2018 AWARDS
Allan N. Karlin
Founder and Attorney, Allan N. Karlin & Associates
It is good to look in the mirror and believe that,
win or lose, you tried and, most often, succeeded
in contributing to a more just world.”
Photo by Delaney Photography.
BY KEVIN DUVALL. Since beginning his
career at Legal Aid of West Virginia in
1974, Allan Karlin, founder and attorney
of Allan N. Karlin & Associates, has com-
mitted decades of work to representing
the victims of injustice and those denied
fundamental rights.
“If making a lot of money is always a
factor in the selection of cases, one misses
the chance to do a lot of interesting work,”
says Ka rlin. “Besides, this kind of work
is good for the soul.”
Today, Karlin is known as a top trial
attorney in West Virginia, and he has been
renowned for his pro bono work, espe-
cially in civil rights cases, and his work
with the Innocence Project, a nonprofit
organization devoted to exonerating
wrongfully convicted people.
Karlin’s compassion for marginalized
individuals stems from his family’s guid-
ance as a child. He grew up in Chicago,
where his father worked as a plaintiff’s
attorney and his mother was a homemaker
dedicated to volunteer work. Karlin’s par-
ents instilled in him the value of using one’s
gifts to combat injustice through their
work and the teachings of the Jewish faith.
“I was always a good student,” he re-
calls. “My mother reminded me many
times that with the gift of intelligence
comes a responsibility to use that gift
wisely. To her that meant helping others
and standing up for what was right. As
a Jew, I was also reminded every year at
the Passover holiday that Passover was
not a dusty old religious tale but rather
a lesson that we should resist every form
of slavery against all people, regardless of
religion, race or national origin.”
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WEST VIRGINIA EXECUTIVE
Karlin places high importance on seeing
these principles in action as a foundation
of his aspirations in law. “I recall on a
family trip when I was a child, we were
going to stay overnight in a town where
one of my favorite baseball players owned
a motel,” he says. “I asked my parents
if we could stay at this white ballplay-
er’s motel, and they said yes—until we
arrived and saw a sign on the door that
said words to the effect of ‘We reserve
the right to refuse a room to prospec-
tive guests.’ Seeing that sign, my father
immediately turned around and left the
parking lot even though it was already
dark and we needed a place to sleep. He
explained, in a lesson I never forgot, that
the sign meant the motel discriminated
against black persons, and we weren’t
going to give it our business.”
Karlin had a chance early in life to
implement the lessons his parents taught
him while completing a five-year bache-
lor’s degree at Yale University, where his
studies included a year of teaching public
school in Fes, Morocco. He graduated
summa cum laude in 1969.
After college, he worked with poor and
working-class residents of Texarkana,
Texas, as a member of Volunteers in Ser-
vice to America, or VISTA. His work
focused on organizing and educating
members of low-income communities
about their rights. This experience proved
to be a turning point in Karlin’s life. While
working with a local pastor who helped
bring the struggle against poverty and
discrimination to Texarkana, Karlin and
his fellow VISTA members were banned
from the city by its council.
“We had just been voted out of Texar-
kana after being portrayed as dangerous
outsiders who had come to promote an
attack on its alleged values,” he recalls.
“We thought our local enemies were
coming to get us, but the pastor, Rever-
end David Stephens, gathered us together
and said, ‘How can we turn this to our
advantage?’ That has been my motto
ever since. No matter how bad things
look, there may be a way to turn events
around. It is an attitude that has served
me well in my legal career.”
After seeing that the VISTA group’s
lawyer was able to use legal channels
to help people who lived outside of the
city’s power structure, Karlin decided to
enroll in law school. “Maturing in the
1960s and early 1970s, I viewed law as
an important avenue for social change,”
he says. “In part, this view was nurtured
by the activist lawyers who brought civil
Karlin and a past co-worker preparing
to enter a coal mine during a case.