2014 May/Jun - Diversity & The Bar Magazine

® May/June 2014

STAND

YOUR

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EXAMINING STAND YOUR GROUND PAGE 16

HOW LATINOS IN THE US OVERCOME LEGAL OBSTACLES AND ENGAGE IN CIVIC LIFE

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MCCA’S LLOYD M. JOHNSON, JR. SCHOLARSHIP PROGRAM PAGE 32

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The MCCA DIVERSITY GALA July 25, 2014

The MCCA Diversity Gala is the premier national awards program honoring the foremost corporate law departments from across the nation for diversity,industry leadership, and achievements in their legal department diversity programs.

This amazing event includes an exclusive networking reception and awards program that combines honors with entertainment in the famed The John F. Kennedy Center for the performing Arts, in Washington, DC followed by an elegant networking dinner reception.

Employer of Choice Honorees South Region: BP America Inc. Rupert Bondy Group General Counsel Midwest Region: Cummins Inc. Sharon R. Barner Vice President, General Counsel

Western Region: Xcel Energy Scott Wilensky Senior Vice President, General Counsel Mid-Atlantic Region: GlaxoSmithKline Dan Troy Senior Vice President, General Counsel

Northeast Region: Prudential Financial Susan L. Blount Executive Vice President, General Counsel

Gala The MCCA Diversity Gala Awards Include: MCCA’s Employer of Choice Award – honoring general counsel and their law departments for success in their internal and external diversity and inclusion initiatives.

Laurence Fishburne Actor; producer Special guest presenter for the Lifetime Achievement Award

The MCCA Lifetime Achievement Award – presented to an individual who has made important and lasting contributions to advancing a society that fully appreciates, celebrates and recognizes the value of diversity.

George B. Vashon Diversity Innovators – national recognition of innovative diversity programs implemented in corporate legal departments, law firms and bar associations.

Kristen Welker NBC News White House Correspondent 2014 Master of Ceremony

The MCCA Diversity Gala at The Kennedy Center will offer increased opportunities for participants to interact with the MCCA network on a national scale. Sponsorships of this program provide highlevel visibility to the MCCA network though various outlets including mcca.com and Diversity & the Bar® magazine with unparalleled onsite access to the honorees and special guests.

2013 MCCA LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD Ursula M. Burns Chairman and CEO Xerox Corporation

2012 MCCA LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD Dennis W. Archer Chairman and CEO of Dennis W. Archer PLLC and Chairman Emeritus of Dickinson Wright PLLC

2011 MCCA LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD Vernon E. Jordan, Jr. Senior Managing Director, Lazard Frères & Co. Senior Counsel, Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP

For more information visit www.mcca.com/gala

May/June 2014

TABLE OF CONTENTS

p.24

Learn how some Latino lawyers and organizations engage in civil life

p.16

The American Bar Association’s Stand Your Ground Task Force Investigates the Controversial Law

FEATURES 16 STAND YOUR GROUND Controversial “Stand Your Ground” laws are cropping up all over the country. Going further than defending your home, the laws allow individuals to use deadly force to defend themselves without any requirement to evade or retreat. The ABA is investigating the law and

BY JONATHAN GRONER its effects.

24 LATINOS IN THE UNITED STATES: OVERCOMING LEGAL OBSTACLES, ENGAGING IN CIVIC LIFE Latinos are projected to comprise 30 percent of the nation’s population by 2050 but make up only a tiny percentage of the legal profession. Several organizations, including MCCA, are working to address this deficiency. This story will explore the deficiency, why it exists and matters, and give a bird’s-eye view of the various programs. BY LEK AN OGUNTOYINBO

MCCA's

Lloyd M. Johnson Jr.

Scholarship Awards Program

32 MCCA’S LLOYD M. JOHNSON, JR. SCHOLARSHIP PROGRAM MCCA’s flagship scholarship program is celebrating its 10-year anniversary. More than any other program, the Lloyd M. Johnson Jr. Scholarship embodies the mission of the organization by allowing diverse law students to pursue their dreams. COMPILED BY JOSHUA H. SHIELDS

MCCA® Board Of Directors Vernon G. Baker II Former Senior Vice President & General Counsel, Meritor, Inc.

Samuel M. Reeves Senior Vice President, General Counsel, Walmart U.S. Legal

Michelle Banks Executive Vice President, General Counsel, Corporate Secretary & Chief Compliance Officer, Gap, Inc.

Carlos Rincon Partner, Rincon Law Group, P.C.

Clarissa Cerda Senior Vice President, General Counsel & Secretary, LifeLock, Inc. A. B. Cruz III Former Chief Legal Officer & Corporate Secretary, Scripps Networks Interactive, Inc. Anthony K. Greene Director, Jamison Insurance Group

COLUMNS 8 Notes from the President & CEO 10 Perseverance in Profile Highlighting the contributions and talents of attorneys with disabilities.

DEPARTMENTS 42 Association Focus LatinoJustice PRLDEF

BY JESSICA WEISS

46 Movers & Shakers

Beverly Poole Baker

BY TOM CALARCO

14 Spotlighting Lynn Oberlander

BY PATRICK FOLLIARD

2014 STRATEGIC DIVERSITY SPONSORS

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VISIT WWW.MCCA.COM FOR THE LATEST INFORMATION ON OUR EVENTS, AWARDS, AND RESEARCH.

Thomas L. Sager Senior Vice President & General Counsel, DuPont Company Robin H. Sangston Vice President, Chief Compliance Officer, Cox Communications, Inc. Kenneth S. Siegel Chief Administrative Officer & General Counsel, Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, Inc.

Jean Lee Vice President & Assistant General Counsel, JPMorgan Chase

Mary E. Snapp Corporate Vice President & Deputy General Counsel Legal & Corporate Affairs, Microsoft Corporation

Don H. Liu Senior Vice President, General Counsel, & Secretary, Xerox Corporation

Lawrence P. Tu Senior Vice President, General Counsel & Secretary, Dell, Inc.

Hinton J. Lucas Vice President & Assistant General Counsel, DuPont Company

Neil Wilcox General Counsel Chase Card Services, JP Morgan Chase

Robbie E. B. Narcisse Vice President-Global Ethics & Business Practices, Pitney Bowes Inc.

Simone Wu Senior Vice President, General Counsel, Corporate Secretary & Chief Compliance Officer, Choice Hotels International, Inc.

Advertising For advertising inquiries, contact Don Cooksey, Montrose Media Sales, at don@MontroseMediaSales.com.

MCCA® Membership Please visit www.mcca.com for membership and other information.

General Information and Address Changes Send your questions, complaints, and compliments to MCCA®, Kim Howard, CAE, Editor in Chief, kimhoward@mcca.com. Address changes should be sent to MCCA’s Vice President of Membership and Development at 1111 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, Washington, DC 20004.

