KU News Release

Trinia Arellano

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More Information

• School of Law

LAWRENCE — A spring 2009 graduate of the University of Kansas School of Law has been selected as the first fellow to the school’s Family Health Care Legal Services Clinic.

Trinia Arellano will serve in that capacity for 11 months through a postgraduate fellowship program established with a three-year grant from the Sunflower Foundation of Topeka. The grant seeks to enable the law school to participate in efforts to expand and enhance the medical-legal partnership model in Kansas.

“We are proud to host the first postgraduate medical-legal partnership of its kind in the country and are grateful to the Sunflower Foundation for generously funding it,” said Elizabeth Weeks Leonard, associate professor of law and clinic director. “The fellowship offers a unique opportunity for a recent law graduate to further her commitment to public interest work and develop essential lawyering, advocacy, institution-building, scholarly research and public-speaking skills.”

Arellano is the ideal person for the inaugural year of the fellowship, Leonard said.

“She brings both medical and legal expertise to the job, as well as passion for the medical-legal partnership model,” Leonard said. “Her ability to clearly explain the ideas underlying this combined approach to legal and medical services and advocate the project throughout Kansas will be an invaluable service to the vulnerable populations that we serve.”

Medical-legal partnerships aim to improve the health and well-being of individuals, children and families by integrating legal assistance into the medical setting. The KU School of Law launched its Family Health Care Legal Services Clinic in January 2008 in partnership with Southwest Boulevard Family Health Care in Kansas City, Kan. Working under faculty and clinic staff supervision, law students provide legal assistance to clients referred to them through the medical clinic, engaging in interviewing, counseling, negotiation and other aspects of the legal process.

Arellano will represent clients and supervise students in the Family Health Care Legal Services Clinic. She will also assist Leonard in maintaining and developing relationships with other medical-legal partnerships, legal services providers, health care providers and funders. In addition, Arellano will research and write an article on how attorneys with health care backgrounds can play an important part in advancing the medical-legal partnership model.

“I really believe medical legal-partnerships are the way of the future,” Arellano said. “Unfortunately, there is a great deal of long-standing animosity between doctors and lawyers. Attorneys with health care backgrounds are perfectly suited for working with these partnerships because we know how to navigate both worlds.”

Arellano earned a bachelor’s in nursing from Texas Christian University, where she was an active member of Army ROTC, the Mortar Board Honor Society and Sigma Theta Tau Nursing Honor Society. After graduation, she was an Army Nurse Corps officer, gaining clinical and managerial nursing experience, and a legal nurse consultant with Fulbright & Jaworski in its San Antonio office. In law school, Arellano was president of the Black Law Students Association and received the Equal Access to Justice Scholarship. She worked as an extern at KU Medical School in the Office of the Assistant Vice Chancellor of Compliance and, last spring, partnered with Leonard to give a presentation on the law school’s medical-legal clinic at a conference on medical-legal partnerships.