Webinar: Career Opportunities Advocating for Veterans and Military Personnel

Join the Veterans & Military Law Section as we explore career options that involve representing or advocating for veterans and military personnel.  Webinar attendees will learn about working for various organizations, including private firms, nonprofit organizations, government/military entities, and academic institutions.

 

Presented by the Veterans and Military Law Section

 

Registration for this event is closed.

Presenters

Anna Richardson (Moderator) – Co-Executive Director & Chief Counsel of Veterans Legal Services

Anna Richardson is co-executive director and chief counsel at the Boston-based legal aid organization, Veterans Legal Services. Anna has served in that role since 2010, after previously working as a VLS staff attorney. In 2018, under the leadership of Anna and her co-director, Sarah Roxburgh, VLS received the Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly’s Reginald Heber Smith Award for Excellence in Legal Services. In 2019, she was named co-Lawyer of the Year by the Frank J. Murray Inn of Court and was also a Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly “Top Women in the Law” honoree. Anna successfully argued Dept. of Revenue v. Grullon, 485 Mass. 129 (2020), protecting the rights of indigent parents from wrongful incarceration in child support proceedings. Anna was also appointed by the Trial Court to the Massachusetts Child Support Guidelines Task Force in 2020 and 2024.

In addition to her legal work at VLS, Anna has led trainings on veterans’ legal issues for the Boston Bar Association, the Massachusetts Continuing Legal Education, and various legal services agencies throughout Massachusetts.

Anna received her B.A. from Boston College and her J.D. from Boston University School of Law. She currently serves on the board of the Mental Health Legal Advisors Committee, appointed by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court.

 

Katie Becker – Instructor at the Veterans Legal Clinic, University of Missouri School of Law

Katie M. Becker is a staff attorney and instructor at the Veterans Clinic at the University of Missouri School of Law. In this role, she supervises students, teaches classes, and manages an active caseload assisting veterans and their dependents with obtaining benefits they have earned through service to our country, primarily before the U. S. Department of Veterans Affairs and the Department of Defense.  She also serves as the chair of the amicus advocacy committee of the National Law School Veterans Clinic Consortium.

Becker previously served as a staff attorney for the Veterans Legal Clinic at the University of Georgia School of Law, and an associate appellate attorney with Chisholm Chisholm & Kilpatrick in Providence, RI. She also worked for the Veterans Consortium Pro Bono Program in Washington, D.C.

Becker earned her law degree magna cum laude from Syracuse University ​College of Law where she served as an executive editor of the Syracuse Law Review, was inducted into the Order of the Coif, and served for four semesters as a student attorney in the school’s Veterans Legal Clinic.

 

Thomas Roughneen

Thomas Roughneen served as an Assistant Prosecutor in Union and Essex Counties for nine years starting back in 1998.  He opened his own law practice in 2014 to serve the unique interests of military members and Veterans. He served on active duty and with other law firms through the years.  His general practice is in New Brunswick, New Jersey and he opened a second office in Huntsville, Alabama. CitizenSoldierLaw accepts military-related matters for troops and veterans from around the world and conducts a wide range of civil and criminal litigation.

He enlisted in 1988 and attended Army Basic Training as a Private in the New Jersey Army National Guard.  He received his commission as a Field Artillery Officer and retired as an Army Judge Advocate after service in Iraq conducting civil-military operations in Kirkuk and the Sunni Triangle in Iraq in 2003 and 2004.  He later served as defense counsel to Salim Hamdan, a Guantanamo Bay detainee, before mobilizing again as a military prosecutor at Fort Dix, followed by a tour as a Brigade Judge Advocate in Germany. His last active-duty mobilization was as an adjudicator at the Physical Evaluation Board in Arlington, Virginia, where he reviewed Army Soldiers’ claims for disability retirement.

He graduated from Johns Hopkins University, School of Advanced International Studies with a Masters Degree in 2007, received his Juris Doctorate from Seton Hall University School of Law in 1995 and earned his undergraduate degree from Rutgers College in 1991. He is married to Alice Tzeng, M.D., and is blessed with two daughters and a son.

Formerly, he served as Chairman of the Military Law and Veterans Affairs Section when the New Jersey State Bar Association successfully lobbied for the Criminal Diversion Program law.

 

Jonathan Crisp 

Jonathan Crisp founded and is the sole Owner and Member of Crisp and Associates Military Law in 2007 after serving on active duty in the U.S. Army Judge Advocate General’s Corps JAG for almost seven years.  When he transitioned from active duty, he immediately joined the Pennsylvania Army National Guard where he served for the next fifteen (15) years and retired in November 2021 as a Lieutenant Colonel. Prior to joining the U.S. Army JAGC Corps, he served as a county Public Defender in Centre County, PA

Mr. Crisp has litigated more than 210 jury (panel) trials to verdict and resolved numerous others short of litigation. He has represented clients in and out of uniform all over the United States and around the world, to include Kuwait, Iraq, Bahrain, Korea, Germany, Italy, Spain, Japan and Kosovo.

Mr. Crisp began his career as an Assistant Public Defender in Centre County, Pennsylvania. He left the Centre County Public Defender’s Office to join the U.S. Army Judge Advocate General’s Corps. In the Judge Advocate General’s Corps, he first served as a Legal Assistance Attorney and then the Chief of Legal Assistance at Patton Barracks in Heidelberg, Germany.

Mr. Crisp then served as a Defense Counsel in Ansbach, Germany, where he represented soldiers at administrative proceedings and courts-martial. He was subsequently selected to be the Senior Defense Counsel in Fort Jackson, South Carolina.  Two of the more high-profile cases in which Mr. Crisp was involved as a servicemember involved charges of abuse against detainees at Abu Ghraib and a case involving the death of a detainee during an interrogation.

After leaving active duty, Mr. Crisp co-founded Crisp & Associates, LLC in 2007.  His efforts in intervening 16 plus years has seen the firm grow from a solo practice operation to a firm of eight (8) attorneys and twelve (12) support staff who serve the needs of service members in all facets of their career and have led to representing civilians in other high-profile cases. Most recently, he defended an individual who was a member of the Oathkeepers indicted on charges of sedition, of which she was acquitted.

Mr. Crisp was born and raised in Philadelphia, PA and has been married for over 24 years to Angela; they have two children, Ivan and Elsie.  They currently reside in Harrisburg, PA.

 

Emma Peterson 

Emma joined CCK in 2014 and serves as a Managing Attorney. Her practice focuses on representing disabled veterans and their families before the U.S. Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims, the Board of Veterans’ Appeals, and the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Emma graduated from Connecticut College with a B.A. in Government in 2007 and graduated cum laude from Roger Williams University School of Law Honors Program in 2011.

While in law school, Emma was a member of the Trial Team, the Women’s Law Society, and served as a Rule 9 Student Attorney with the Rhode Island Attorney General’s Office. Prior to joining CCK, Emma practiced at a general litigation law firm.

Emma has been a speaker twice at the National Organization of Veterans’ Advocates bi-annual conferences. In the Fall of 2018, she presented on Extraschedular consideration, and in Spring of 2022 she presented on appeal options in the Appeals Modernization Act after MVA v. McDonough.

Registration for this event is closed.

Registration Fees

• FBA Member: $0
• Nonmember: $95

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A: Please contact sections@fedbar.org for any other questions.

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