In 2010, guess who set up a law school scholarship, with priority for part-time evening students?
Who had graduated from law school just ten years before, after studying in the evening program?
Whose mother had been born on a cotton farm in Texas?
Whose grandmother worked in a beauty parlor in Dallas?
Whose father, a beer salesman, moved the family around from Sacramento, to Utah, Colorado, and Missouri?
Whose first job, after graduating from the University of Pennsylvania, was with Rahm Emanuel; and who worked on more than 100 campaigns?
http://www2.gwu.edu/~magazine/archive/2010_law_winter/dept_philanthropy.html
There is nothing faint-hearted about Michael J. Avenatti, JD ’00. From aggressively pursuing justice for clients to driving a Porsche 997 professionally for fun, Mr. Avenatti moves full steam ahead.
Mr. Avenatti’s vitality also applies to his philanthropy to GW Law. His first gift came in 2000 when the ink on his degree was barely dry. The Michael J. Avenatti Award for Excellence in Pre-Trial and Trial Advocacy is given annually to a member of the graduating JD class for demonstrating excellence in pre-trial and trial advocacy courses. Mr. Avenatti followed this with a gift to renovate the Jacob Burns Moot Court Room, where he participated as a member of GW’s Moot Court Board from 1997 to 1999.
Mr. Avenatti’s latest donation is a $250,000 endowed scholarship—a five-year pledge for an annual $10,000 scholarship and a $40,000 investment in an endowment. After five years, the endowment’s investment income will fund annual scholarships. Recipients of the Michael J. Avenatti Scholarship will be JD students having “diverse undergraduate extracurricular achievements and demonstrated leadership qualities indicating unique potential for becoming an effective trial advocate, with particular emphasis on prior work experience. First preference shall be given to students enrolled in the part time evening division,” as defined by the award.
“I think students enrolled in evening classes face more challenges,” explains Mr. Avenatti, who was a GW Law evening division student. “They are effectively juggling two jobs—their regular day job and law school. The financial aid community sometimes overlooks them because they don’t fit the traditional law student profile. This scholarship provides them with another opportunity to receive financial aid.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/michael-avenatti-the-adrenaline-fueled-lawyer-taking-on-donald-trump/2018/03/25/3ef5cbdc-2e88-11e8-b0b0-f706877db618_story.html?utm_term=.e818d5abf3f0
Avenatti was born in Sacramento and lived as a young child in Utah and Colorado before the family settled in St. Louis in the midst of a hot 1982 baseball pennant race that turned him into a rabid Cardinals fan. His father worked as a liaison between wholesalers and Anheuser-Busch.
After Avenatti left to attend the University of Pennsylvania, his father was unexpectedly laid off, and the son went to work to earn tuition money by doing opposition political research on Republicans and Democrats for a firm owned by Rahm Emanuel, the future chief of staff in the Obama White House and the current mayor of Chicago. Avenatti says he saw the “soft underbelly of politics,” and he left the job with a “significant degree of cynicism.”
In law school, he clerked at a law firm by day and took courses at night, finishing first in his class. He accumulated $340,000 of student debt, which he says he later erased with the bonus for a single big verdict while he was working at a California firm. His cases included a $10 million defamation lawsuit, which ended in a confidential settlement, that he filed on behalf of a socialite client against Paris Hilton. He was also on a team of lawyers who sued Trump and the producer of “The Apprentice” on behalf of a man who said they stole his idea for the hit show. The case ended in a settlement.
= new reply since forum marked as read
