A $1.65 million gift from two prominent members of the Kline School of Law will enable the newly named Andy and Gwen Stern Community Lawyering Clinic to expand its free legal assistance locally and to support Kline’s commitment to social justice.
The transformative gift reflects Andy and Gwen Stern’s passion for community engagement, and it provides for the hire of an additional staff attorney to extend the clinic’s programs under its director Rachel López.
“Andy and Gwen’s generous gift will allow us to realize the clinic’s full potential,” López says. “Not only will it mean that we can provide more high-quality legal assistance to some of Philadelphia’s most vulnerable, but it will also create new opportunities for innovations that will facilitate a more collective and holistic approach to legal problem-solving.”
Andy Stern is an accomplished partner and trial lawyer known for obtaining record-setting verdicts at Kline & Specter, which was co-founded by the Kline School’s naming benefactor, Thomas Kline. Gwen Stern is director of the Kline School’s Trial Advocacy Program. In 2005, she established the Marshall-Brennan Constitutional Literacy Project in Philadelphia, bringing a national program dedicated to teaching city teens about the legal system and exposing them to the power of advocacy.