Sean Mark Rashkis is a recipient of the 2004-2005 Borchard Fellowship in Law and Aging. Formerly, he served as an intern for the Senior Legal Hotline, a division of Legal Services of Northern California. Under the direction of a supervising attorney, Sean provided free legal advice to senior citizens throughout California by telephone. This internship was a natural choice for Sean, who has a long history in the public interest sector. Sean spent a number of years working as a mental health counselor to adults in crisis, as well as an anger management counselor for Western Institute for Therapeutic Studies in South Sacramento. During law school, Sean spent two summers as a graduate law clerk for the Sacramento office of the Attorney General of California, working in the Correctional Law and the Criminal Appeals Writs and Trials sections.
As a 2004-2005 Borchard Fellow, Mr. Rashkis will design and direct a free mediation program for senior citizens of California. The mediation program will be implemented through the Senior Legal Hotline in Sacramento, California. In order to provide services for isolated seniors, a majority of mediations will take place via telephone, an innovative technique that has never been used before on a statewide level. In addition, Sean will act as a primary supervisor of all volunteer mediators, while also assisting in grant writing for this program. Sean will also assist the Senior Legal Hotline in implementing a program to better follow-up the concerns of telephone clients. In this process, he will flag cases for which law student interns and volunteers will provide brief services beyond phone advice, such as writing letters to third parties or engaging in negotiations with third parties for clients.
Mr. Rashkis attended the University of California, Davis where he received his Bachelors of Arts degrees in Psychology and English. He later attended McGeorge School of Law, which is affiliated with the University of the Pacific, where he received his Juris Doctorate in May 2004. Sean is admitted to practice in California.