Permissions and Reprints Reproduction of Diversity & the Bar in whole or in part without permission is prohibited. The Copyright Act of 1976 prohibits the reproduction by photocopy machine or any other means of any portion of this issue, except with the permission of MCCA. To obtain permission, contact: Kim Howard, CAE, Editor-in-Chief, kimhoward@ mcca.com.

Copyright Copyright® 2014 by the Minority Corporate Counsel Association. Diversity & the Bar is published six times a year and is distributed to supporters and subscribers, 1111 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, Washington, DC 20004.

The information contained in this publication has been provided to the Minority Corporate Counsel Association (MCCA®) by a variety of independent sources. While MCCA makes every effort to present accurate and reliable information, MCCA does not endorse, approve, or certify such information, nor does MCCA guarantee the accuracy, completeness, ef-

ficacy, or chronological sequence of any such information. Use of such information on the readers’ part is entirely voluntary and reliance upon it should be undertaken only upon independent review and due diligence. References herein to any commercial product, process, or service by trade name, trademark, service mark, manufacturer, or otherwise shall not constitute or imply endorsement, preference, recommendation, or the favor of MCCA. MCCA (including its employees and agents) assumes no responsibility for consequences resulting from the use of the information herein, or in any respect for the content of such information, including (but not limited to) errors or omissions, the accuracy or reasonableness of factual or other data, including statistical or scientific assumptions, studies or conclusions, the defamatory nature of statements, ownership of copyright or other intellectual property rights, and the violation of property, privacy, or personal rights of others. MCCA is not responsible for, and expressly disclaims and denies liability for, damages of any kind arising out of use, reference to, or reliance upon such information. No guarantees or warranties, including (but not limited to) any express or implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular use or purpose, are made by MCCA with respect to such information.

Copyright in this publication, including all articles and editorial information contained herein, is exclusively owned by MCCA and MCCA reserves all rights to such information.

MCCA is a tax-exempt corporation organized in accordance with section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. Its tax ID number is 13-3920905.

MCCA® Law Department Members The Minority Corporate Counsel Association (MCCA) acknowledges the support of the following law departments whose financial contributions have helped to advance the goal of furthering diversity in the legal profession.

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3M Company AARP AT&T Accenture LLP AECOM AGCO Corporation Allstate Insurance Altria Group, Inc. American Airlines, Inc. American Express Company American Lawyer Media Aon Corporation Areas USA, Inc. Bank of America Bechtel Becton, Dickinson and Company Behr America Inc. Boehringer Ingelheim Corporation Booz Allen Hamilton BP America Inc. Bristol-Myers Squibb Company BNY Mellon CALIBR, global leadership network Capital Legal Solutions, LLC Capital One Financial Corporation Cargill Inc. Carter’s, Inc. Catalent Pharma Solutions CBIC Construction & Development, LLC Chevron Corporation Choice Hotels International, Inc. CIGNA Corporation CITGO Corporation Colgate-Palmolive Company Compass Group, The Americas Compassion Care Hospice Computer Science Corporation ConAgra Foods, Inc. ConocoPhillips Constellation Energy

Cox Communications Crawford & Company Darden Restaurants, Inc. D.C. Water and Sewer Authority Deere & Company Dell Inc. DHL America Diageo North America Inc. Dignity Health DiversityInc Media, L.L.C. Dow Corning Corporation Duke Energy DuPont Eaton Corporation Eli Lilly and Company Entergy Corporation Estée Lauder Companies Inc. Exelon Business Services Company Fannie Mae Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco Fickel Enterprises Inc. Flagstar Bank Freddie Mac Fujitec America, Inc. Gap Inc. General Electric Company General Mills Inc. GlaxoSmithKline Graduate Management Admission Council Genentech, Inc. Goldman Sachs & Co. Google Inc. Hewlett-Packard Company HJ Heinz Company H.J. Russell & Company Halliburton Honda of America MFG., Inc. Honeywell International Huntington Ingalls Industries

IBM Corporation Ingersoll-Rand PLC Intel Corporation International Paper Company Jamison Insurance Group JC Penney Company, Inc. JetBlue Airways Corporation Johnson & Johnson JPMorgan Chase Bank NA JM Family Enterprises, Inc. Kaiser Foundation Health Plan, Inc. KeyCorp Kraft Foods Law School Admission Council (LSAC) Leading Educators Leidos Leo Burnett Company LexisNexis Liberty Mutual Insurance Company Lifelock, Inc. LifeVantage Corporation Liquidity Services, Inc. Macy’s, Inc. ManpowerGroup Marriott International, Inc. MassMutual Financial Group Medifast, Inc. MetLife Inc. Merck & Co., Inc. McDonald’s Corporation Microsoft Corporation MillerCoors Monsanto Company Morgan Stanley Nabholz Construction Services National Grid Nationwide Mutual Insurance Company Navistar, Inc.

Neighborhood Defender Service Newegg Inc. New York Life Insurance Company NORCAL Mutual Insurance Company Northrop Grumman Corporation Nuclear Electric Insurance Limited Office Depot Pacific Gas and Electric Company Pepco Holdings, Inc. PepsiCo, Inc. Pfizer Inc. Pitney Bowes, Inc. PPG Industries, Inc. Porzio Life Sciences, LLC PRAXAIR, INC. PreCash Premier Media, Inc. Prudential Financial Quest Diagnostics Incorporated RBS Americas Reckitt Benckiser, Inc. Reed Elsevier, Inc. Rockwell Collins Rolls Royce North America Inc. Rosetta Stone Inc. Sara Lee Corporation Scripps Networks Interactive, Inc. Sears Holding Company Sempra Energy ServiceMesh, Inc. Shell Oil Company Sodexo Sony Electronics, Inc. Southeastern Freight Lines, Inc.

Southern California Edison Company Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) Staples, Inc. Starbucks Coffee Company Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, Inc. Spanish Broadcasting System Inc. Synopsys, Inc. Tanenbaum Harber of Florida, Inc. Target Corporation Tessera North America, Inc. The Brookings Institution The Church Pension Fund The Clorox Company The Coca-Cola Company The Conference Board, Inc. The Dow Chemical Company The Juilliard School The Vanguard Group, Inc. The Walt Disney Company The Williams Companies, Inc. Tyson Foods Inc. UBS UnitedHealth Group United Parcel Service United Technologies Corporation U.S. Food Service, Inc. Verizon Communications Walmart Stores, Inc. WellPoint, Inc. Waste Management Wells Fargo & Company Wireless Generation Inc. Xerox Corporation XO Holdings, Inc. Xylem Inc. Yazaki North America Inc. Zenith Insurance Company

All Firm Affiliates Receive These Exceptional Benefits: • Use of MCCA Law Firm Affiliate Network’s logo for the firm’s business cards, ads, website, etc. (under license agreement).

