Instructing the next generation of attorneys in client-centered, cross-cultural, access-to-justice, and movement-based lawyering

Shefali Milczarek-Desai (@Shefalimdesai) is Assistant Clinical Professor of Law and Director of the Workers’ Rights Clinic at the University of Arizona’s James E. Rogers College of Law.

She instructs the next generation of attorneys in client-centered and cross-cultural lawyering through representation of low-wage immigrant and migrant workers throughout Arizona’s borderlands. Under her supervision, law students have worked on cases resulting in published decisions in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and the Arizona District Court upholding the rights of asylum seekers and immigrant workers. 

Shefali's clinical and online coursework reflects collaborations with Harvard Law School’s Labor and WorkLife Program, Northern Arizona University’s Center for Health Equity Research’s Immigrant Research, Practice and Policy Program, the Mexican Consulate, and the Tucson Immigrant Workers’ Cooperative Network. She regularly speaks and presents on issues affecting immigrants including for the American Public Health Association, the State Bar of Arizona, the Arizona Women Lawyer’s Association, and the College of Law.

She also writes at the intersection of critical race and feminist theory and employment and immigration law. Her current research focuses on how paid sick time laws and policies influence the legal rights and well-being of immigrant workers, and how migrant workers can reclaim their labor through worker-owned cooperatives. Her work has appeared in The Conversation, the Columbia Human Rights Law Review and the UCLA Women’s Law Journal, among others.

Prior to teaching, Shefali assisted in litigating Flores v. Arizona, a U.S. Supreme Court case concerning the rights of English Language Learners in Arizona public schools, practiced at the DeConcini McDonald law firm where she was elected shareholder, and clerked for Vice-Chief Justice Ruth V. McGregor at the Arizona Supreme Court. She is a Rhodes Scholarship Finalist, a Notre Dame Law School Feminist Jurisprudence award winner, and has published numerous articles and essays as well as a book manuscript selected as a finalist in an international competition. Her favorite pastimes include hiking in mountains, preparing Indian food, and reading to her sons.