Lawyers Journal
By Bill Archambeault
They've tried hiring freezes, layoffs,
limiting office hours and plundering their reserve accounts, but it
hasn't been enough. In the midst of an unusually harsh recession,
nonprofit legal services groups are caught between the most severe
funding shortage anyone can recall and an unprecedented demand for
legal help from the poor. There simply isn't enough money, and too
many people need help. So they're trying something new. A number of
things, actually.
By Tricia Oliver
As far back as age 5, Valerie A.
Yarashus set her sights on becoming an attorney. Now 43, there has
been very little that Yarashus has put her mind to that she has not
achieved. An accomplished plaintiff trial lawyer, Yarashus is a
principal of Meehan, Boyle, Black & Bogdanow PC. Yarashus built
much of her career at Sugarman and Sugarman PC, where the 1990
Harvard Law graduate cut her teeth as a trial attorney and quickly
established herself as the firm's first female partner in 1996.
Yarashus' latest professional accolade came when she assumed the
presidency of the Massachusetts Bar Association on Sept. 1.