Michael Diamond

Director, Harrison Institute for Housing and Community Development , diamondm@law.georgetown.edu

BA, Syracuse University
JD, Fordham University
LLM, New York University

Michael Diamond is Professor of Law at Georgetown  Law where he is the Director of Georgetown’s Harrison Institute for Housing and Community Development and directs its Housing and Community Development Clinic.  He also teaches Corporations and Property.  Professor Diamond taught at American University’s Washington College of Law and at Antioch University School of Law and visited at several Law Schools.  He has taught Contracts, Business Associations, Property, Administrative Law, and seminars in Housing, Economic Development and Sociology of Law.  Professor Diamond has been of counsel to the law firms of Goldfarb & Singer and O’Toole, Rothwell, Nassau, and Steinbach and a consultant to the ABA’s Central and Eastern European Law Initiative on proposed housing laws in Russia and Bosnia, and to the Agency for International Development.   He consulted with the District of Columbia Law Revision Commission and several advisory commissions on housing policy.  His books include:  Corporations: A Contemporary Approach, 2d Ed. Carolina Academic Press (2004), and How to Incorporate; A Guide for Entrepreneurs and Professionals, 5th Ed. John Wiley and Sons (2007).  His recent articles include: Community Lawyering: Revisiting the Old Neighborhood, Columbia Human Rights Law Review (2000); Leaders, Followers and Free Riders: The Community Lawyer’s Dilemma when Representing Non-Democratic Client Organizations, Fordham Urban Law Journal  (2004, with O’Toole); Community Economic Development: A Reflection on Community, Power and the Law, The Journal of Small and Emerging Business Law (2004); Affordable Housing, Land Tenure and Urban Policy: The Matrix Revealed, Fordham Urban Law Journal (with Byrne).  Professor Diamond gave the keynote address at a workshop entitled Affordable Housing and Public/Private Partnerships:  The Intersection of Housing, Property, and Real Estate.at the University of Colorado Law School.  He has recently presented papers at the University of Colorado Law School (on tenant participation in Low income Housing Tax Credit projects) and Chapman University Law School (on the cultural meaning of property).

Raquel C. Skinner

Staff Attorney, rcs75@law.georgetown.edu

BA, Spelman College
JD, University of Pennsylvania

Raquel C. Skinner is an adjunct professor and staff attorney with the Harrison Institute’s Housing and Community Development Clinic at Georgetown University Law Center. As a staff attorney, she advises low-income tenant associations with respect to their purchase and renovation of multifamily housing and conversion of such housing into condominiums and cooperatives. In her adjunct role, she supervises work performed by clinical law students on these transactions and teaches in Georgetown Law’s Housing and Community Development Seminar. Before joining the Harrison Institute, Ms. Skinner was an Associate General Counsel at Fannie Mae, where she provided transactional legal support to Fannie Mae’s Multifamily Mortgage Business. Ms. Skinner’s earlier experience includes several years with two major law firms where she represented borrowers and lenders in commercial real property transactions and worked on corporate and securities transactions.

Courtney Anderson

Fellow, cla46@law.georgetown.edu

JD, Harvard University

Courtney Anderson is a clinical fellow with the Housing and Community Development Clinic at the Harrison Institute at Georgetown Law.  She represents low-income tenant associations in purchasing, renovating, and converting multifamily housing into condominiums and cooperatives, and supervises clinical law students who work on these cases.  Prior to joining the Harrison Institute, Courtney worked in the real estate group at Sidley Austin LLP where her practice had an emphasis on corporate and financing transactions.

Alina S. Ball

Fellow, asb99@law.georgetown.edu

Alina is a clinical teaching fellow with the Harrison Institute for Housing and Community Development. In this role, she represents low-income tenant associations in a variety of transactional matters that includes working with the tenants to organize, purchase residential buildings, develop and renovate their residential buildings and learn how to operate the buildings.

Prior to joining the Harrison Institute, Alina was a business associate in the Washington, D.C., office of Morrison & Foerster LLP, where her practice focused on representing investment advisors and other entities in secondary debt transactions. She also has experience advising nonprofit corporations on issues relating to entity formation, regulation of exempt organizations, and nonprofit governance.

Alina received her J.D. from UCLA School of Law in 2008, with a specialization in Critical Race Studies. She received her B.A. degrees from Wellesley College majoring in Mathematics and Spanish, with a concentration in Latin American Studies. Before pursuing her legal career, Alina was a program coordinator at Hispanics in Philanthropy, where she helped administer capacity building grants to Latino-led nonprofits across California.

Harrison Institute for Public Law
Georgetown University Law Center
111 F Street NW, Suite 102
Washington, DC 20001
Phone: 202-662-9600
Fax: 202-662-9613
Email: hihousing@law.georgetown.edu