Sowing More Seeds… 30 Elizabeth Stone House In 2008, Mintz Levin attorneys continued to provide legal services to the Elizabeth Stone House (ESH), a pro bono partner for many years, which provides emergency shelter, transitional housing and a number of services to women and their children who have been victims of domestic violence. Attorney Martha Zackin completed an overhaul of the ESH Employee Handbook, including a collection of policies for ESH staff. Attorneys Anthony Hubbard and Marianne Staniunas completed revised Articles of Organization and Bylaws to reflect the much-improved corporate governance structure, and assisted with various corporate documents and grants of authority to effectively transition the change in governance. Attorneys Maryann Civitello and Jennifer Kiely and legal assistant Michelle Morgan completed a refinancing of ESH’s transitional housing building mortgage, providing a much- needed boost to ESH’s finances, as ESH was still recovering from a 2007 fire in its emergency shelter, which left that building uninhabitable. RealBenefits RealBenefits, a small Massachusetts non-profit organization, combines the use of innovative Internet technology with outreach and advocacy to change the way low-income households learn about and enroll in the public benefit programs they need to be healthy, productive, and secure. Since its inception, more than 150 organizations have used RealBenefits to screen over 96,000 families. In total, RealBenefits has delivered over $371 million in public benefits to needy families. Our work for RealBenefits included providing them with legal assistance in the licensing of its innovative software technology. Ann-Ellen Hornidge, Robert Duggan, Kevin Walsh, Anthony Hubbard, Meryl Epstein, Kostantinos Sofronas, Paula Valencia-Galbraith, Christopher Lhulier, Marianne Staniunas, and Julia Siripurapu all worked on this unique project. Volunteer Lawyers Two years ago, the San Diego Volunteer Lawyer Program asked Benjamin Wagner to represent an AIDS patient who was denied Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI). The client had became unemployed shortly after contracting AIDS and subsequently applied for SSDI, only to be denied twice. After consultation with medical and employment experts, Ben resolved his case favorably. In Boston, when three tenants in a municipal public housing complex reported a bedbug infestation to their landlord, they expected swift and effective attention to the matter. In April 2008, a neighbor had brought an infestation into his unit, and the bugs quickly spread to the three neighboring units. Six months and several insufficient extermination attempts later, the infestation in the neighboring units continued to grow. The living conditions became so dire that many of the tenants’ children could not sleep in their own beds without suffering bites all over their bodies. One tenant, fearing for her children’s safety, moved into her parents’ home with her husband and both of their children. In order to force their landlord to act, the three tenants banded together and withheld their rent. Rather than address the tenants’ request, however, the landlord moved to evict all three families. Mintz Levin attorneys Benjamin Clark and Alec Zadek got …For Shelter and Good Health