Molly Lao
Staff Attorney
Molly Lao (she/her) is a Staff Attorney with the Racial Economic Justice Program. She began her legal career as a Skadden Fellow in her hometown of Fresno, California, where she created a medical-legal-social services partnership to provide legal services to individuals whose criminal records and disabilities compound and intersect to create barriers to living wage employment. She continues her work in the Central Valley conducting community trainings, advocating for policy changes, and taking on cases for impact litigation and limited representation. She has successfully settled various cases with significant compensatory and affirmative relief in the restaurant, security, healthcare, oil refinery, retail, and car manufacturing industries, among others, in the Central Valley and throughout California.
As a first-generation college student, Molly graduated from Brown University and Berkeley Law where she was honored with the Yat K. Tow Prize for Public Service, the Francine Marie Diaz Memorial Award for Public Service and the John D. Weiss Employee Justice Award. During law school, Molly worked for the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, the East Bay Community Law Center, Legal Aid at Work, and the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. She was also Editor-in-Chief of the Berkeley Journal of Criminal Law and Diversity Editor of the California Law Review. Prior to law school, Molly was a Policy and Program Manager at the California Workforce Development Board, a Consultant for the California Senate Public Safety Committee where she served as a California Senate Fellow, and a Policy Intern for First Lady Michelle Obama.
She currently serves as Board Secretary of the United Khmer Cultural Preservation, Fellow on the American Bar Association’s Standing Committee on Legal Aid and Indigent Defense and Co-Chair of the National Asian Pacific American Bar Association’s Civil Rights Committee. She is also a founding member of the National Association of Cambodian American Lawyers. She has been named to the Rising Star Super Lawyers list. She has formerly served on the board of the Community Justice Center and as a steward for her union. She is a native speaker of Cambodian.