Ruth Silver Taube, special counsel to the Legal Aid Society – Employment Law Center (LAS-ELC), has been chosen as a recipient of the State Bar Pro Bono Service Award. This honor was established in 1983 by the State Bar Board of Governors to recognize California attorneys "who have provided or enabled the direct provision of legal services to poor persons or to organizations whose primary purpose is to provide legal services to the poor, free-of-charge, without expectation of compensation from the client. "
Ms. Silver Taube, who is a partner in the two-person firm Silver and Taube and a lecturer at Santa Clara University School of Law, has been actively involved in the Katharine & George Alexander Community Law Center’s Workers Rights Clinic since 1995. Each year she has contributed hundreds of hours of her time training countless numbers of law students in the art of client interviewing and the substance of employment law. She has also supervised the weekly Workers’ Rights Clinic, which assists scores of low wage workers monthly with a wide array of employment-related problems. Ruth is a person of great passion for civil rights and commitment to the provision of free legal services. “We are all impressed by her energy, her sense of fairness, and her profound dedication to helping others,” says Professor Angelo Ancheta, Director of the Katharine & George Alexander Community Law Center.
According to Joan Graff, LAS-ELC President, Ms. Silver Taube was nominated for this award because of her “tireless and excellent work, her boundless energy, her genuine modesty, her ever ready willingness to be of help to clients, and her enthusiasm for instructing and mentoring law students. We admire and respect her for following her social justice path and we value her for her compassion, infectious sense of humor, expansive generosity and the inspiration she offers to us all. She is warm, spirited, smart and deeply caring, and the clients and students alike gain from her compassion and wisdom.”
