About Appleseed
More than 30 years ago, members of Harvard Law School’s Class of 1958 voted to create an organization to help establish and guide centers for law in the public interest throughout the country. They had a grand idea to tackle societal ills through the founding of non-profit law centers and to “plant a seed from which a public service activity involving lawyers, young and old, can grow and develop across the country.”
Instead of the traditional model of providing legal services to individuals, their strategy was to tackle system-wide reform – in other words, to address problems at their root. In 1994, the Appleseed Foundation was formally launched and today, the Appleseed Network has expanded to include 19 centers across the US and Mexico.
In a fractured political environment, Appleseed has found a way to win important victories—and we will continue to do so for the next 25 years and beyond.
Our Founders
Robert L. Bachner
Herbert P. Gleason
Donald Hirsch
Mark R. Joelson
Edward M. Levin
Richard J. Medalie
Ralph Nader
William Schurtman
Eugene L. Vogel
M. David Distler
Richard N. Goodwin
James S. Hostetler
Hugh Latimer
Kenneth Lewis
Arthur R. Miller
Ralph I. Petersberger
Nancy Boxley Tepper
Philip F. Zeidman
Gail Erickson
Robert E. Herzstein
Joseph L. Hutner
Paul D. Rheingold
William B. Mallin
Robert H. Mundheim
Bertrand B. Pogrebin
Paul H. Tobias