Ellen has more than thirty years of experience with litigation and legal writing, both as an attorney and as a professor of legal writing. She is admitted to the bar in Florida, Massachusetts, New York, and Rhode Island, as well as six federal district and circuit courts. She has worked as a civil rights and disability rights attorney since 1986 when she joined the New York City Commission on Human Rights. She served as Deputy Director and then Director of the Equal Employment and Public Accommodation Division, where she oversaw the intake and investigation of discrimination complaints. She then joined New York Lawyers for the Public Interest as a staff attorney in its disability rights unit. Her work there included Burr v. Sobol, which established compensatory education as a remedy for special education and also attorneys’ fees for administrative hearings under IDEA. When NYLPI established its Disability Law Center, Ellen became Director. Under her leadership, NYLPI filed four of the first ADA Title II complaints with the U.S. Department of Justice, including a case that resulted in making the Empire State Building’s observation deck accessible. In Florida, she worked for Legal Services for Greater Miami for a year and then worked for the Advocacy Center for Persons with Disabilities (now Disability Rights Florida). There, her work included special education cases as well as class action lawsuits, including Prado-Steiman v. Bush, which resulted in a settlement that required Florida’s Medicaid program to improve and expand its Home and Community based Waiver program for people with developmental disabilities. After moving to Rhode Island, she taught legal writing at Roger Williams University School of Law and now has a private practice that includes special education. She often works with the American Civil Liberties Union of Rhode Island, the Disability Law Center of Massachusetts, Rhode Island Legal Services, and the Rhode Island Disability Law Center, both on individual cases and on systemic law reform work including special education. Ellen is a member of the COPAA amicus committee and has co-authored many amicus briefs for COPAA

Roman Martinez is the Deputy Office Managing Partner of the Washington, D.C., office and a member of the firm’s Supreme Court & Appellate Practice. He represents clients in their highest stakes appeals in the Supreme Court of the United States, as well as in federal and state appellate courts around the country.

Mr. Martinez handles civil and criminal matters involving a wide range of constitutional, statutory, and administrative law issues.

Mr. Martinez has argued 13 cases in the Supreme Court, including important cases in the fields of the First Amendment, arbitration, copyright, patent law, criminal law, civil rights, employment, and civil and criminal procedure. In addition, he has argued dozens of appeals in the D.C., Second, Third, Fourth, Sixth, Eighth, Ninth, and Federal Circuits, as well as in New York, California, New Jersey, Ohio, and Tennessee appellate courts, among others.

In the 2022 Term, Mr. Martinez prevailed in Perez v. Sturgis Public Schools, in which the Court expanded legal protections for children with disabilities. Last year, he also successfully argued ZF Automotive v. Luxshare, in which the Supreme Court clarified that US courts lack authority to grant discovery for use in private commercial arbitrations conducted abroad, and Vega v. Tekoh, in which the Court clarified the scope of civil liability for violations of Miranda v. Arizona.