• Listed as a Firm Affiliate Network (FAN) member on the MCCA website—this will be regularly circulated to MCCA member companies who care about diversity for their information and reference.

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• Ability to post bios and practice information on the firm’s diverse attorneys in the Diverse Outside Counsel Database (DOCD) that is marketed to MCCA member companies for outside counsel selection.

• Access to MCCA’s Career Center. Firms will be able to post jobs at low cost and review resumes at no cost.

• Special firm affiliate enewsletter containing trends, statistics, article links, and information on in-house counsel promotions.

• Two MCCA Diversity Planning Toolkits (compendium of diversity research and best practice information compiled by MCCA).

MCCA.COM

MCCA® Law Firm Affiliates MCCA® acknowledges the decision of the following law firms who have joined with MCCA to advance the goal of furthering diversity in the legal profession.

Alchemy-Partners, PC Alexander & Associates Anderson Kill P.C. Archer & Greiner, P.C. Arent Fox LLP Arrastia & Capote LLP** Axiom Baldassare & Marra LLC** Benesch Friedlander Coplan & Aronoff LLP Berger Singerman LLP Beveridge & Diamond, P.C. Bond, Schoeneck & King, PLLC Bressler, Amery & Ross PC Bricker & Eckler LLP Brinks Hofer Gilson & Lione Brown Law Group** Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney PC Butler, Snow, O’Mara, Stevens & Cannada, PLLC Calfee, Halter & Griswold LLP Cavich, Familo & Durkin Co., LPA Christian & Small LLP Clifford Chance US LLP Cooley LLP Cottrell Solensky & Semple, P.A. Courington Kiefer & Sommers LLC Cozen O’Connor Crumbie Law Group, LLC** Davis & Gilbert LLP DeMahy Labrador & Drake, PA** Dickstein Shapiro LLP Drinker Biddle & Reath LLP Duane Morris LLP Elliott Greenleaf Epstein, Becker & Green, PC Finnegan, Henderson, Farabow, Garrett & Dunner, LLP Fish & Richardson P.C. Fitzpatrick, Cella, Harper & Scinto Goldberg Segalla, LLP Gonzalez Saggio & Harlan LLP** Griffith Sadler & Sharp, P.A.**

Hamilton Miller & Birthisel LLP** Helms & Greene LLC Hinkley Allen & Snyder LLP Hughes Roch LLP** Ice Miller LLP Infante Zumpano** Innis Law Group LLC** Igbanugo Partners International Law Firm Jeffrey Samel & Partners** Kasowitz, Benson, Torres & Friedman LLP Kaufman Dolowich & Voluck, LLP Kenyon & Kenyon LLP Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton LLP King Branson LLC Kirkland & Ellis LLP Kumagai Law Group PC Kumar, Prabhu, Patel & Banerjee** Lathrop & Gage LLP Law Office of LaVonne Lawson** Leader & Berkon LLP Littler Mendelson P.C. Lim Ruger & Kim LLP** Loeb & Loeb LLP Lowe & Associates LLC Martin & Martin, LLP** Maynard Cooper & Gale PC McGuireWoods LLP Meckler Bulger Tilson & Pearson LLP Messner & Reeves, LLC Miles & Stockbridge P.C. Miller Law Group** Montgomery, Barnett, Brown, Read, Hammond & Mintz LLP Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP Nemeth Burwell, P.C.** Nicholson Law Group LLC** Ogletree Deakins Nash Smoak & Stewart P.C. Patton Boggs LLP Pepper Hamilton, LLP Peter Law Group** Phelps Dunbar LLP Pinckney, Harris & Weidinger LLC**

Polsinelli PC Porzio, Bromberg & Newman, PC Quarles & Brady LLP Quintarios Prieto Wood & Boyer, P.A.** Rivero Mestre, LLP** Rooney Rippie & Ratnaswamy, LLP Sanchez & Amador, LLP** Sanchez-Medina, Gonzalez, Quesada, Lage, Crespo, Gomez & Machado LLP** Saul Ewing LLP Schiff Hardin, LLP Schwartz Hannum PC** Shella, Harris and Aus, P.C.** Sher Garner Cahill Richter Klein & Hilbert LLC Shook, Hardy & Bacon L.L.P. Smith, Anderson, Blount, Dorsett, Mitchell & Jernigan, LLP Snell & Wilmer LLP Steptoe & Johnson LLP Stevens & Lee Stradling Yocca Carlson & Rauth, P.C. Sughrue Mion PLLC Sutherland Asbill & Brennan LLP The Goldstein Environmental Law Firm P.A. Thompson Hine LLP Troutman Sanders LLP U.K. Vyas Law** Vinson & Elkins LLP Waas Campbell Rivera Johnson & Velasquez LLP Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP Willis Law Group** Winston & Strawn LLP Wheeler Trigg O’Donnell LLP Wong Fleming P.C.** Vinson & Elkins LLP Xupkus & Angell, P.C.** Young Conaway Stargatt & Taylor, LLP Zuber Lawler & Del Duca LLP

• Unlimited licenses to reprint articles/ information from Diversity & the Bar®and MCCA Research Reports for internal educational use and distribution within the firm.

• Bulk rate subscriptions* to Diversity & the Bar for unlimited number of firm’s attorneys.

For more information, contact David Chu, MCCA’s Vice President of Membership & Development at 202-739-5906 or davidchu@mcca.com.

* This item will require an additional payment at MCCA’s cost for printing and centralized shipping of a specified number of copies of the magazine to an office of the firm for the firm’s further internal distribution.

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** Minority or Women Owned Law Firm

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DIVERSIT Y & THE BAR®

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Notes

From the President & CEO

DIVERSITY AT THE GC LEVEL AND THE IMPACT OF BROWN

THIS ISSUE OF DIVERSITY & THE BAR LANDS ON DESKS before MCCA’s Pathways

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to Diversity conference and just prior to the release of MCCA’s Annual General Counsel Survey. This makes it fitting that the conference’s opening plenary session will feature a GC “town hall” where law department leaders will discuss the current realities of in-house practice, and both their expectations and the challenges that come with the territory. Since 1999, MCCA has tracked the progression of women and minority GCs in the ranks of the Fortune 1000.

This year, this town hall discussion will illuminate the issues lying behind the numbers.

This year’s conference will also take place for the first time in Washington, D.C., making it equally appropriate that the other plenary session will focus on the 60th anniversary of the seminal U.S. Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka and Hernandez v. Texas; in which legal scholars will discuss the history and impact of these cases and the

advancements in both society and the legal profession since. Leading the discussion will be actor and humanitarian Laurence Fishburne, whose portrayal of Justice Thurgood Marshall in the one-man play Thurgood helped personify the heroism of that era.

