Student Honors: Greg Pleasants

The award: Greg Pleasants, in his fourth and final year of a dual J.D./Masters of Social Work program at USC, recently received an Honorable Mention for the Pro Bono Publico Award from NALP’s Public Service Law Network (One of 10 winners among 33 nominees from law schools nationwide). The award, in its 12th year, recognizes the significant contributions that law students make to underserved populations, the public interest community, and legal education by performing pro bono or public service work. How Pleasants was chosen: According to PSLawNet, law students are judged by their extracurricular commitment to law-related public service projects or organizations, as well as the quality and impact of their work. Most recently, Pleasants participated in the Katrina Legal Aid Project in Mississippi. He began his law-related public service even before coming to USC Law. After graduating from Washington and Lee University in Virginia, Pleasants volunteered in several Central American countries, including Nicaragua, where he worked with street children through Covenant House. He later joined an AmeriCorps program focusing on border issues in Los Angeles. At USC Law, Pleasants got involved in the Public Interest Law Foundation, participating in several clinics as a 1L and serving as PILF president as a 2L. He worked with Public Counsel the summer after his first year. During his second year, as part of his MSW program, Pleasants was placed as a social worker for mental health patients at Clínica Romero, which sparked an interest in mental health law. Later, Pleasants became heavily involved with the Immigration Clinic, taught by Professor Niels Frenzen. “I’ve been working with the immigration clinic since the summer after my second year and I haven’t stopped – I love it,” Pleasants said. “Professor Frenzen really connected the practice of law to social justice for me. The more the law school can do to invest in public interest clinical programs, the better. It’s been the most extraordinary experience of my law school career.” How USC helped: Pleasants was nominated by Associate Dean Lisa Mead, head of the Office of Public Service, and Assistant Dean Melisa Balaban, head of career services – although Pleasants didn’t find out until just a few days before learning of his honorable mention. “This nomination and this award were a really nice surprise. Dean Mead and Dean Balaban and Professor Frenzen have been super supportive of everything I’ve wanted to do here and I really have a lot of praise for them,” Pleasants says. “You don’t do public interest work to get recognized, but it’s always nice when it happens.” Future career plans: Pleasants recently submitted applications for Equal Justice Works and Skadden post-graduate public interest fellowships, using a project he designed with Professor Frenzen. Under the guidance of Mental Health Advocacy Services, Pleasants hopes to “enforce the mental health and immigration rights of immigration detainees with mental disabilities, and who are, as a result of those disabilities, subject to indefinite detention.” Some immigrants with mental health issues are found incompetent after being detained and cannot complete their immigration procedures. “So their case is closed, but they’re still detained, and while they’re detained, they don’t receive the mental health care they need to get better. So basically they’re stuck between a rock and a hard place and they just sit there in detention.” If he does not receive either fellowship, Pleasants – who has taught middle school and kindergarten – plans to teach high school.