PRESS RELEASE: Rebecca Goldfrank of DC Affordable Law Firm to Receive 2025 Scoutt Prize

[District of Columbia, May 14, 2025] – The District of Columbia Bar Foundation has selected Rebecca Goldfrank as the 2025 Jerrold Scoutt Prize awardee. Ms. Goldfrank is the legal director at DC Affordable Law Firm (DCALF), where she manages a 25-member team representing clients in immigration, family law, and probate and estate planning matters.

The Scoutt Prize is awarded annually to an attorney who has worked for a significant portion of their career at a nonprofit organization, providing devoted, skillful, and compassionate legal work for underserved residents of the District of Columbia.

“Rebecca is the living embodiment of what a public interest advocate should be,” says Gabby Mulnick Majewski, DCALF’s executive director. “The District of Columbia is a better place for families thanks to her tireless leadership and zealous championship for our community’s members.”

Goldfrank joined DCALF in 2021 after serving as director of the Detained Children's Program at the Capital Area Immigrants’ Rights Coalition – now known as Amica Center for Immigrant Rights. Since graduating from American University’s Washington College of Law in 2004, Rebecca’s 21-year legal services career has also included work at the Children’s Law Center (2004-2018) and the DC Bar Pro Bono Center (2019-2020).

Ms. Goldfrank has been a commissioner on the DC Access to Justice Commission since 2023 and previously served as a board member for the Washington Council of Lawyers. She was the 2022 recipient of the Elliot Millstein Award for Professional Excellence from the Washington College of Law.

“With fierce compassion and exceptional devotion, Rebecca has spent the last 20 years successfully protecting children, migrants, and others with means too limited to afford representation,” says Seth Rosenthal, chair of the Scoutt Prize Selection Committee. “Her work as a public interest attorney and a mentor to other public interest attorneys following in her footsteps has been extraordinary. It is the Committee’s honor to recognize Rebecca with this year’s award.”

In 1992, DC law firm Zuckert, Scoutt & Rasenberger (now KMA Zuckert LLC) endowed the Jerrold Scott Prize in honor of Jerrold Scoutt, Jr., a founding partner of the firm, in recognition of Mr. Scoutt's long-term support of legal services.

The DC Bar Foundation will present the 2025 Jerrold Scoutt Prize to Ms. Goldfrank during its Fall Reception on November 6, 2025.

About the DC Bar Foundation: We are committed to transforming DC’s legal aid network so all District residents have access to our local civil justice system without regard to knowledge, income, or power. Through our network approach, we actively bring together all invested stakeholders to identify and address the unmet civil legal needs of DC residents with low income, create solutions, and demonstrate meaningful impact.

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