For decades, the North Carolina Legal Education Assistance Foundation has focused on recruiting and retaining public interest attorneys whose salaries are lower than public-sector attorneys and whose law school debt might prevent them from engaging in public service. According to the agency, assistant district attorneys, public defenders, and nonprofit lawyers often must choose between public service and pursuing higher salaries.
Katherine Blass Asaro, NC LEAF’s executive director, spoke recently with Lawyers Weekly, discussing key components of the agency, including its mission, who benefits from its work, and why its existence is important.
Before she joined NC LEAF, Asaro served as senior staff attorney and Disaster Legal Services program director at the North Carolina Pro Bono Center, a program of the North Carolina Supreme Court’s Equal Access to Justice Commission; clerked for Chief Judge William Osteen Jr. and Senior Judge N. Carlton Tilley in the Middle District of North Carolina; and served as a staff attorney at the North Carolina School Boards Association in Raleigh.
The Michigan-born, Ohio-reared Asaro has a bachelor’s degree in history and a teaching certification from Duke University, a master’s in education from Harvard University and a law degree from the University of North Carolina School of Law.
A: The North Carolina Legal Education Assistance Foundation was founded in 1989 by North Carolina law students and deans passionate about...
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