Staff Spotlight: Megan Harkins
Legal Council just keeps growing! In just this month, we welcomed over 10 new employees in our legal programs, development team, and administrative team. Legal Council has many exciting projects coming up, so we’re taking the time to highlight the projects and our new team members in our new blog series “Staff Spotlight.”
In the first installment of this series, Megan Harkins, a legal advisor with our homeless program and an Equal Justice Works Fellow sponsored by Dentons, discusses her new medical-legal partnership. Megan was an intern with Legal Council in 2015 and we’re excited to have her back full time! Welcome Megan H. to the team and learn more about her big plans below.
Megan Harkins, Legal Advisor and Equal Justice Works Fellow sponsored by Dentons
What brought you to Legal Council?
I sought out Legal Council my first year of law school (2015) because of the work the homeless project was engaged in. I wanted to put what I was learning in law school into action, and Legal Council’s homeless project seemed to be a good fit. After volunteering for a year and a half, I reached out again to see if Legal Council would be willing to host a project I wanted to propose to Equal Justice Works. My project idea stemmed from the work I had done as a volunteer and conversations with Kate Miller (Senior Legal Advocate) and Lisa Parsons (Program Director) about areas they were interested in seeing the homeless project expand. With Legal Council’s help, I submitted an Equal Justice Works fellowship application, which has since been generously supported by Dentons.
What does your program do and who do you serve?
My project will provide trauma-informed disability benefits advocacy to justice-involved individuals living with serious mental illness in Cook County Jail. My project will launch a medical-legal partnership with Thresholds that will support this vulnerable population’s reintegration into community life.
What are you most excited about with your new role?
There is a lot to be excited about. I am excited to help empower a population that has been stigmatized and neglected. With a collaborative team of interdisciplinary professionals, justice-involved individuals living with mental illness can get a true second chance at living a recovered and rehabilitated life. I am also excited to have the opportunity to learn from my now colleagues who have been doing this great work for years.
Where were you before joining Legal Council?
Before I joined Legal Council, I graduated from Loyola University Chicago School of Law and sat for the Illinois Bar.