What is the Collaboration for Justice?
The Council is the lawyer organization which focuses on advocating for a fair and efficient administration of justice. Chicago Appleseed is a nonpartisan and independent research and advocacy organization which focuses on remedying systemic injustice affecting vulnerable populations within our courts. Together, the two organizations work to investigate the causes of systemic injustice in our courts, proposing effective solutions and working for their implementation.
A member of the Chicago Council of Lawyers (Council) is part of the Collaboration for Justice – the joint effort of the Council and the Chicago Appleseed Center for Fair Courts to bring about systemic reform of the justice system.
Get Involved:
We believe that lawyers should do two kinds of pro bono – individual representation and systemic reform work that will make the courts more fair and effective for all people. We provide the opportunity to do meaningful systemic reform work.
We have six Collaboration for Justice Program Committees that are a joint effort of Chicago Appleseed and the Council: Access to Justice, Civil Liberties & Police Accountability, Child & Family Law, Criminal Justice, Federal Courts, and Immigration Court Reform. Members of the Council, and those who want to donate time to Chicago Appleseed, are invited to join and participate in these Program Committees. Chaired by members of both the Council and Chicago Appleseed, these Committees work with our staff to identify issues, plan research initiatives, recommend solutions to injustices, and work for their implementation. We also invite and encourage our members and donors to suggest new systemic reform issues, which could become new program areas for the collaborative effort of the Chicago Council of Lawyers and Chicago Appleseed.
Malcolm Rich, Executive Director
Malcolm Rich has been the Executive Director of the Chicago Council of Lawyers since 1987 and of Chicago Appleseed Center for Fair Courts since its creation in 1997. He is a 1979 graduate of the Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law, where he was the recipient of a Northwestern University Center for Urban Affairs Research Fellowship. Malcolm practiced with the law firm Whitted & Kraning, where he specialized in special education and mental health law, and continues to be of counsel to the law firm Whitted & Takiff LLC. He currently chairs the Executive Directors’ Council of the Appleseed Network and helps lead the Alliance of Bar Associations for Judicial Evaluations, and previously served as the Executive Director of the Foundation for Educational Research.
Contact Malcolm: malcolmrich@chicagoappleseed.org
Stephanie Agnew, Director of Communications
Stephanie Agnew is the Director of Communications for Chicago Appleseed Center for Fair Courts and the Collaboration for Justice. Stephanie completed her Bachelor’s in Social Work (BSW) at Loyola University Chicago in 2017 and graduated with her Master’s (AM) from the University of Chicago’s Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy, and Practice in 2019, where she studied social welfare and civil rights policy analysis and advocacy. As a student, Stephanie was a Civil Rights Fellow at the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights’ Regional Programs Coordination Unit in Chicago, working on projects related to policing in Delaware and prosecutorial discretion in Mississippi.
Kathleen Geier, Membership & Development Associate
Kathleen has spent her career as a writer and researcher in the nonprofit world and academia. Her areas of interest include economic inequality, social welfare policy, and gender and workplace issues. She holds a Master’s degree in Public Administration from Columbia University and was a PhD student in Public Policy at the University of Chicago. As a freelance journalist, she has contributed to The Nation, Washington Monthly, Bookforum, The Baffler, The New Republic, and other outlets.
Elizabeth Monkus, Civil Courts Project Director
Elizabeth Monkus is a graduate of Georgetown University Law Center. Prior to joining the Collaboration for Justice, she was an appellate attorney, served as an adviser at the Writing Center of the John Marshall Law School, and was an instructor in Constitutional Law at Governors State University. Elizabeth came to Chicago Appleseed and the Council in 2010 to manage the Judicial Performance Commission Demonstration project. She is currently the Development and Program Manager, focusing on domestic relations and judicial elections in her program work. Elizabeth’s family has been in Chicago since the Fire and she is thrilled to be working to improve the quality of justice in Chicago.
Sarah Staudt, Director of Policy
Sarah Staudt has led the Collaboration for Justice Criminal Justice program since 2018. Sarah graduated from the University of Chicago Law School in 2013. Before coming to the Collaboration, Sarah was an Equal Justice Works Fellow and criminal defense attorney with the Lawndale Christian Legal Center (LCLC) where she represented juveniles and young adults in the Cook County Criminal Courts. Sarah focuses on pretrial court reform issues through our work as a member of the Coalition to End Money Bond and was instrumental in the drafting and advocating for the groundbreaking Pretrial Fairness Act, which passed in 2021. The Pretrial Fairness Act makes Illinois the first state to fully end money bail and restructure the pretrial justice system. She also leads other criminal legal reform work, such as projects focused on electronic detention, abolishing overly punitive sentencing systems, and promoting court system efficiency, fairness, and accountability.