Eric Angel, Legal Director

At the risk of embarrassing our colleague and friend, we would like to highlight a career milestone for Senior Staff Attorney Julie Becker: her 10-year-anniversary at Legal Aid.

After graduating from Yale Law School, Julie served as a law clerk for the Honorable Sonia Sotomayor, then of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and now on the Supreme Court of the United States. After her clerkship, Julie joined Legal Aid as a Skadden Fellow. The focus of her fellowship was reform of the DC Housing Authority just as it was emerging from receivership. After two years as a Skadden Fellow, Julie stayed on at Legal Aid and has been practicing housing law throughout her tenure.

Julie Becker, Senior Staff Attorney

In the past decade, Julie has become an indispensible leader on behalf of tenants living in poverty in the District of Columbia. During her time here, she has done extraordinary work to prevent homelessness, to increase the availability of affordable housing , and to improve the conditions of low-income housing in the District.

Among her peers, the bench and the bar, Julie is recognized as an expert and a tireless advocate. She has an extraordinary legal mind and is often the intellectual architect of some of the most sophisticated litigation and policy advocacy pursued by the legal services community. She is relentless in her pursuit of a just result for a client or for the community, committing her full self to the project and working endless hours. As a result of her work, she received the National Housing Law Project’s Housing Justice Advocate Award in 2006 and last year was highlighted as a “Rising Star” in the National Law Journal’s “40 under 40” article. Just this week, she helped win an important victory at the D.C. Court of Appeals.  See Loney and Tenants of 710 Jefferson Street Opinion.

Julie’s clients know her to be a brilliant and effective lawyer who places a high value on ensuring that everyone -- but especially persons traditionally denied a voice -- is treated with dignity and respect. She has the rare combination of a superb legal talent, vision, dedication, empathy, compassion, and respect.

But to us, Julie is an amazing mentor, colleague, and friend. She is an inspiration to those of us who are fortunate to work with her every day here at Legal Aid. We congratulate her on this wonderful milestone.