Member of the Month: November 2006
David Yen, Chicago Illinois

David Yen of the Legal Assistance Foundation of Metropolitan Chicago is NACBA’s Member of the Month for November, 2006.  David’s organization of about 80 attorneys provides free civil legal services to low income and others with special legal needs, such as elderly and disabled persons.  Only a small fraction of these attorneys file bankruptcy cases.

David has been in legal aid practice for thirty years, although mostly involved with general poverty law practice for much of the time.  He spent nine years with legal services in Alabama prior to his current position.  The bankruptcy component started to expand in David’s practice about fifteen years ago, and he has been practicing bankruptcy exclusively for the past seven years.

Significantly, David Yen has defended the rights of tenants in bankruptcy (Robinson v. Chicago Housing Auth., 54 F.3d 316, 7th Cir. 1995) and used bankruptcy to help homeowners facing the loss of their homes due to unpaid property taxes (In re Davenport, 268 B.R. 159, 167, Bank. N.D .Ill. 2001).  His most recent appellate victory was in the Seventh Circuit, when the court held that his client’s former landlord could not discharge a judgment owed to his client due to landlord’s misappropriation of the client’s security deposit (In re McGee, 353 F. 3d 537. 7th Cir. 2003).

David graduated with a BA from Yale in 1971 and received his JD from the University in Pennsylvania in 1975.  His legal career in Alabama got off to an interesting start when he filed a Truth-in-Lending counterclaim against one of the big law firms in town.  David has consistently fought for the rights of our neediest citizens.

David Yen joined NACBA in 1995 and was a panelist at the 2005 convention in San Diego.  An active participant on NACBA’s listserv, David has been” impressed with how a group with such diverse views on issues of the day can work so effectively together to assist consumers in need of help.”