Elizabeth Diamond
Legal Fellow
Elizabeth is a legal fellow at Sustainable Economies Law Center with a focus on Rethinking the Legal Profession. She is focused on supporting research related to the barriers of entry into the legal profession as well as barriers to accessing legal services and how changes in the organization of the profession can benefit both workers in the legal field as well as their broader communities, especially those who lack access to adequate legal resources. In the coming year she also plans to support the Rethinking Home program and the City Policies program.
Prior to SELC
Elizabeth is a recent graduate of UC Berkeley School of Law and comes to SELC following a 3 month placement with the East Bay Community Law Center (EBCLC), where she served low-income residents of Alameda County in a neighborhood justice clinic. During law school, Elizabeth also interned with EBCLC’s HIV/AIDS Law Project, where she helped address the needs of low-income, HIV-positive adults, with a focus on reducing barriers to care created by lack of stable income, housing and health care coverage. She also spent a summer with the Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society, where she researched and reported on diversity in higher education and the implications of restrictions on affirmative action programs. Elizabeth’s first introdcution to SELC was through her volunteer work with the food justice project of the Students for Economic and Environmental Justice (SEEJ), where she worked on the “Legal Eats” project.
Prior to law school, Elizabeth spent eight years in New York City, where she attended New York University. Her studies focused on urban planning and sociology, and after graduating in 2007, she began working for an affordable housing developer in NYC. She has also worked with non-profit organizations (including food coops) in NYC, Prague, and New Orleans. A summer volunteering with a grassroots non-profit in New Orleans provided much of her inspiration to pursue a law degree as a means for positive social change. In her free time Elizabeth enjoys hiking, biking cooking and learning cheesy songs on the ukulele.