Inland Empire Latino Lawyers Association (IELLA), in partnership with San Bernardio Superior Court and Riverside Superior Court, recently started offering expungement services to people with conviction history in San Bernardino and Riverside.  Monica Mar, the executive director of IELLA, was with the Reentry Legal Clinic in our first year, and we are thrilled to see her pioneer offering reentry legal services to those in her service area.  So congratulations to everyone!

IELLA isn't the first public interest agency to offer reentry legal services, however, in the State of California.  We aren't either.  Other agencies responded to their community's need for these services much earlier.  And we take this opportunity to offer our gratitude to those who came before us--and those who will come after.  We acknowledge that this is a long struggle, something that will probably last our lifetime and beyond.  And we are so blessed to be in the company of so many good people on this journey.  You can find some of them on this (slightly-outdated) map of reentry legal services in Southern California.

In particular, at the Reentry Legal Clinic, we owe everything to the Neighborhood Legal Services of Los Angeles (NLS-LA) and staff attorneys, Jose O. Tello and Josh Stehlik, without whose selfless assistance this clinic wouldn't have been possible.  And we also thank the East Bay Community Law Center (EBCLC).  Although they are in Berkeley, hundreds of miles away from us, their assistance too has been integral to our growth over the years.