Litigation Advisory Board
Our Litigation Advisory Board is composed of a group of talented and experienced mentors who are subject matter experts in the areas of law that we litigate.
Ahilan T. Arulanantham is Professor from Practice and Co-Director of the Center for Immigration Law and Policy at UCLA School of Law. He has successfully litigated a number of cases involving immigrants’ rights, including Franco-Gonzalez v. Holder, the first case to establish a federal right to appointed counsel for any group of immigrants; Jennings v. Rodriguez, which secured the due process rights of immigrants jailed for years while litigating their deportation cases; and, most recently, Ramos v. Nielsen, a challenge to the Trump Administration’s plan to end the TPS program for immigrants who have lived here lawfully for decades. Ahilan has argued twice before the United States Supreme Court, and will argue again this fall on behalf of Americans of the Muslim faith who were targeted by the federal government for surveillance because of their religion, in FBI v. Fazaga. He has also testified before the United States Congress on three occasions, and served as a Lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School and at the University of Irvine School of Law, where he taught on Preventive Detention.
Ahilan’s parents are Sri Lankan Tamil immigrants who left Sri Lanka to escape race discrimination and sporadic violence. Several years after they came to this country, the Sri Lankan civil war began, causing much of his extended family to flee Sri Lanka. Ahilan has remained interested in promoting human rights in Sri Lanka, and has also represented several Sri Lankan Tamil refugees during the course of his work with the ACLU.
Prior to joining UCLA, Ahilan was Senior Counsel at the ACLU in Los Angeles, where he worked for nearly twenty years. Ahilan has also worked as an Assistant Federal Public Defender in El Paso, Texas, and as a law clerk on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. In 2007 and 2013 he was named one of California Lawyer Magazine’s Lawyers of the Year for immigrants’ rights, and has repeatedly been named one of the Daily Journal’s Top 100 Lawyers in California over the last decade. In 2010 he received the Arthur C. Helton Human Rights Award from the American Immigration Lawyers’ Association, and in 2014 received the Jack Wasserman Memorial Award for litigation to protect the rights of vulnerable immigrants, also from the American Immigration Lawyers’ Association.
In 2016 Ahilan was named a MacArthur Foundation Fellow.
Ahilan T. Arulanantham
Christopher Benoit is a partner with Coyle & Benoit, PLLC in El Paso, Texas who primarily practices in New Mexico and El Paso. Chris has worked alongside workers, unions, and vulnerable communities since 2003. He has tried numerous cases against federal and local law enforcement for civil rights violations, public transparency law violations, and against employers for violations of state and federal employment rights throughout Texas and New Mexico. He regularly represents employees in administrative proceedings, arbitration, and complex federal and state litigation. Christopher has also worked as an attorney at Texas RioGrande Legal Aid, Inc., the Proyecto de Derechos Económicos Sociales y Culturales, AC in Mexico City, and was the Legal Director in El Paso, Texas with the Texas Civil Rights Project.
Christopher Benoit
Mark Fleming is vice chair of WilmerHale’s Appellate and Supreme Court Litigation Practice. Mark has appeared in more than 200 appellate cases and personally presented oral argument in 46 of them, including six before the Supreme Court of the United States and 19 before the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, including three in the same week. He has also argued before the First, Second, Third, Eighth, Ninth, Tenth and District of Columbia Circuits and the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court and Appeals Court.
Mark’s broad-based appellate experience covers numerous subject areas, ranging from patent law, securities, and complex business disputes to real estate, antitrust, and tax. His clients include leading companies in the fields of medical devices, biotechnology, and pharmaceuticals, as well as high-technology industries including semiconductors, smartphones, online storage and processing, and connectivity. He also maintains an active pro bono practice, particularly in matters involving immigration law, where he has argued and won several high-profile Supreme Court cases.
Mark previously served as a law clerk to the Honorable David H. Souter of the Supreme Court, the Honorable Michael Boudin of the First Circuit, and the Honorable John C. Major of the Supreme Court of Canada. He also served as an associate legal officer in the Appeals Chamber of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.
