Civil Disobedience 101: Adding the Defense to Your Practice

Bill Quigley is a law professor and Director of the Law Clinic and the Gillis Long Poverty Law Center at Loyola University New Orleans. Bill has been an active public interest and human rights lawyer since 1977. Bill has served as counsel with a wide range of public interest organizations on issues including Katrina social justice issues, public housing, voting rights, death penalty, living wage, human rights, civil liberties, educational reform, constitutional rights and civil disobedience. Bill has litigated numerous cases with the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc., the Advancement Project, and with the ACLU of Louisiana where he was General Counsel for over 15 years. He has been an active lawyer with School of the Americas Watch and the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti. Bill served as Legal Director of the Center for Constitutional Rights in NYC from 2009 to 2011 before returning to Loyola.

Bill teaches in the Law Clinic and teaches courses in Law and Poverty, Social Justice Lawyering, and Catholic Social Teaching and Law. His research and writing has focused on community lawyering, living wage, the right to a job, legal services, community organizing as part of effective lawyering, civil disobedience, high stakes testing, international human rights, revolutionary lawyering and a continuing history of how the laws have regulated the poor since colonial times. He has served as an advisor on human and civil rights to Human Rights Watch USA, Amnesty International USA, and served as the Chair of the Louisiana Advisory Committee to the US Commission on Civil Rights.

Bill is the author of Ending Poverty As We Know It: Guaranteeing A Right to A Job At A Living Wage (2003) and Storms Still Raging: Katrina, New Orleans and Social Justice (2008). In 2003, he was named the Pope Paul VI National Teacher of Peace by Pax Christi USA. Bill is the recipient of the 2004 SALT Teaching Award presented by the Society of American Law Teachers. He was awarded the Stanford Law School National Public Service Award in 2006, the 2006 Camille Gravel Civil Pro Bono Award from the Federal Bar Association New Orleans Chapter and the 2006 National Lawyers Guild Ernie Goodman award. In 2007 the University of California named Bill their Social Justice Scholar in Residence. In 2009, he was the Daynard Public Interest Visiting Fellow at Northeastern University School of Law. In 2011, Bill was awarded the Fordham University School of Law Louis J. Lefkowitz Public Service Award and the Activist Scholar Award of the Urban Affairs Association. In 2015 Bill was awarded the Fr. Robert Drinan Pro Bono Award from American Association of Law Schools Pro Bono and Public Service Opportunities Section. In 2015 Bill was appointed Co-Dean of the School of Law and Political Science of Universite Fondation Dr. Aristide (UNIFA), Port au Prince, Haiti. Bill also serves as Pro-Bono General Counsel for the Washington Peace Center.

Ms. Southers has been mentoring, coaching and helping lawyers throughout her 24-year legal career. In 1993 Ms. Southers was honored as Outstanding Woman of the Year by Women’s Referral Service which has a broad-based membership of Professional and Businesswomen in the Southern California area. The primary basis for this award was her service to the organization’s mentor program which she organized and ran for several years. This provided mentors who Ms. Southers trained and managed and matched with entrepreneurs who desired help in running their businesses.

From that base, Ms. Southers has gone onto writing an advice column for the State Bar publication “Big News”. Topics have included starting your firm, problems with employees, personal issues facing lawyers and many other problems faced daily by the legal profession. She has also taught State Bar MCLE programs on Strategic Planning for the business of law and getting paid for your work.

Additionally, Ms. Southers has mentored and assisted many individual attorneys over her career. In the past few years, Ms. Southers has added this area of expertise to her practice. Guiding and coaching on a regular basis both new as well as established lawyers to a more successful and happier existence in their legal pursuits.

Ms. Southers comes from a managerial as well as a business background and brought this experience to her solo practice of law over 20 years ago. She built her practice to include several areas of the law and was also a trial attorney, winning large awards for her clients. She has “morphed” her practice several times. With over 2,000 past clients, she has encountered and survived numerous business challenges and now “morphed” into a practice which can include helping lawyers on a one to one basis to increase their revenue and be successful without forfeiting their personal life.

More importantly, Ms. Southers has attributed her success to two very important coaches in her life. One was able to see that she should “select one or two areas and not try to start a general practice” when she first opened her solo practice. This piece of advice turned Ms. Southers’ practice around and made it a profitable venture almost immediately. The other coach came later in her career and helped her start a successful mediation practice and handle various management problems with staff and kept her focused on specific goals to fulfill her dreams.

