Intro to Discharge Upgrades with Some Intermediate Discharge Practice | 2019 Veterans Law CLE

Robert Cuthbert, formerly of Military Discharge Upgrade Clinic, Veteran Advocacy Project of the Urban Justice Center

Rob Cuthbert is a national award-wining freelance writer who formerly served as the pro bono coordinator for the discharge upgrade clinic of the Urban Justice Center-Veteran Advocacy Project in New York City. His work has been published by The New York Times, USA Today, The New York Daily News, The Baltimore Sun, and The Richmond Times-Dispatch. Rob is also a United States Army veteran of Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom. After completing his active duty military obligation, Rob interned at the Yale Law School Veterans Legal Services Clinic, where he co-authored Casting Troops Aside: The United States Military’s Illegal Personality Discharge Problem for Vietnam Veterans of America.



Alan Goldsmith, Chair Veterans and Military Law Section Federal Bar Association, Former Section Head, BCNR

Mr. Goldsmith served as a section head at the Board for Correction of Naval Records (BCNR) for 25 years. His section reviewed requests for discharge upgrades, reinstatement in the service, changes in reenlistment codes, removal of nonjudicial punishments and related matters. Mr. Goldsmith also served on active duty as an Air Force judge advocate, specializing in administrative separation actions.

Mr. Goldsmith received his BA from Kenyon College and his JD from the Catholic University School of Law. He has been awarded the Air Force Commendation Medal and the Navy Superior Civilian Service Award. Mr. Goldsmith serves on the Board of Directors of the Judge Advocates Association and chairs the Veterans and Military Law Section of the Federal Bar Association (FBA).



Dana Montalto, Harvard Veterans Law and Disability Benefits Clinic

Dana Montalto is an Attorney and Clinical Instructor in the Veterans Legal Clinic at the Legal Services Center of Harvard Law School. She represents veterans with less-than-honorable discharges in seeking military discharge upgrades and federal and state veteran benefits. Dana also founded and directs the Veterans Justice Pro Bono Partnership, which connects veterans who wrongfully received less-than-honorable discharges with pro bono attorneys seeking to give back to those who served. She authored Underserved: How VA Wrongfully Excludes Veterans with Bad Paper on behalf of Swords to Plowshares and the National Veterans Legal Services Program and co-authored With Malice Toward None: Revisiting the Historical & Legal Basis for Excluding Veterans from “Veteran” Services, 122 Penn. St. L. Rev. 69 (2017).

Dana received her bachelor’s degree, magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, from Wellesley College and her law degree from Yale Law School, where she participated in the Veterans Legal Services Clinic and the International Refugee Assistance Project. She joined the Legal Services Center in 2014 as an Arthur Liman Public Interest Fellow after completing a clerkship for the Honorable F. Dennis Saylor IV of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts.