UW–Madison alumnus Philip Althouse has received the C. Lyonel Jones Lifetime Achievement Award from the Legal Aid Society, an honor bestowed on full-time employees in recognition of their longstanding commitment to the nonprofit’s mission.
Althouse, who earned his bachelor’s degree from the School of Education in 1979, has worked for the Legal Aid Society of Greater Cleveland for 18 years, focusing on consumer protection cases.
Reflecting on the honor, Althouse said recognition from clients matters most to him. “I get thank-you cards, thank-you emails from people, and I really want to say that those are more valuable than any awards or recognition I get,” he said. “The most joy I get from lawyering is what I get from when a client says, ‘Thanks for your hard work.’”
In a story in The Chronicle, Althouse reflects on his path from UW–Madison toward the end of the Vietnam War to a career in public interest law. While at UW, he planned to become a social studies teacher, but his experiences on campus profoundly shaped his future.
As a reporter for The Daily Cardinal, one of UW–Madison’s student newspapers, he covered the high-profile trial connected to the 1970 Sterling Hall bombing, which was a protest against the Vietnam War and the Army Mathematics Research Center on campus. The following year, he reported on the federal trial of eight former Ohio National Guardsmen charged in the 1970 Kent State University shootings.
“I was exposed to not just the media, but more lawyers and all these civil rights issues,” he said. “Those things helped to heavily influence my decision all the way to become a lawyer — but not before I got an undergraduate degree in education.”
After he graduated, Althouse was a part-time teacher in Milwaukee and a union member before deciding to attend law school. “It gave me a sense about, again, advocating for the underdog, of civil rights, human rights and so on,” he told the Chronicle.
To learn more, read the full story in The Chronicle.