The common thread of these seemingly unrelated themes is a strong one: The historic work of those who helped eliminate barriers to inclusion decades ago is coming to fruition in this current age. The challenge for us is to determine where we stand in the trajectory of the movement, why its continued evolution is important, and what we each must do to see that it continues.

JOSEPH K. WEST

President & CEO

MCCA_law

www.facebook.com/mcca.law

Publications Staff President & CEO Joseph K. West Founder and Publisher Emeritus Lloyd M. Johnson Jr. Editor-in-Chief Kimberly A. Howard, CAE

DIVERSIT Y & THE BAR®

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Publishing Consultants Toni Coleman Joanne Richcreek Advertising Don Cooksey Design/Art Direction Quad/Graphics Creative Solutions

MCCA® Staff Mahzarine Chinoy David Chu Donna Crook Charles Hollins Jessica Martinez Aracely Muñoz Petrich Andrea Pimm

Contributing Writers Tom Calarco Adrienne Dominguez Patrick Folliard Jonathan Groner Lekan Oguntoyinbo Joshua H. Shields Jessica Weiss

MCCA.COM

Taking diversity and inclusion to the next level

At Ogletree Deakins, we believe that our philosophy and practice of inclusion—soliciting, valuing, and incorporating the myriad viewpoints of our lawyers—makes the firm more creative, stronger, and better able to address the evolving issues in the workplace.

With more than 700 attorneys in 45 offices in the USA and Europe, Ogletree Deakins is one of the nation’s largest labor and employment law firms, exclusively representing management.

FOR QUESTIONS ABOUT OGLETREE DEAKINS’ INCLUSION EFFORTS, PLEASE CONTACT: Michelle P. Wimes, Director of Professional Development and Inclusion michelle.wimes@ogletreedeakins.com | Phone: (816) 471-1301 | www.ogletreedeakins.com

Perseverance in Profile

BEVERLY POOLE BAKER A Profile of Courage

BY TOM CALARCO

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Birmingham, Ala., attorney Beverly Poole Baker has faced so much adversity that you could liken her to the biblical Job. Her father died when she was a young child; her lungs collapsed when she was in her 40s; her second husband was stricken with Alzheimer’s; and she endured nearly fatal throat cancer, permanently impairing her voice. Yet her indomitable spirit has prevailed, and at 75 she is still a productive lawyer at Ogletree Deakins, making contributions to diversity and justice.

M

y dad died when I was young,” she says, “and left me a small trust. But anytime I needed money to pay for something like my braces, I had to go to the lawyer’s office to explain why.

I thought to myself: ‘This man is making money to allow me to use my money.’”

It got her thinking

that this might not be a bad job.

“I was about 10 at the time,” she says, “and my mom had her friends over, and I said to them: ‘I want to be a lawyer.’”

The women laughed and told her that there were no women lawyers. It was the 1950s but Baker says she was stubborn and determined. Instead of becoming a lawyer, at least for the time being, she grew up, went to college, got married before graduating, had two children, and then divorced.

In the 1960s, she began to work as a secretary at her uncle’s law firm, where she met her second husband who was also a partner at the firm. She excelled in her work, but another pregnancy stalled her career. Her husband gave her an ultimatum: quit or be fired. So, she returned to domestic life. Once her kids grew up, she decided to finish her college

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MCCA.COM

degree. It was following graduation at a cocktail party with her husband that she confided to a female judge about her uncertain future. The judge suggested she take the LSAT and said that coincidentally they were offering it the next day and allowed walk-ins. So, she took the test and received an excellent score.

“I got a letter from Georgetown offering a full scholarship,” she says, then laughs, “but my husband said ‘Too bad you can’t go to Georgetown—who’s going to cook, clean, and do the carpool?’ So, I ended up at Cumberland [Cumberland School of Law in Homewood, a suburb of Birmingham] and worked around my domestic duties with law school.”

Baker began her law practice in 1984 and started as a bond lawyer for Haskell, Slaughter & Young, LLC in Birmingham.

“I didn’t even know what a bond was when I started,” she says, “but by

the time I stopped working on bonds I had mastered it.”

Her most noteworthy accomplishment was a $118,175,000 bond that was funded by racetrack revenues, the largest bond issue in the history of Birmingham.

The 1980s also saw her involvement in numerous civic projects.

“One of my favorites,” she says, “was the International Festival of Arts.”

It was an annual event in Birmingham that showcased the cultures of different countries, and she discovered that schools with high numbers of African Americans never went because of affordability.

“I felt this was unfair,” she says, “and I went to companies and boards and raised money to arrange buses, consent forms, lunches, personnel, and they were able to take 600 children to the festival.”

Unfortunately, this turned out to be only a one-time occurrence, she

says, because it drew hostility from the public for reasons that were unclear.

Another organization she joined was Leadership Alabama, a group composed mainly of CEOs and executives from around the state.

“We’d get together to come up with resolutions for statewide problems,” she says. “One of the results of our work was the creation of a foundation for education called A Plus.”

But the 1980s were not without challenges.

“In 1985 I had been speaking to a group of women who wanted to become paralegals. On my way back to the office, I began coughing and blew out a lung and ended up in the hospital. Three or four months later I had a recurrence,” Baker explains.

It wasn’t a total surprise because she had grown up with respiratory problems. This was much more serious, and she had to undergo a thoracotomy. It is a major operation

Hot JOBS

Hot Jobs Email Blast -- MCCA is pleased to send out an email blast of Hot Job announcements to our network on the last Friday of every month. As an exclusive membership benefit, MCCA member companies, and MCCA FAN law firms, wishing to advertise their open positions to our diverse network may participate in MCCA’s Hot Jobs email blast. This service is provided in addition to the MCCA Job Bank, which allows users to post job announcements online to the MCCA website.

Members, who would like to submit a job announcement to be included in the MCCA Hot Jobs email blast, should email Connie Swindell-Harding, Regional Coordinator, Southeast Region, at connieharding@mcca.com to receive the requisite form. All forms must be submitted by 5:00 pm EST on the 20th of the month before the listings are to be sent.

Interested in becoming a Member of MCCA or a Firm Affiliate Network law firm?

Contact David Chu, Director of Membership, at davidchu@mcca.com or (202) 739-5906.

HotJobs_halfpg_D&B_MAR.indd 2

2/5/2013 9:06:44 AM

The women laughed and told her that there were no women lawyers.

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during which surgeons open up the midsection of the body, exposing the heart, lungs, and esophagus. A painful recovery period follows, and Baker was forced to undergo a second surgery before the end of the decade.

