneJustice water bottle.

And, to sweeten the pot in honor of National Trivia Day, if someone guesses the exact correct number of interviews granted in 2013, they will win a $25 Amazon gift card. Yippee!

Let the guessing begin! (And this post didn’t satisfy your appetite for trivia, check out this additional site with 45 amazing facts in honor of National Trivia Day). Enjoy!

Delighting foodies and justice supporters alike Credo Restaurant’s unique way of helping nonprofits.