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Issue Sept/Oct 2009

Fundraisers inc.: Legal services groups turn creative to help bridge funding shortfalls

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.

Accomplished trial attorney, altruist takes MBA helm

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.