“They have to staple you back together,” she says, and many people don’t return to work after the procedure.

In the 1990s, she started to focus on employment law when she was asked to do some work for the Jefferson County Personnel Board. She told her firm that they wouldn’t have to pay her while she learned and went to California to talk with a mentor who was experienced in employment law.

“But my firm paid me anyway,” she laughs. “And it paid off for them. They let me start my own department which eventually grew to eight lawyers.”

Her success was followed, however, by another health setback.

“I used to litigate a lot, doing a lot of closing arguments, and I kept coughing,” she says.

They tested her for cancer, but results came back benign. Nevertheless, the surgeon was skeptical and advised exploratory surgery. When they opened her up, they found the cancer attached to her vocal chords. The year was 1996.

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“They wanted to do aggressive chemo,” she says, “and one of the doctors came in to see me and said I should try to enjoy what time I had left. I told them I never wanted to see that doctor again.”

On top of that, her husband was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s.

Nevertheless, she didn’t give up hope.

After five or six more surgeries on her vocal chords, she was unable to talk and had to go through a lengthy period of speech therapy. Never, she says, did she think about retiring.

“I never thought that I would not return to work—all I could remember was how strong my mother was when my dad died—you never give up, you take what life gives you, and you make the best of it,” she says.

Baker returned to work while she put her husband under round-the-clock home care before he finally passed way.

Though she could barely talk, she found a new area of law in which to focus her energies: mediation and arbitration.

“I like resolving issues,” she says.

“I thought I could do that, no matter what my voice did—my voice is subject to change without notice, but my brain remains the same.”

She says some of her clients would laugh at her voice and that she would

laugh with them.

“I never knew what my voice would be like,” she says, chuckling, “sometimes it would become very high like Minnie Mouse.”

She goes on, “Laughter, frankly, has helped me get through it. I laugh at the way I talk, it diffuses people’s embarrassment, and it works.”

But at other times, she says, she became depressed because of her voice.

“I kept trying to resign but my firm wouldn’t allow it.”

In 2008, she moved from Haskell, Slaughter & Young to Olgletree Deakins, an international employment law firm, where she was put in charge of their diversity program. She continues to do about 50 mediations and arbitrations a year and points with pride to a settlement she assisted for 12 government employees with claims worth millions of dollars.

Her health continues to diminish, however.

“One vocal cord is terribly paralyzed and the other is wearing out,” she says, “and I only have one-and-ahalf lungs working.”

She also is receiving injections to stimulate her immune system and medication for her rheumatoid arthritis. Baker doesn’t dwell on her medical problems.

“My newest interest is the lack of diversity in ADR (Alternative Dispute Resolution). It’s mostly just white guys. The lack of diversity does a disservice to the people we serve, and I’m going to start talking to parties of interest about how we can work on those issues. For instance, I’m the only black woman in Alabama who’s a member of College of Labor and Employment Lawyers.”

She rattles off a few other professional groups in the legal profession of which she’s the only black woman.

“We need to start talking.” D&B Tom Calarco is a freelance writer based in Wildwood, Fla. MCCA.COM

Gala

The MCCA DIVERSITY GALA

Washington, DC

July 25, 2014

Red Carpet, VIPs, Business Executives, General Counsel, Premium Networking, Elegant Ambience Join MCCA in the nation’s capitol to honor the foremost corporate and industry leaders at one unforgettable awards presentation.

Employer of Choice Honorees

South Region BP America Inc.

Midwest Region Cummins Inc.

Western Region Xcel Energy Inc.

Mid-Atlantic Region GlaxoSmithKline

Northeast Region Prudential Financial

Sponsored by

For more information you can visit our website: www.mcca.com/gala

Spotlighting

14

A GC’S PASSION FOR THE FIRST AMENDMENT Lynn Oberlander

BY PATRICK FOLLIARD Lynn Oberlander takes the press’ role of preserving the American system of checks and balances seriously, and as general counsel of First Look Media, she relishes the part she plays in the process.

“The media has an important structural role in our democracy,” says Oberlander, who joined First Look in March. “When we call press the Fourth Estate, we mean that. Shining a light on what government is up to helps to make a stronger polity.

Media lawyers assist in getting the story out. I feel it’s very important work, and I’m happy to be able to do it.”

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B

ankrolled by billionaire eBay founder Pierre Omidyar to the tune of $250 million, First Look was founded in October as a wholly digital conduit for original, independent journalism. Its first publication is The Intercept, a digital magazine (edited by journalist Glenn Greenwald, documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras, and Oscar-nominated documentary filmmaker and journalist Jeremy Scahill) whose short-term mission is to provide a platform to report on the documents previously provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. Its long-term mission is to produce fearless, adversarial journalism across a wide range of issues.

Later this year, the company plans to launch a second digital publication focusing on the ongoing financial crisis and its relation to politics to be helmed by former Rolling Stone writer Matt Taibbi. Additional digital publications dedicated to specific topics and led by experienced journalists will follow.

As First Look’s general counsel, Oberlander’s responsibilities include building out the organization’s legal operation, concentrating on contracts, licenses, IP issues, syndication, digital agreements, terms, and policies—all the things that go into creating a media company. She also works closely with reporters and editors by providing pre-publication review and strategic legal advice.

“When I’m working with journalists, it’s not my job to censor them, but rather to ensure that they are putting out the strongest story they can. It’s OK for them to be aggressive, but when they take a risk they need to know what it is and make their decision with that risk in mind.”

Prior to joining First Look Media in March, Oberlander was general counsel of The New Yorker for seven years where she oversaw all legal aspects of the publication and contributed blog posts to newyorker.com on topics related to media and the law. And before that she was editorial counsel for Forbes.

An expert on First Amendment issues, she counts several matters to be among today’s most pressing expression concerns: “There’s the question of the government going after leak investigations on the backs of journalists,” she says. “That is abominable and creates a difficult situation for journalists on national security or any reporting where you rely on confidential sources. It has a chilling effect on free speech.” Also of concern, she adds, are the whole set of restrictions and rights abroad that differ from what we have in the U.S.—these create tension and issues for reporters.

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Oberlander grew up in Westchester County, the affluent suburbs north of New York City. She attended Yale University where she majored in economics and political science and served as news editor and columnist at the Yale Daily News. She seemed destined for a career in journalism. But then in her senior year, she took a media in the law seminar with John Zucker, a media lawyer with ABC (then with CBS). “He exposed us to New York Times v. Sullivan—all the great First Amendment cases, but also the press cases. I loved it,” recalls Oberlander.

“At the time, part of me didn’t think I was good enough to be a professional journalist, but I felt I could be a fine lawyer. I wanted to do what John Zucker was doing. It was then that I decided to go to law school.”

