MBA Member Directory

David Keller Trevaskis, Esquire, is an attorney and former third grade teacher with a master’s degree in Education.   Trevaskis is the Pro Bono Coordinator for Legal Services for the Pennsylvania Bar Association (PBA), responsible for helping local bar associations, legal aid programs and other groups who offer legal services across the Commonwealth improve the access to justice for the neediest among us.  He also promotes civic education through such organizations as the PBA, the Pennsylvania Council for the Social Studies (PCSS) and Law, Education and PEACE for Kids (LEAP-Kids).

Trevaskis’ work in poverty law is extensive as the PBA’s Pro Bono Office processes nearly 6000 requests for help each year through the PBA Legal Services to the Public Committee and helps organize and run clinics on a variety of subjects from expungements to elder law issues.  He is pushing hard to have every lawyer in Pennsylvania share palawhelp.org with clients and register themselves for palwhelp.org and Pennsylvania Free Legal Answers.  Trevaskis staffs the PBA’s Immigration Law Committee and supports the Wills for Heroes Program of the PBA’s Young Lawyer Division which has provided first responders and veterans with wills and other estate planning documents at no cost.  Trevaskis is proud of his work supporting veterans and active-duty personnel with civil legal aid through the PBA’s Military and Veterans Affairs Committee. He delights in celebrating that his namesake, nephew David Trevaskis, serves as a Staff Sergeant in the United States Army. 

Trevaskis has long been a champion of non-violence, having been the designer of and original trainer for Project PEACE (Peaceful Endings through Authorities, Children and Educators), a peer mediation, anti-bullying and youth court program jointly sponsored by the PBA and the Pennsylvania Office of the Attorney General.  A co-author of the text, School Law: Legal Framework, Guiding Principles, and Litigated Areas, David is an expert on school law and school crisis. He teaches in the classroom and online at Community College of Philadelphia, Gratz College, Arcadia University, and the University of New England.

Mock trial as an educational tool is a passion of Trevaskis and he has been actively involved in the Pennsylvania Statewide High School Mock Trial Program sponsored by the PBA Young Lawyers Division since 1985.  He currently serves on the PBA YLD Mock Trial Program Advisory Group and has past service on the Board of the National High School Mock Trial Competition.  Working with the Rendell Center for Civics and Civic Engagement, Trevaskis works to create mock trials and mock appellate arguments from children’s literature for students of all ages.  He also creates moot court simulations with current and historic United States Supreme Court cases.

In his work with PCSS and LEAP-Kids, Trevaskis supports social studies education from pre-Kindergarten to graduate school. A two-time president and current Executive Secretary of PCSS and the long-time Executive Director of LEAP-Kids, Trevaskis presents hundreds of programs each year for thousands of educators and students.  He is a celebrated presenter of both history and herstory across the Commonwealth and beyond.  The pandemic brought Trevaskis more fully into the digital world though there was already enough video on him from the Perspectives interview series he hosted for Community College of Philadelphia’s CCP-TV.

Trevaskis has won more awards than any one man deserves, but he was excited that Gabriele Miller-Wagner, the half-time paralegal who works with him at the PBA, was honored with the most recent Pennsylvania Legal Aid Network Excellence Award, joining Trevaskis who won his in 2013.  Trevaskis and Miller-Wagner shared PBA President Awards in 2015, too.  Trevaskis was honored with Kelly J. Gastley, Managing Attorney at Philadelphia VIP, as co-recipient of the 2020 Philadelphia Bar Foundation Award.  Trevaskis was lauded as a Shepherd of Peace by the Good Shepherd Mediation Program in October 2018 and he and Project PEACE were honored by the World Affairs Council of Harrisburg in September 2019 with the Peacemaker in Our Midst Award.  Trevaskis was delighted to receive the American Bar Association Isadore Starr Award in 2015 for outstanding achievements in teaching about the law in the elementary and secondary grades.  Dr. Starr, a lawyer/educator who passed away in 2018 at 106 years young, personally saluted David when David was given his award and that made it even more special.

In the current era of the world moving past the virus, he has been zooming in and out of classrooms and sessions all over the country.  And, to the chagrin of his wife and close friends who say, “enough already”, he won another award, being honored with a team of talented lawyers at the PBA Annual Meeting in May 2021 for the team’s work on mock trial during the pandemic.

Trevaskis is married with two children and two grandsons.