My Life as an Animal Lawyer — Career Pathways & Advice: Litigation

Christine Ball-Blakely, Senior Staff Attorney, Animal Legal Defense Fund

As a senior staff attorney at the Animal Legal Defense Fund, Christine works to end the exploitation and systemic abuse of farmed animals. She uses environmental laws to hold the factory farming industry—and the government agencies responsible for regulating it—accountable. She believes that we can build a just legal system that prioritizes the protection of animals, the environment, and marginalized communities over private profit. Before joining the Animal Legal Defense Fund, Christine was a litigator for the federal government. She graduated with high honors from the University of Tennessee College of Law, where she served as president of the Student Animal Legal Defense Fund. Christine is the author of CAFOs: Plaguing North Carolina Communities of Color.

Kelsey Eberly, Senior Staff Attorney, FarmSTAND

As a senior staff attorney at FarmSTAND, Kelsey engages in strategic litigation and movement-centered advocacy to fight corporate control and expose the abuses in the industrial animal agriculture system. Before joining FarmSTAND, Kelsey was a lecturer and litigator with the Media Freedom & Information Access Clinic at Yale Law School, a policy fellow at the Brooks McCormick, Jr. Animal Law & Policy Program at Harvard Law School, and an attorney with the Animal Legal Defense Fund. Kelsey specializes in litigation to combat secrecy and increase transparency in the industrial food system—challenging efforts to silence investigations and whistleblowers and advocating for consumers misled by animal agribusinesses’ deceptive marketing. When not working to transform the food system, Kelsey can be found running over the hills and dales of Vermont, listening to investigative journalism podcast.