DiFilippo, Ashley Dring

Meehan Rasch has always been driven by the thirst for knowledge, and, as a former competitive swimmer, by the challenge of tough competition.  Her inquisitive mind and precocious powers of persuasion gained her admission to Stanford University at age sixteen, where she promptly talked her way into every interesting graduate-level seminar she could find, ultimately graduating with an award-winning honors thesis.  That same spirit of focus and curiosity now underscores her work as an appellate advocate.

Meehan received her law degree from UCLA, where she was a Senior Editor of the UCLA Law Review, winner of the Best Brief award at the National Sexual Orientation Law Moot Court Competition, and a teaching assistant for the first-year legal writing program. She cut her teeth early on appellate law, clerking for justices of the Hopi Appellate Court through the UCLA Tribal Appellate Clinic and representing the interests of foster children in California juvenile dependency appeals through the UCLA Appellate Advocacy Clinic.  After law school graduation, Meehan clerked for renowned jurist and appellate scholar Judge Ruggero J. Aldisert of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.

Prior to joining GMSR, Meehan taught at UC Davis School of Law as a Wydick Fellow, and worked as a litigator in the Los Angeles office of the international law firm Sidley Austin. At Sidley, her complex commercial litigation practice included employment and bankruptcy appeals, multidistrict wage and hour class actions, and hedge fund and accountant representation. Her pro bono practice has included asylum petitions and appeals, as well as a post-conviction capital appeal in the Alabama Supreme Court for a client on death row in Alabama.  She has prosecuted criminal jury trials as a temporary Deputy District Attorney with the Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office, through the Los Angeles County Bar Association TAP program, and was a Sidley Pro Bono Fellow with the Public Counsel Appellate Law Program in Los Angeles before entering private practice.

Before law school, Meehan worked as a nonprofit director and grants manager for a variety of public interest legal and social services organizations, and was a Jane Addams-Andrew Carnegie Fellow at the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University.  She also put her love of good writing to work during a stint in publishing as the acquisitions editor for a literary agency, quashing the dreams of countless aspiring authors with gently-worded rejection letters. 

Meehan is a past board member of California Women Lawyers, Stanford Pride, and the Third Wave Foundation, and a current adjunct professor of Legal Writing and Advocacy at USC Gould School of Law.  She lives in the Mount Washington neighborhood of Los Angeles with her partner, documentary filmmaker Sally Rubin.