Last month, the Public Law Center said goodbye to our Director of Litigation, Christian Abasto, and I conducted his exit interview with mixed emotions. I knew from the beginning Christian’s daily commute to our headquarters in Santa Ana from his home in San Diego would be tough to sustain. I also knew Christian’s leadership at PLC would expand our impact in the Orange County community to new horizons and so whatever amount of time we had him on board would be good for PLC and good for the community.

Three years ago, Christian joined PLC after a 14-year tenure at the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles. There, he honed his skills on Affordable Housing and Homelessness Prevention and developed his strategies on impact litigation and policy advocacy. Christian’s effect on the PLC staff and our clients was immediate – quickly doubling and eventually tripling our impact litigation work.

In 2011, the year Christian started at PLC, we handled five impact litigation matters and about a dozen policy advocacy projects. Under Christian’s leadership in 2014, we took on 16 impact litigation matters and maintained the same level of policy advocacy projects.

Perhaps most importantly, Christian institutionalized a deep appreciation and commitment to impact litigation and policy advocacy at PLC. He also led by empowering others – Christian did not take on most of high-profile cases himself; instead he made it possible for other PLC staff attorneys and pro bono counsel to work on these projects.

Although we are losing our illustrious Director of Litigation and I’m going to miss having him as a thought partner in the office, Christian built such a strong foundation at PLC in three short years that I feel confident we will be able to continue to build upon recent successes. For now, Christian’s position will remain unfilled – a strong testament to his success in building our staff capacity.

Christian will forever be a member of the PLC family. On behalf of the entire extended PLC clan, I wish him great success in his future endeavors and much fun during his well-deserved time with his family.

Cheers!

Ken Babcock
Executive Director & General Counsel
Public Law Center