Following Yale, she spent a year working on the business side of The New York Daily. She received her J.D. degree from Columbia Law School. While there, she was an editor on the Law Review and did all the First Amendment work she could.

After a federal clerkship (District Court for the District of Columbia), she joined Paul Weiss’ New York office as an associate. “Though not known for its First Amendment practice, it’s a terrific law firm and great training ground. I knew it was never a place to spend my career, but the litigation experience I gained there enabled me to land a gig in NBC’s legal department.”

During her first years at NBC, Oberlander did a little bit of everything. Then she moved into the network’s media group where she worked directly with journalists at owned-and-operated stations and the network. “If you’re a newshound like me it’s really fun. If not, you may not be excited about a call at 2 in the morning from the Today Show. I thought it was great. And continue to think so.”

As deputy editor of The New Yorker, Pam Maffei McCarthy MCCA.COM

worked closely with Oberlander. The experience, she says, was entirely positive: “Lynn was a determined ally of our writers and editors, more interested in collaborating on how to publish than in warning not to. She is a committed idealist and a cleareyed realist. She has a journalist’s impulse to uncover and inform, she has a lawyer’s knowledge and precision, and she has the sense of mission that both the best journalists and First Amendment lawyers have. For all these reasons she’s been a superb adviser and colleague and friend to the magazine, and I am certain will be for First Look as well.”

Oberlander didn’t go in-house for work-life balance reasons. “I went inhouse because I really wanted to be a media lawyer. But consequently, I had more time and was able to meet my husband and have three children. That may have been almost impossible at a firm given the time demands.”

For Oberlander, each new position has built on the last. She feels that she has been fortunate in her career path.

While First Amendment law is familiar across the media, she has been able to work with different content doing different things: “I immensely enjoy working with writers. Learning new technology has been an enjoyable challenge. Twitter didn’t exist when I was at Forbes, and now I’m at First Look whose publications are digital-only.

“It’s exciting to be part of a new venture, developing a media organization from the ground up, especially one that has the First Amendment at its core,” she says. “I believe strongly in accountability journalism that is aggressive and transparent, and the role that it plays in our democracy.” D&B Patrick Folliard is a freelance writer based in Silver Spring, Md. 15

If you’re a newshound like me it’s really fun.

If not, you may not be excited about a call at 2 in the morning from the Today Show. I thought it was great. And continue to think so.

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YOUR GROUND VARIED STATUTES.

RACIAL DISPARITY IN THEIR APPLICATIONS.

WHAT DOES THE ABA RECOMMEND?

BY JONATHAN GRONER MCCA.COM

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HEN NEIGHBORHOOD CRIME WATCH

Captain George Zimmerman shot and killed unarmed Florida teenager Trayvon Martin in February 2012, the nation’s attention was suddenly focused on the so-called “Stand Your Ground” laws that have been enacted over the past decade in some 25 U.S. jurisdictions.

Although Zimmerman did not specifically invoke Florida’s expansive “Stand Your Ground” statute in his defense, his acquittal on second-degree murder charges last July dramatically added to the national furor over these laws.

Massive media coverage examined every aspect of the Zimmerman case, including the obvious racial overtones since Martin was black and Zimmerman identified as a white Hispanic. Yet, surprisingly, it appears that no one has ever conducted a full and thorough nationwide study of George Zimmerman

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“Stand Your Ground” laws—their origin, their role in the legal system, and their societal impact.

Enter the American Bar Association, which last year appointed an 11-member National Task Force on Stand Your Ground Laws with the broad mandate to review and assess the state laws and to examine the potential effects that they may have on public safety, individual liberties, and the criminal justice system.

The task force is made up of members from various groups within the ABA, law enforcement representatives, government officials, state prosecutors’ offices, lawyers in public and private criminal practice, academia, and other legal arenas.

“No comprehensive assessment of this relatively new set of laws has ever been undertaken,” says Leigh-Ann

Buchanan, a Miami lawyer who co-chairs the task force along with lawyer Jack Middleton of Manchester, N.H. “No one knows what all of these laws are, how they have been applied, and what the potential legal issues are. And as lawyers, we are the people who have the responsibility to understand the way in which any law impacts the communities in which we live and work. It is important that lawyers lead the national dialogue about these laws.”

Buchanan emphasizes that although the task force is a project of the ABA’s Coalition on Racial and Ethnic Justice (COREJ), its work is by no means limited to studying cases like the Trayvon Martin trial with its volatile mix of racial implications.

“We have learned, above all, that there is a lot of misperception out there about Stand Your Ground laws,”

STAND YOUR GROUND STATUTES

they authorize citizens who believe themselves to be in immediate bodily harm to “use force against force.”

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UNDER THE COMMON LAW, A PERSON IS UNDER NO OBLIGATION TO RETREAT WHEN THREATENED WITH VIOLENCE IN HIS HOME BUT IS OBLIGATED TO RETREAT RATHER THAN USE DEADLY FORCE OUTSIDE THE HOME.

Buchanan says. “We want to get discussion going and to foster public education. We are looking at all aspects—the impact on public safety, individual liberties, criminal justice and law enforcement, and on vulnerable constituencies such as racial and ethnic minorities.”

The task force held public hearings in five cities throughout 2013 and is now in the final stages of preparing its report, which it plans to submit to the ABA’s House of Delegates for approval at the association’s regular annual meeting this August in Boston. Speaking at the hearings were representatives of law enforcement, the criminal defense bar, victims’ rights and civil rights groups, prosecutors, and legal academics who have studied the issue.

Buchanan points out that the first of the Stand Your Ground statutes was passed in Florida in 2005 and that many states approved them around that time with relatively little discussion or debate.

The Stand Your Ground statutes, she notes, are extremely varied. What they have in common is that they authorize

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citizens who believe themselves to be in immediate bodily harm to “use force against force.”

Under the common law, a person is under no obligation to retreat when threatened with violence in his home—but is obligated to retreat rather than use deadly force outside the home.

Stand Your Ground laws extend the boundary where force is allowed to be used, to include areas outside the home. They have been widely criticized for the alleged racial disparity in their application, as studies have shown that white people who defend themselves are exonerated by judges and juries at much higher rates than black people, and the laws have also been assailed as promoting vigilante justice.

Stand Your Ground laws have also been widely defended as an effective anti-crime measure that gives upstanding citizens the right to defend themselves against criminals and as potentially useful for domestic violence victims (although most courts that have faced the issue have not granted protection to women in that situation).

Florida’s Stand Your Ground law, one of the broadest in the nation, was in play in the Trayvon Martin case, in which Zimmerman shot the young man who was visiting his father in a gated community. Although Zimmerman did not formally claim the protection of that law, the judge instructed the jury that under the law, Zimmerman had no duty to retreat. The Florida law goes so far as to provide a defendant with complete immunity from civil or criminal prosecution if a judge finds that he or she was justified in the use of deadly force.

