President's Message

Firsts

By Anh Le Kremer

Anh Le Kremer is a former business litigator at Stinson, LLP. She is currently the chief operating officer and general counsel for Nystrom & Associates, a behavioral health organization headquartered in Minnesota. After the Court rises for the summer recess and Justice Stephen Breyer’s retirement becomes effective, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson will become the first former federal public defender and first female African American jurist to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court. It is against this milestone that the FBA presents this edition of The Federal Lawyer, which spotlights “firsts” in the legal profession. It is my privilege and honor to serve as the FBA’s first Asian-American national president, and in an interview with Kiera Murphy of the FBA’s Diversity & Inclusion Committee (starting on page 19), I explain what that means to me—and more importantly, what that might mean for others. In addition, in the pages that follow ( 21 through 31), we hear the stories of 11 other lawyers who are or were trailblazers in their communities.

As Justice Jackson emphasized during her confirmation hearing, trailblazers stand on the shoulders of others who preceded them. I feel the same, and I hope this special edition of The Federal Lawyer will help inspire you to lift up all lawyers (and lawyers to be) with promise. “Equal Justice under Law” are not just words written above the main entrance to the Supreme Court; they are a call to action and require collective effort to become reality.