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Catherine Weiss

Of Counsel

New Jersey
T: +1 973.597.2438 F: +1 973.597.2439 cweiss@lowenstein.com
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A lifelong public interest lawyer, Catherine Weiss is committed to maximizing the impact of Lowenstein Sandler’s pro bono work. As Of Counsel and former Chair of the Lowenstein Center for Public Interest, she brings strategic focus to the firm’s pro bono efforts and deepens its partnerships with leading nonprofit and community organizations across the country and within the firm’s local communities.

Before joining the firm, Catherine served as Director of the Division of Public Interest Advocacy in the New Jersey Department of the Public Advocate, Deputy Director of the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law, and Director of the Reproductive Freedom Project in the national office of the ACLU.

During Catherine’s twelve-year tenure as Chair of the center, she built on the firm’s historic commitment to public service by creating an award-winning program that serves hundreds of low-income individuals and the nonprofit organizations that support them.

Catherine also maintained her own pro bono docket throughout her tenure, focused on litigation and policy initiatives to advance the rights of the populations the center serves.  As Of Counsel, she continues to represent pro bono clients in a range of matters and to work with coalitions she helped create that focus on both individual representation and systemic change in our broken immigration and housing systems. 

  • Representing three New Jersey families who were forcibly separated at the U.S. border in their lawsuits against the U.S. government.
  • Lead counsel for a class of more than 700 young immigrants in a successful challenge to the government’s illegal policy of disqualifying 18- to 21-year-olds from Special Immigrant Juvenile Status, a form of immigration relief.
  • Represented 25 church-state scholars in an amicus brief to the Supreme Court of the United States, arguing that the Establishment Clause prevents religious nonprofits, colleges, and universities–as well as closely held for-profit companies–from shifting the burden of their religious objections to contraceptive coverage to their employees and students by declining to file paperwork they view as making them complicit in the provision of such coverage by other entities.
  • Leads the firm's representation of children in immigration proceedings, ensuring that many each year are placed with safe custodians, protected from persecution in their home countries, and defended from deportation.
  • Represented leading national immigration organizations as amici in the Supreme Court of New Jersey in a case that clarified the role of the state courts in cases involving Special Immigrant Juvenile Status and lifted barriers to this key form of immigration relief for children.
  • Partnered with Merck and Legal Services of Northwest Jersey to create and run the Veterans Justice Initiative, which was recognized as a model private-nonprofit partnership at the 2014 White House Access to Justice Forum. Enlisted corporate legal departments at Bristol-Myers Squibb and Sanofi in the initiative. Helped secure pro bono medical evaluations for veterans seeking disability benefits.
  • Partnered with Merck and Volunteer Lawyers for Justice to create and run a Chapter 7 Bankruptcy Program and argued an appeal in the Supreme Court of New Jersey that successfully dispelled unfounded legal ethics concerns about the program, clearing the way for broader nationwide participation by the bankruptcy bar in pro bono practice.
  • Partnered with Prudential and Volunteer Lawyers for Justice to design and launch an ongoing, court-based pro bono clinic to provide legal advice and document-drafting to assist low-income tenants in defending themselves from eviction.
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Education

  • Yale Law School (J.D. 1987)

    Yale University (M.A. 1984), National Science Foundation Fellowship

    Princeton University (A.B. 1981), summa cum laude; Phi Beta Kappa

Admissions

  • New York
  • New Jersey
  • District of Columbia

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