The task force has obtained information on the legal, sociological, law-enforcement, and other aspects of Stand Your Ground laws through its public hearings, research, and study.

Justice Michael B. Hyman, an Illinois appellate judge who is chair of the ABA’s COREJ group, the chief sponsor of the task force, summarized the issues facing the task force when he asked at its 2013 hearing in Chicago: “Do Stand Your Ground laws make our society safer or more dangerous? Do

“how many citizens in this country have to worry about armed marauders coming into [their homes] that they have to blow away? Do they really have to kill people?”

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they save lives, or do they take more lives? Are they neutral, or do they disproportionately impact people of color?”

The hearings, which took place in Dallas, Chicago, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Miami, featured a variety of witnesses. In the Dallas hearing in February, Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins focused his testimony on the racially biased way in which the laws are applied.

“Until we respect life, no matter what color the person is or where they come from, we will continue to have these committees and panels,” Watkins said. “Here we are in 2013 and we’re having this debate about . . . Stand Your Ground laws, when the reality is that the majority of the people who end up on the wrong side of the bullet look like me.” Watkins is African American.

At the same hearing, Eric Davis, an attorney with the Harris County Public Defender’s Office, said, “The problem with Stand Your Ground laws is that you place in the hands of citizens the right to take someone’s life when there is a viable alternative.”

At the hearing in Chicago, David Will, a criminal defense attorney, said he would like to tell his clients that

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“Do stand your ground laws make our society safe or more dangerous?

Do they save lives, or do they take more lives? are they neutral, or do they disproportionately impact people of color?”

“You have a right to defend yourself and you’re justified in what you’re doing.” But, Will asked, “How many citizens in this country have to worry about armed marauders coming into [their homes] that they have to blow away? Do they really have to kill people?”

At that hearing, Chicago civil rights advocate Rev. Janette C. Wilson noted, “States in the South where we had the highest [numbers] of lynchings are the very same states that have introduced Stand Your Ground legislation.”

COREJ was started by the ABA in 1992 in the wake of the riots following the Rodney King incident in Los Angeles. It has a broad mandate to serve as a catalyst for eliminating racial and ethnic bias in the justice system with a focus on systemic change.

Hyman says, “We in COREJ and the task force have no pre-ordained conclusions for our work. We wish to be broad in scope and to ignore no viewpoint. We need to get all sides of the story so that we can wrap our heads around what’s going on.”

Stand Your Ground, Hyman says, “is a law that appears just on its face but may be unjust in practice. So it seemed

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to us at COREJ that we as an entity were well suited to taking a broad look at these statutes on the national landscape and to evaluate whether this perception of Stand Your Ground statutes is in fact justified.”

Hyman says the task force’s work on Stand Your Ground laws “is not about guns at all, and it’s not primarily about race or about black victims. That is not what we are pinpointing.

“I have every confidence in the task force and its ability to produce an excellent report,” Hyman says. “I expect all sorts of discussions within the ABA itself and in the legal community, and in state houses throughout the nation, after this report comes out.”

Task force co-chair Buchanan says that in leading the national dialogue on Stand Your Ground, the group “must not ignore the impact that these laws have on racial and ethnic minorities. The U.S. Civil Rights Commission has begun a national investigation, the U.S. Attorney General has spoken out about these laws, and even President Obama last July, in the wake of the Zimmerman case, called on the nation to look at Stand Your Ground.” D&B

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LATINOS IN THE UNITED STATES

Overcoming

LEGAL Obstacles ENGAGING IN CIVIC LIFE

Slightly less than three percent of the nation’s population is comprised of Latino lawyers. Find out how some lawyers in leadership roles and Latino organizations are combating this. by lekan oguntoyinbo

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ven as a child Lynda Cevallos knew she wanted to be a lawyer. She was driven in part by what she regularly witnessed as a child on the streets of her native Newark, New Jersey: police harassment of Latinos, many of whom were not aware of their rights.

“There was always the fear of what was going to happen to them if they did fight back,” she recalls. “That always stayed in my mind.”

Back then, Latino lawyers were rare, says Cevallos, a 2001 graduate of American University law school.

While Latino attorneys may not be rare these days, their numbers remain miniscule.

Latinos, the nation’s largest minority group, make up about 16 percent of the population. That figure is projected to rise to 30 percent by 2050. But in the legal profession, Latino lawyers are a tiny minority. Slightly less than three percent of the nation’s lawyers are Latinos.

These dismal numbers are of grave concern to many of the nation’s leading Latino lawyers, including Stephen Zack, a Miami-based partner of a prominent law firm who in 2010 served as the first Hispanic president of the American Bar Association. Zack has argued that the law profession risks losing credibility if the practitioners are not representative of the people they serve.

“There’s a justice gap in this country,” says Zack, who as ABA president appointed a commission to identify barri-

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ers to full participation in the justice system by Hispanics.

“There is a fundamental issue of liberty and justice. We can’t have that without access to the court system. We won’t have access if we don’t have diverse lawyers representing a diverse population.

“Hispanics are the fastest growing demographic in the United States. We’re so far behind now… We are in trouble and we need to respond immediately.”

Leaders of education advocacy groups say several barriers continue to keep the numbers down, including a lack of exposure to role models, inadequate preparation for the rigors of college and the LSAT at the K-12 level. Cevallos, who serves as pre-law coordinator for the Council on Legal Education Opportunity (CLEO), says many LYNDA CEVALLOS minority students enter college with deficiencies in areas like critical thinking,

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and reading comprehension and analysis. Many others face financial challenges and are sometimes unable to pay for amenities like LSAT prep courses, which often cost more than $800.

Several advocacy groups are working to steer more young people into the legal profession. To be sure, some of these groups have been doing this work for years and, in some cases, decades. But many have tweaked their programs by expanding them, increasing participation in their programs or being more deliberate in seeking out school districts and colleges that have high Latino enrollments.

Spokespeople for some of these groups say these are challenging times for them. Law school enrollment has declined sharply in recent years, fueled largely by the turbulence in the legal profession and the large debt burdens shouldered by newly minted lawyers. All of these make enticing young people into a law career a tough sell.

But they say it is an effort that must go on—in part because a law education can open lots of doors, including seats on corporate boards.

“The legal profession provides an entrée to” several other opportunities, including judgeships, careers in the corporate world and politics, says Thomas Saenz, president and general counsel of MALDEF, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund.

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less than

3%

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Lee Arbetman of Street Law program, which operates several diversity pipeline programs largely targeted to minority youth, says a more diverse corps of attorneys is good for business and important for a democratic society.

