About Us
In 1971, no law firm existed solely to represent the public interest. Four O'Melveny & Myers attorneys left private practice to change that — creating California's first public interest law firm.
Founding, Mission, Legacy
Founded in 1971 by Carlyle Hall, John Phillips, Brent Rushforth and Ric Sutherland, the Center for Law in the Public Interest (CLIPI) was one of the nation's first nonprofit public interest law firms. Established to redress the gap between powerful corporate and public legal teams, on one hand, and underrepresented communities and non-profit organizations, on the other, CLIPI provided pro bono legal services focused on advancing environmental stewardship and social justice, civil rights, consumer protection, and promoting transparency, honesty and accountability in public and private organizations.
To expand its legal resources, CLIPI immediately established a clinical legal education program with UCLA and other law schools, followed by a fellows program in which talented graduating law students seeking public interest law careers would first work at CLIPI for a year. Both programs were among the first in the nation. Crucially, CLIPI also hired some of the most first-rate attorneys in the nation to work as its staff attorneys: Mary Nichols, Tom Hunt, Tim McFlynn Geoff Cowan, Fred Woocher, Bill Lann Lee, Nick Yost, Walt Cochran-Bond, Letty Belin, Lucas Guttentag and Joel Reynolds.
Over the decades, CLIPI built a distinguished legacy through impact litigation, counseling, and legislative advocacy. The firm successfully shaped important developments under the California Environmental Quality Act and other important environmental and land use laws, defended consumer rights, and litigated landmark employment discrimination and civil rights cases.
While CLIPI closed its doors in 2007, its legal victories continue to influence public interest law. And its alumni have gone on to extraordinary careers in public service and private practice. (35 of these alumni are featured here.)
In 2025, CLIPI donated 365 boxes containing the legal archives of about 50 of its prominent cases to UCLA's Special Collections division. This generous gift will allow students, teachers, lawyers, government officials and the media to have full access to these monumental litigation files for reference and precedent.
CLIPI Founders - Carlyle Hall, Brent Rushforth, Ric Sutherland, John Phillips at fifteenth Anniversary dinner.
35 Years of Impact Litigation
From 1971 to 2006 CLIPI used the courtroom as a tool for public good—halting bulldozers, opening park gates, cleaning the air, and securing thousands of affordable homes. Every entry on our timeline marks a moment when determined lawyers teamed with community members to turn new laws into lasting change across Los Angeles and beyond.
This timeline touches on just a few of CLIPI’s key cases. For a fuller discussion that includes documents, see individual case pages.
See where the CLIPI family is now
At CLIPI, every brief aimed higher than a courtroom win. Our attorneys blended civil-rights grit with environmental vision, fighting oil rigs on beaches, freeways through neighborhoods, and bribery and fraud initiated in corporate boardrooms. Together they proved legal talent—deployed for the public good—can redraw city maps and expand opportunity for generations.
"We started CLIPI because no one else was offering full-service, public-interest lawyering to ordinary communities."
Carlyle W. Hall, Jr. - Co-Founder of Center for Law In the Public Interest
