July 2020 – California Women Lawyers (CWL), an organization dedicated to the advancing women in the legal profession, announced that it is honoring Kendall Brill & Kelly Partner Laura W. Brill with the 2020 Judith Soley Lawyer as Citizen Award for her mentorship and support of women lawyers and her work as Founder of The Civics Center.
Ms. Brill founded the nonprofit organization in 2018 to build a foundation for civic engagement and voter participation in high schools through education, organizing, and advocacy. The Civics Center supports student-led, peer-to-peer voter registration and preregistration efforts in high school communities.
The Judith Soley Lawyer as Citizen Award is named after a longtime CWL board member who demonstrated a commitment to her community before her tragic death. The award recognizes one attorney each year who has “made a significant contribution to their community” that extends “beyond the practice of law” and “devotes time and effort to the public good and values through the tradition of public service and involvement.”
Among the many reasons for honoring Ms. Brill, CWL recognized her work using “little known law and procedure” to increase voter pre-registration among high school students. It praised her success in getting students around the nation to use The Civic Center’s “Democracy in a Box” toolkit to build civic engagement, as well as her contributions writing articles and participating in panels on the issues of voting rights and judicial independence. To see CWL’s Awards, please click here.