Legal Assistance Group Appoints New Chief Executive
Public Counsel, the nation’s largest pro bono legal assistance program, appointed a new chief executive officer and general counsel in Los Angeles on Tuesday--Israeli-born attorney Daniel Grunfeld.
The 38-year-old attorney was named to replace former Executive Director Steven A. Nissen, who stepped down earlier this year to become the executive director of the State Bar Assn.
Grunfeld, currently a partner in the Los Angeles office of McDermott, Will & Emery, a national law firm, will direct Public Counsel’s staff of 40 attorneys and paralegals and a volunteer corps of thousands of people who provided $24 million in free legal services to indigent Southern California residents last year.
Earlier this year, Grunfeld headed a team of lawyers representing 39 plaintiffs who succeeded in their effort to force a Hollywood slumlord to repair their apartment building and comply with the city’s housing code. For that work, Grunfeld and three colleagues at his firm were given a special award by Bet Tzedek Legal Services, a nonprofit law project in Los Angeles.
Bet Tzedek’s Executive Director David Lash praised Grunfeld’s appointment, as did several other local attorneys. “Daniel is a great guy and he will be a great asset to the whole public interest community,” Lash said.
“We are proud that Daniel Grunfeld, one of the true rising stars of the Los Angeles legal community, will be leading Public Counsel into the 21st century,” said Thomas Unterman, chairman of Public Counsel’s board.
Grunfeld was born in Jerusalem and spent most of his early years in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, where his parents served in the Israeli diplomatic corps.
In 1970, the family moved to Philadelphia, where his mother practices law and his father teaches philosophy at Drexel University, Grunfeld’s alma mater. Grunfeld studied law at Cornell University in New York and moved to Los Angeles when he began private practice in 1986. He became a partner at the 675-lawyer McDermott firm in 1993.
He has specialized in commercial litigation, representing the Sizzler restaurant chain, DirecTV and several medical device companies.
Grunfeld also has represented several nonprofit organizations, including Alliance for the Arts, the fund-raising arm of the Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza. Grunfeld successfully pursued a major case on behalf of that group stemming from a disagreement about a major donation from millionaire Charles E. Probst.
Under a settlement announced in June 1996, Probst agreed to deliver the remaining $1.75 million of a promised $2-million donation and the alliance agreed to drop its breach-of-contract suit against Probst and his wife, Florence.
Grunfeld said he was looking forward to the “opportunity to lead Public Counsel, one of the preeminent pro bono organizations in the country.”
He said that he did not contemplate any major change in direction for Public Counsel but that he hoped to “broaden . . . voluntarism in the Los Angeles legal community. For many lawyers, pro bono is the most satisfying work they will ever do. You are on the side of the angels.”
