Laura W. Brill

Brill represents clients like Mitsubishi Corp., Outfront Media Inc., Los Angeles County and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. She is co-counsel with Boies Schiller Flexner LLP in the major Nazi looted art case Cassirer v. Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection, currently headed for trial after a 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel reversed a lower court’s dismissal.

These days she’s deeply enmeshed in a significant pro bono voter registration project, leading an effort to educate lawyers, young people, their parents and school officials about California’s little-known pre-registration law, which since 2016 allows those under 18 to sign up so they can cast their first ballot at the first election following their 18th birthday.

“I love all the work, but I’m particularly obsessed with voter registration now,” she said. “What’s driving me isn’t so much partisan politics as the realization that voting is so central to our democracy. And it’s essential now that we see basic democratic institutions under attack: an independent judiciary, the rule of law, free speech and respect for the truth.”

Frustrated by the current political climate, Brill said she decided last year to do more than complain about it after she learned about the law and found that every public high school in California is required to designate a person responsible for distributing voter registration cards. Using the Public Records Act, she obtained a list of schools that were in compliance and found only 260 out of more than 1,700 schools had designated a person.

Following repeated emails and follow-up phone calls, she persuaded high-level Los Angeles school administrators to help young people register. Virtually all the schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District now have designated persons and volunteers from the nonpartisan League of Women Voters who will be able to help get young people engaged, she said.

“You have kids in high school learning about the civil rights movement and how government works,” she said. “This pre-registration program helps connect the curriculum to actual civic engagement.”

She also convinced the San Bernardino County Registrar of Voters to offer voter registration services to new citizens as they emerge from their naturalization ceremonies. An article she wrote about voter registration inspired a group in Orange County to launch a drive at San Juan Hills High School. From seven students registered, the number has risen to more than 610.

“There’s a real hunger for this,” Brill said. “It is energizing.”

— John Roemer