Chuck DiMare has over 30 years experience in the successful litigation of hundreds of civil and criminal cases before a wide variety of federal and state courts and administrative agencies. This experience includes a substantial number of jury trials, judge trials, summary jury trials, mini-trials, mediations, case evaluations, hearings, motions, depositions, settlement conferences, appeals and other matters. Many of these cases have been reported and can be found by conducting a search through West Law and Lexus. A significant number of these cases have also been reported in Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly, The Western Massachusetts Law Tribune, and other legal publications, web news articles, general circulation newspapers and magazines (i.e., New York Times, Boston Globe, Springfield Union).

Chuck’s areas of practice include civil rights law, labor & employment law, higher education law, property rights, family law, professional negligence and personal injury.

Chuck has been admitted to practice law in Massachusetts, the State of Vermont (pro hac vice), the United States Supreme Court, the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, Second Circuit, Third Circuit, Ninth Circuit, Federal Circuit, and also the U.S. District Courts for the Districts of Massachusetts, Vermont, Northern and Western Districts of New York, Northern District of California, and the Districts of New Hampshire (pro hac vice) and Maine (pro hac vice).

Chuck teaches graduate, undergraduate, and combined courses in the School of Education (Department of Educational, Policy, Research and Administration) at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. In the past, he has also taught law related courses in the Departments of Political Science, Legal Studies and the Honors Program. In addition to lecturing at numerous other colleges and universities, he has been a Visiting Professor at Vermont Law School and at Northeastern University’s Graduate Criminal Justice Program, where he taught courses in Law Enforcement Civil Liability and Policy Development.

He has authored many newsletter articles and training manuals for lawyers, legal assistants, and students, and is the author of a chapter on intentional torts for "ATLA's Litigating Tort Cases," published by Thompson/West.

Chuck has been involved in a broad array of leadership and community service work including, Chair of the Zoning Board of Appeals for the Town of Shutesbury, the Massachusetts Bar Association Individual Rights & Responsibilities Section, the Massachusetts Bar Foundation and various local and state boards and committees.

Chuck is also a mediator and trainer at New England Civil Rights Training & Mediation, where he has facilitated mediations in a wide range of issues involving civil rights, police misconduct, race discrimination, age discrimination, disability discrimination, sexual harassment, personal injury, legal malpractice, property damage and labor & employment law. He has made numerous presentations and participated in trainings on the subject of civil rights, constitutional law, labor & employment law, higher education law, police misconduct, consumer protection law, trial advocacy and mediation.

Chuck has lectured to professional associations and groups including the Massachusetts Association of Law Enforcement Administrators, the Massachusetts State Police Academy, the Massachusetts Association of Chiefs of Police, the Massachusetts Municipal Management Association, the Campus Police Officers and College Administrators, the Massachusetts District Courts (Hampshire County), the Springfield Police Academy, the Massachusetts College Personnel Association, the Western Massachusetts Labor Action Committee, the United Auto Workers Union, the Service Employees Union, AFL/CIO, and numerous police departments, public schools, cities and towns, student groups, fraternities, sororities, and private businesses. He has also trained lawyers, law students, and legal assistants at continuing legal education seminars for various groups including the National Legal Aid and Defender Association, the Massachusetts Bar Association, the American Trial Lawyers Association, the National Lawyers Guild, the Legal Services Corporation, the Migrant Legal Services Association, the United States Attorney’s Office (District of Massachusetts), the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office, the Northwestern District Attorney’s Office, the National Jury Project, the Hampshire County Bar Association and the New York City Bar Association.

Chuck has also held legal positions with the federal government, a labor relations law firm, various legal clinics, a public defender's office, the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination and the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

He is a member of the American Association for Justice, the National Police Accountability Project, the National Legal Aid and Defender Association (Student Legal Services Section), the Massachusetts Bar Association, the Massachusetts Bar Foundation, the Massachusetts Academy of Trial Attorneys and the Hampshire and Franklin County Bar Associations.

Bina Ahmad is a social justice attorney. Bina was a staff attorney at PETA, worked with Farm Sanctuary, the Center for Constitutional Rights and Human Rights Watch. She lived and worked in Palestine with Al-Haq, served on the legal team for the Russell Tribunal on Palestine, and was a legal consultant to Badil. She is a founding member of the NLG’s Animal Rights Activism Committee and former NLG National Vice President. Currently, she is a public defender in Manhattan, New York.