Elliot Slosar, the 2009 Abraham Lincoln Marovitz Scholar, made a difference for the underprivileged and those who are forgotten by the legal system as an undergraduate student at DePaul University when he started the DePaul Students against the Death Penalty (DSADP). Elliot didn’t just start the organization; ultimately he helped investigate and develop facts for the appeals of individual prisoners who wrote to him. One thing led to another and Loevy and Loevy, a civil rights firm, hired Elliot as an in-house investigator. While Elliot was at Loevy and Loevy, they started the Exoneration Project at the University of Chicago Law School. The Project’s Legal Clinic investigates and represents dozens of people who have been wrongfully convicted of various crimes. These experiences solidified Elliot’s desire to go to law school and continue the type of work he was doing on behalf of the under-privileged and forgotten but as a lawyer rather than an investigator.

Three impressive recommendations supported Elliot’s application for the Marovitz Scholarship: one from the current Clinical Professor of Law and Director of the Center for Justice in Capital Cases who knew Elliot from his work organizing DSADP and two from the lawyers for whom he works. One of the lawyers described Elliot as follows: “Elliot is [one of] a special minority of people [who take] the project in entirely different and positive directions, adding untold value in the process…he does not just execute assignments; he looks at the end goal (winning the case) and finds his own creative ways to achieve it.”

Elliot will continue the work about which he cares so much while going to law school part-time at night at DePaul University College of Law.