CHICAGO, Sept. 16, 2016 — Miami lawyer Angela C. Vigil will receive the 2016 Making a Difference through Pro Bono Work Award during the American Bar Association GPSolo 2016 Solo & Small Firm Summit on Friday, Sept. 30, in Cincinnati. The award honors an attorney, law firm, corporate legal department, government attorney office or institution in the legal profession that does pro bono work and has made an outstanding commitment to volunteer legal services for the poor and disadvantaged.
Angela C. Vigil is a pro bono partner and executive director at the law firm of Baker & McKenzie, in the Miami office. She represents children in children’s law, in appellate work and in human rights and civil rights advocacy. She has been recognized with honors from Northwestern University School of Law for her Outstanding Commitment to Public Service, the American Bar Association for her pro bono work, the National Association of Counsel for Children for her work on behalf of children and youth and several organizations in Florida where she lives and practices. Vigil helps lead teams on child welfare, juvenile justice and education issues in federal circuit courts, state supreme courts and in the appellate and trial courts of Florida where she has been focusing on the representation of victims of immigrant children and trafficking victims in Miami and from around the nation. In addition, her legal work includes human rights and public international law projects for global pro bono clients of the firm.
She is a frequent speaker at national and international conferences, including the National Juvenile Defender Summit, Pro Bono Institute’s national seminar, the Equal Justice Conference of the National Legal Aid and Defenders Association and the ABA International Summit on the Legal Needs of Street Children, as well as other organizations. Vigil recently helped found the Children’s Rights Summit that is now an annual event in Silicon Valley for in-house counsel and children’s advocates. She also helped lead the first-ever White House Hackathon on foster care and technology and has continued the work started there in other technology developments around the country focusing on at-risk and vulnerable children and youth.
Vigil is a member of the ABA Working Group on Unaccompanied Minor Immigrants, ABA Section of Litigation’s Children’s Rights Litigation Committee, the Coordinating Committee on the Legal Needs of Homeless Youth and the Pro Bono Task Force for the Section of Litigation. She is a board and faculty member for the National Institute for Trial Advocacy and a member of the Standing Committee on Pro Bono for the Florida Bar. Her past work includes service as a Pro Bono Task Force member of Legal Services Corporation (LSC), the single largest funder of civil legal aid for low-income Americans in the nation.
With 11,791 members, the ABA Solo, Small Firm and General Practice Division (GPSolo) is committed to providing unique resources exclusively for solo, small-firm and general practitioners, who represent half of the nation’s lawyers.
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