Chin Heads California EJW

By Herbert A. Sample

Diane Chin's idealism stretches back to her youth. As a daughter in a large, immigrant family that helped neighbors in need, she was a teenage volunteer peer counselor and tutor. And after getting her JD at Northeastern University School of Law in Boston, she entered the relatively small sector of public-service law.

So it seems fitting that Chin, 45, is now heading up the newly created California office of Equal Justice Works (EJW), a national group that recruits law students to public-service work and encourages experienced attorneys to take more pro bono clients.

Appointed the first director of Equal Justice Works/West in March, Chin plans to expand its programs on the West Coast. But there will be challenges: Chin must first assess the public-service needs throughout a large, ethnically diverse territory. Making a difference in rural California is also sure to be a tall order, she adds.

But Chin will be well served by her civil-rights pedigree, including her work at the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area; San Francisco's police-watchdog agency; Chinese for Affirmative Action (CAA); and the Thelton E. Henderson Center for Social Justice at the UC Berkeley School of Law. In addition, Chin has a history of meeting challenges. For example, she successfully eliminated a backlog of complex police-misconduct cases in San Francisco. She also negotiated the ideological and cultural diversity of San Francisco's Chinese community as CAA's executive director from 1998 to 2003.

Colleagues credit Chin with energy, passion, and strong administrative skills. Anna Wang, deputy director of the John and Terry Levin Center for Public Service and Public Interest Law at Stanford Law School, where Chin was director from 2003 to 2007, calls Chin a wonderful listener and practitioner.

Michael Wald, professor emeritus at Stanford Law School and a close friend of Chin, hopes she may broaden the reach and scope of the public-service law community as it rebounds from the lean years of the 1990s. "I think she will be building a lot of coalitions among firms and public-interest organizations that don't exist now, and that would be really beneficial," he says.

In Chin's view, the law is "a primary vehicle through which social justice ... and poverty can be addressed and a host of problems can be alleviated." She adds, "We are dedicated to trying to make sure that the most qualified young lawyers ... meet the most dramatic and critical legal needs."

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