The American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) Presents Patrick Taurel with the 2018 Joseph Minsky Young Lawyer Award

Patrick Taurel of Clark Hill's Washington, D.C. office was honored with the 2018 Joseph Minsky Young Lawyer Award by The American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) for his outstanding contributions made as a young lawyer in the field of immigration and nationality law. The award was presented during AILA’s Annual Conference in San Francisco. 

Taurel is an associate attorney with Clark Hill PLC’s Immigration Practice Group. His practice focuses on federal court litigation and removal defense, as well as affirmative benefits before U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and U.S. consulates. He currently serves on AILA’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement Liaison Committee. In 2017, he was named by Washingtonian Magazine as one of “Washington’s Top Lawyers” in the field of immigration law.

Taurel has helped clients achieve goals that ranged from securing protection under the Violence Against Women Act to negotiating safe plea deals in state and federal criminal matters. For two years, he was a legal fellow with the American Immigration Council, where he focused on prosecutorial discretion policies and became an expert on the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. At the Council, Mr. Taurel authored several practice advisories on DACA and related topics. Following law school, he spent two years as an associate attorney with the leading Idaho immigration law firm, Andrade Legal.

As a law student, Taurel interned with the ACLU’s Immigrant Rights Project, the Hong Kong Refugee Advice Centre, and the Immigrant Defense Project. He graduated Cum Laude from Brooklyn Law School in 2010 and he received his B.A. in Philosophy from Brown University in 2004. Mr. Taurel was born in Brazil, speaks Portuguese and Spanish, and is proficient in French and Italian.