Trina Grillo, social activist and beloved professor

The Grillo Retreat, co-sponsored by SALT and a consortium of West Coast law schools, honors the memory of Trina Grillo, a dedicated social activist and justice advocate who died in 1996. Click here to learn more details about the Trina Grillo Retreat for 2008.

For a fuller history of the Trina Grillo Retreat, go to the Santa Clara University School of Law website by clicking here and going through the histories preserved there.

The first retreat was held in 1998, and was based at University of Santa Clara School of Law where Trina was a professor. Now the Grillo Retreat moves among the locations where the consortium members are located, across the Pacific.

Like the Cover Retreat, the purpose of the Grillo Retreat is to offer public-interest minded law school students an opportunity to break the isolation by meeting and networking with other students from around the country. Not only does this provide students with a network while in school, it provides the foundation for a professional network to support their public interest ambitions later.

Students also get to interact with lawyers, legal academics, and other professionals who can offer guidance and act as role models for the variety of ways in which one can serve the public interest. By putting together students, faculty, and practitioners, the Retreat offers a chance to examine legal education to assure that what occurs in the classroom prepares students for a career in public interest law.

Lastly, the Retreat can spawn creative ways to approach using law as an instrument for social change.

A sampling of Grillo Retreat themes include:

• 2003 "Poverty, Wealth, Status & Inequality: Social Justice Lawyering in Theory and In Practice"
• 2004 “Empowerment for Social Change”
• 2005 “Rebellious Lawyering”
• 2006 “What does money have to do with social justice lawyering?”
• 2007 “Justice Across Borders”
• 2008 "Communities Building Social Justice"

The Trina Grillo Public Interest & Social Justice Law Retreat is sponsored by the following West Coast law schools:

Santa Clara University School of Law

Stanford University School of Law

University of California, Los Angeles, School of Law

Golden Gate University School of Law

Seattle University School of Law

Boyd School of Law, University of Nevada, Las Vegas

University of Oregon School of Law

University of San Francisco School of Law

University of Denver Sturm College of Law

Lewis & Clark Law School

March 2008 Update: Las Vegas was the host school for the 2008 Trillo Grillo Public Interest and Social Justice Law Retreat.  The focus was on developing public interest institutions in community like Las Vegas, where relatively few public interest organizations exist.

Approximately 60 students attended the program that brought together local practitioners, conference speakers, and faculty. 

Saturday morning began with a plenary "Models for Social Justice--Framing Your Mission, featuring Professor Bill Hing (UC-Davis), Professor Leticia Saucedo (UNLV), and Professor Deborah Kenn (Syracuse).  Three workshops followed where people could follow their interests: "Private Pro and Low Bono--Advocating for the Public Interest in Private Practice," "Navigating Challenges and Growing Your Model," and "Getting Involved with Existing Social Justice Projects." 

After a career strategies lunch, a second plenary "How to Create Your Own Shop and Fund It" took students through the financial considerations of getting and making money while doing social justice work. 

Stanford Law School students will organize the 2008 Trina Grillo Retreat.

For fuller descriptions of each Grillo Retreat, go to the Equalizer portion of the website, where annual reports on each public interest retreat are published.