2022 Jacquelyn and Bruce Rogow Employee of The Year Award Presented to Laurie Yadoff
April 29 at 10 am via Facebook Live
Make a donation in honor of Laurie Yadoff!
Laurie Yadoff is the recipient of the 2022 Jacquelyn and Bruce Rogow Employee of The Year Award. Laurie has been an attorney for more than four decades and for the last 15 years dedicated her practice to transform the Public Benefits Unit at Coast to Coast Legal Aid of South Florida into a more expansive vision encompassing Economic Advocacy and Community Health. She is a skilled attorney in a wide variety of substantive legal areas including public benefits, unemployment compensation, veteran’s benefits, and social security. She is fearless in her representation. The quality of her work is of the highest caliber, resulting in wonderful results for her clients. During the initial COVID months, Laurie was called upon to speak to national media about legal issues adversely affecting our clients. She has continued to participate in social media presentations and does so with ease, confidence and expertise.
Not only does Laurie have a great relationship with her longtime staff, many clients have reported positive and significant outcomes from their cases, and give Laurie the full credit. While Laurie’s primary responsibility is as Director of the EACH Unit, for the past year she helped with many CCLA Program-wide initiatives. CCLA’s major funder, Legal Services Corporation (LSC) views our Needs Assessment as the most important next step our program takes and Laurie volunteered to form a Needs Assessment Committee, which has already launched surveys. She has helped to establish a Centralized Intake system, which included examining metrics to more fully understand our needs. Laurie understands the nuances of LSC rules and has advised CCLA’s Board on potential limitations and allowances.
For years, Laurie has seen the need to address Racial and Cultural Equity challenges as a program. As a direct result, we have now implemented a Racial and Cultural Equity Committee. Laurie stays on top of developments in the law and with LSC matters. She has formed many significant relationships with other agencies and organizations in the community which have led to funding. In addition, she manages a variety of CCLA grants. It is because of Laurie’s selflessness, love of the legal profession and dedication to her staff and organization that she received the Jacquelyn and Bruce Rogow Employee of the Year Award.
As Director of Economic Advocacy and Community Health Project for CCLA since 2007, Laurie Yadoff is responsible for supervising and training attorney and paralegal staff while also writing and coordinating grant submissions and ensures grant compliance. In addition, Laurie maintains a full caseload providing many areas of practice including public benefits, VA benefits, discharge upgrades, Social Security disability claims, Unemployment Compensation, Medicare, Medicaid, SNAP, TANF, evictions and Healthcare access. Laurie has been a VA accredited attorney since October 2010 and has appeared successfully before the Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims and the Board of Veteran Appeals. Laurie has also worked to establish the VALOR Project, a medical legal partnership with the Broward VA clinic. She has been providing representation in public benefit claims since 2003 including Social Security disability administrative hearings and appeals and administrative fair hearings.
Prior to leading her staff at CCLA, Laurie was a Staff Attorney in the Children’s Dependency Unit at Legal Aid Service of Broward County where she represented foster children in dependency court hearings including Marchman Act hearings and involuntary mental health commitment hearings. Prior to that, she served as a staff attorney at the Coalition for Independent Living Options (CIL) from 2003 to 2006 in West Palm Beach where she focused on legal matters impacted by disability. She also filed and pursued claims with OCR, EEOC and the Office of Human Rights and received training in building accessibility standards under the ADA. Laurie has also served as National Institute for Trial Advocacy faculty during multi day trial advocacy programs at Nova Southeastern Law School over a number of years. Course was provided for experienced trial attorneys. In addition, she has provided statewide training for Legal Aid programs in Social Security Disability claims.
Laurie was admitted to the Florida State Bar in 1997, US District Court Southern District of Florida in 2007 and in 2013 was admitted to the United States Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims. Ms. Yadoff earned a Juris Doctorate degree from University of New Hampshire Franklin Pierce School of Law and is a member of The Florida Bar and the Broward County Bar Association.