The HBA-PA and the HBA LEF join the Philadelphia legal community in mourning the passing of Anita Santos-Singh, past HBA-PA and HBA LEF President and past recipient of the La Justicia lifetime achievement award. Anita was the longtime Executive Director of Philadelphia Legal Assistance (PLA). In her 27 years as the leader of PLA Anita was a respected and beloved colleague, mentor and dear friend to many.
Anita began her legal career as a housing attorney at Community Legal Services in 1989, protecting homeowners facing mortgage foreclosure and the loss of their homes. Widely admired by her colleagues, Anita was tapped, at the age of 32, to become the founding Executive Director of PLA in 1996, a new organization created to serve Philadelphia’s poor with federal funds.
Anita was very active in the HBA-PA and HBA LEF during her legal career, becoming involved in the early 1990’s and holding several leadership positions in both organizations. Anita was a model and an inspiration for Latina lawyers. She was a trailblazer as one of only a few Latina executive directors in Philadelphia who inspired generations of diverse lawyers to go into the public interest legal services field. She is responsible for hiring generations of public interest lawyers who to this day consider Anita one of the reasons they entered, and stayed, in public interest work.
Hailing from Brownsville,Texas she received her undergraduate degree from the University of Pennsylvania. After graduating from the University of Michigan Law School in 1989, she returned to her adopted home of Philadelphia. Anita was a fixture in and treasured member of our community ever since. She passed away on January 13, 2024. Anita will be remembered as a lover of live music, travel, knitting, and Rafael Nadal. She loved to laugh out loud, had an infectious sense of humor, and loved to dance and to enjoy good food. She was thoughtful, kind, inquisitive and loving. Her presence will be deeply missed but forever remembered by her public interest legal services family, her HBA-PA and HBA LEF familia and her many close friends. We send our deepest condolences to her family in Texas.