Supreme Court names Miriam Krinsky and Hernán Vera to board of trustees

Miriam Krinsky and Hernán Vera, two Los Angeles-based lawyers who each have a track record of providing legal assistance to underrepresented communities, have been appointed to the State Bar Board of Trustees.

The California Supreme Court made the appointments last month and the new trustees will be sworn in Oct. 12.

Krinsky

Krinsky, 53, is an educator. She will be teaching child welfare policy and juvenile law this year at University of California at Irvine School of Law. Previously, she taught at the UCLA School of Public Policy and Loyola Law School.

She recently served as executive director of the Los Angeles County Citizens’ Jail Commission and as executive director of the Children’s Law Center of Los Angeles. Before that, she was a prosecutor in the Los Angeles U.S. attorney’s office, receiving an award for her appellate work.

A graduate of UCLA School of Law, Krinsky has held leadership positions on the Judicial Council, the policymaking body for the California courts, the Los Angeles County Bar Association and the California Bench-Bar Coalition.

Vera

Vera, 42, also a UCLA Law School alum, is the president and chief executive officer of Public Counsel, the largest pro bono law firm in the nation. Previously, he was a litigator at O’Melveny & Myers LLP in Los Angeles. He served as law clerk to U.S. District Judge Consuelo B. Marshall.

In 2009, President Barack Obama nominated Vera to the board of directors of the State Justice Institute, a federal entity that provides grants to state court systems to increase access to justice.

He is also a lawyer representative to the Ninth Circuit Judicial Conference, a member of the Open Courts Coalition steering committee and has served on the boards of the California Reinvestment Coalition and the Los Angeles Center for Law and Justice.

The appointments were the second and third by the Supreme Court under governance reform legislation that calls for the board to transition from 23 to 19 members by 2014.