Chinh Q. Le
Chinh Le is a visiting professor of practice at the Law School. From 2011 to 2021, he served as legal director of the Legal Aid Society of the District of Columbia, the oldest and largest general civil legal services program in the nation’s capital. In that capacity, he was responsible for the organization’s legal program — including Legal Aid’s individual client representation, systemic appellate and policy advocacy, and impact litigation across all of its practice areas — and oversaw a staff of roughly 60 lawyers and more than a dozen legal assistants.
Prior to joining Legal Aid, Le was director of the division on civil rights in the office of the New Jersey Attorney General, where he led the state’s enforcement of state and federal civil rights and family leave laws. Between 2001 and 2006, he served as assistant counsel at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund Inc., in New York, the first two years as a Skadden Fellow. Le spent the 2008-09 academic year as a practitioner-in-residence at Seton Hall Law School and an adjunct associate research scholar at Columbia Law School, where he was affiliated with the Center for Institutional and Social Change. He has also worked as a litigation associate at Jenner & Block.
Le earned his B.A., with high distinction, from the University of Virginia and his J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law, where he served as notes editor of the Virginia Law Review, was elected to the Order of the Coif, and received the Margaret G. Hyde Award, the alumni association’s Distinguished Student Award, and the Mary Clairborne and Roy H. Ritter Prize. Upon graduation, Le served as a law clerk to Judge Walter K. Stapleton of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.
Le is a member of the board of directors of the Poverty and Race Research Action Council and the board of advisors of the Center on Asian Americans and the Law at Fordham Law. From 2020 to 2023, he served on the District of Columbia Access to Justice Commission, to which he was appointed by the D.C. Court of Appeals. From 2013 to 2016, Le served as co-chair of the D.C. Consortium of Legal Services Providers, a coalition of more than 30 legal services organizations in the District of Columbia. From 2011 to 2013, he was co-chair of the Access to Justice Task Force of the ABA Section of Litigation.