Mark Fleming
Mike Kirkpatrick is an attorney at Public Citizen Litigation Group (PCLG) in Washington, DC, where he litigates public interest cases at all levels of the federal and state judiciaries, including the U.S. Supreme Court. His practice areas include constitutional law, civil rights, class actions, administrative law, and open government. Mike joined PCLG in 2004. From 2014-2016, he was a full-time visiting professor at Georgetown Law School and director of the Civil Rights Clinic at the Institute for Public Representation. He returned to PCLG in August 2016.
Before joining PCLG, Mike was a senior trial attorney with the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice (1995-2004), where he litigated employment discrimination cases against state and local government employers, and defended the constitutionality of federal affirmative action programs. Earlier in his career (1991-1995), he was a staff attorney with the Farm Worker Division of Texas Rural Legal Aid, where he litigated employment and civil rights cases on behalf of migrant, transnational, and contingent workers, negotiated labor agreements for striking workers, and counseled farm worker unions and community organizations.
Since 2007, Mike has served as an adjunct professor at Georgetown Law School, teaching a course on ethics in public interest practice and mentoring students in the Public Interest Law Scholar program. He has also taught a seminar on public interest lawyering at George Washington University Law School.
Mike is a recipient of the Peter M. Cicchino Award for Outstanding Advocacy in the Public Interest, and a seven-time recipient of the Department of Justice Special Achievement Award. He has been a Wasserstein Public Interest Fellow at Harvard Law School, the Law and Policy Mentor for the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation, and a Government Fellow for the ABA’s Section of Labor and Employment Law. Mike is a frequent speaker on civil rights, legal ethics, and public interest lawyering.
Mike is a member of the bars of the District of Columbia and Texas (inactive), and is admitted to practice in numerous federal courts. He graduated from Texas Christian University and American University Law School.
Mike Kirkpatrick
Ambika Kumar, co-chair of Davis Wright Tremaine’s award-winning media law practice, focuses on the legal risks posed by content. With a deep understanding of how free speech principles apply to evolving technology, she represents clients in cutting-edge litigation involving content liability and electronic privacy. Ambika has particular experience defending clients under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act and other federal protections for user-generated content. She has helped defeat efforts to censor or otherwise challenge such content in courts around the country. Ambika also regularly advises on and litigates First Amendment, defamation, copyright, and trademark, as well as public records, reporter’s privilege, and courtroom access for a wide range of clients.
Ambika Kumar
Jennifer Lynch is the Surveillance Litigation Director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, where she leads their legal work challenging government abuse of search and seizure technologies through the courts by filing lawsuits and amicus briefs in state and federal courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court, on important issues at the intersection of technology and privacy. Jennifer founded EFF’s Street Level Surveillance Project, which informs advocates, defense attorneys, and decisionmakers about new police tools. In 2017, the First Amendment Coalition awarded her its Free Speech and Open Government Award for her work opening up public access to police surveillance records, and in 2019, the Daily Journal named her to its annual list of Top 100 Lawyers in California. Jennifer has written influential white papers on biometric data collection in immigrant communities and law enforcement use of face recognition. She speaks frequently at legal and technical conferences as well as to the general public on technologies like location tracking, biometrics, algorithmic decisionmaking, and AI, and has testified on facial recognition before committees in the Senate and House of Representatives. She is regularly consulted as an expert on these subjects and others by major and technical news media.
Jennifer Lynch
Jason M. Schultz is a Professor of Clinical Law, Director of NYU's Technology Law & Policy Clinic, and Co-Director of the Engelberg Center on Innovation Law & Policy. His clinical projects, research, and writing primarily focus on practical frameworks and policy options to help traditional areas of law such as intellectual property, privacy, consumer protection, and civil rights adapt in light of new technologies and the challenges they pose. His most recent work focuses on the social and legal implications of machine learning, artificial intelligence, and the Internet of Things.