“Law firms need diversity because it will help them represent the clients. The justice system needs to look like the public,” he says. “The impression of justice is important in a country that is open and democratic.”

Not all the organizations have formal programs. Some, like MALDEF, provide five to 10 scholarships of about $5,000 each to law students. Although most recipients are Latino, Saenz says the scholarships are open to all law students interested in the kind of work MALDEF does and in making a difference in the Latino community. MALDEF also provides opportunities for internships at its offices around the country year round.

Here are some of the more prominent programs sponsored by these groups aimed at boosting the number of Latinos in the legal profession: Hispanic National Bar Foundation—Each year the Washington D.C.-based foundation hosts a summer camp that attracts high school students from all around the country. Over a nine-day period, the students interact with Latino judges and attorneys, participate in mock trial competitions and are drilled in the art of negotiation, public speaking, critical thinking, argument and persuasion, according to Executive Director Alba Lucero Villa.

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“Eye opening and life changing are words we often hear.”

ALBA LUCERO VILLA

“Eye opening and life changing are words we often hear,” says Villa, a graduate of NYU law school. “For our students, many times law camp is the first time they’ve been out of their home state and met Latino attorneys.”

The program attracts 25-30 students, is free but highly competitive. Villa says the foundation is growing and would like to double the number of participants.

The foundation runs law-day programs at several law schools around the country. For a full day, in two separate sessions, high school and college students experience a condensed version of the summer law camp. They sit in on panel discussions about law school admission, interact with Latino attorneys, learn about opportunities in the law profession and get a chance to mingle with Latino law students.

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The foundation also has a mentorship program in which it pairs college students with law students or attorneys.

CLEO—When Cevallos joined CLEO eight years ago the overwhelmingly majority of students who took advantage of CLEO’s programs were African Americans. Cevallos has worked aggressively to boost Latino participation in CLEO events by organizing programs in Miami, New York and the San Francisco Bay area.

CLEO’s programs include workshops for college freshmen and sophomores designed to expose them to the legal profession and attorneys, introduce them to the concept of logical reasoning, and hook them up with pre-law advisers to help strengthen their critical thinking skills. Another program focuses on juniors, senior and post-graduate students. One of the highlights of the workshop is an LSAT practice exam. The students get the results back on the same day.

“That’s critical to our work. We want them to see that this is something that will take a lot of time and effort,” says Cevallos. “But we also want them to see that they do have strengths.”

In the summer CLEO hosts seven ASAP (Achieving Success in the Application Process) sessions around the country. At these sessions, law school admissions officers talk in detail about the application process. Students submit drafts of their personal statement and get feedback that day from the admissions officers.

To Learn More Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF) www.maldef.org Cuban American Bar Association www.cabaonline.com Hispanic National Bar Foundation (HNBF) www.hnbf.com

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ALBA LUCERO VILLA

LatinoJustice PRLDEF www.latinojustice.org Mexican American Bar Association www.mabaattorneys.com Puerto Rican Bar Association www.prbany.com The Kozyak Foundation www.kmmfoundation.org

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“The impression of justice is important in a country that is open and democratic.”

LEE ARBETMAN

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Cevallos says a significant part of CLEO’s funding, which used to come from the U.S. Department of Education, has been lost due to budget cuts in Washington.

She says CLEO is investigating options to replace the funding. The funding cut, she says, has forced her to be even more creative in her outreach. She says she travels less, Skypes often and does a lot more with social media.

LatinoJustice PRLDEF—For 32 years, LatinoJustice has held an annual law day and mentoring program for college students. The program attracts hundreds of students and admissions officers from about 100 law schools. The program serves as a recruitment forum, says Sonji Patrick, education director of LatinoJustice.

Patrick says LatinoJustice holds two personal-essay writing workshops and at least one on financing law school each year. She says her organization tries to engage young people by holding round tables on current social and legal issues that might be of particular interest to them.

“One of our most popular workshops has been our Youth Social Justice Days, where we convene civil rights attorneys from our office and our sister legal defense funds to present to high school groups,” she says. “Also, on the Youth Network side, we hold round tables on pertinent social and legal issues of the day to engage both our pre-law constitu-

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ency and our younger leadership trainees.”

She says that the current state of the legal profession has made it more challenging to interest young Latinos in studying law. She says she’s seen a drop in the number of participating students in their programs.

“According to the Law School Admission Council, from 2011 to 2012, law school applications from Hispanics decreased by 3.9 percent, while the number of Puerto Rican applicants decreased by almost 10 percent,” she says.

To help reverse the decline, LatinoJustice has stepped up its marketing efforts.

“We have beefed up our outreach through email and social media all over the New York tri-state area, to Hispanic-serving institutions, area pre-law advisers, and student organizations (where possible),” she says.

“We also tweaked our website to have upcoming programs right on our homepage so that we have the most current event info clearly visible at all times… we schedule social media mini blitzes to keep our events in our followers’ most current newsfeeds on Facebook and Twitter, and we always post our upcoming programs in our e-newsletters. We also returned to sending fliers via postal mail about our upcoming programs and events.” D&B

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Lloyd M. Johnson Jr.

Scholarship Awards Program

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NURTURING THE ACADEMIC AND PROFESSIONAL CAREERS OF OUTSTANDING LAW STUDENTS AND ADVANCING THE DIVERSITY PIPELINE TO THE LEGAL PROFESSIONAL

BY JOSHUA H. SHIELDS

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f there was ever any doubt about the United States’ status as the ultimate land of opportunity, a brief conversation with Andrea Arias assuages any disbelief. Born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, she immigrated here after she fell in love with the country during a vacation to the U.S. when she was nine years old. She begged her parents to relocate to the United States, and to her surprise, they agreed.

Twenty years later she is an attorney for the Federal Trade Commission in her adopted country’s capital. What enabled her to become the first in her family to earn a professional degree? More than anything, she attributes her success to the Lloyd M. Johnson Jr. Scholarship Program.

“I was really on the fence,” Arias explains, “then you guys called me the weekend I had to make the decision and told me I had gotten the scholarship.

This made the decision a no-brainer. I was able to go to Emory and my top choice.”

SHE [ANDREA ARIAS] SAYS THAT CALL FROM MCCA CHANGED HER LIFE. She says that call from MCCA changed her life.

Her interaction with MCCA didn’t stop after the phone call. “I did so well my first year at law school, MCCA contacted me and said ‘Look, I know yours was a one-time gift but we think you’re doing fabulous work at Emory,' and gave me another year of scholarship,’” she recalls enthusiastically.

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Chike Achebe Chike Achebe is a native of Newark, NJ, and graduated from Rutgers University with honors in a B.A. in political science and organizational leadership. His interest lies in the intersection of law and business and how the two can be effectively applied to improve low-income communities.

Having started a nonprofit organization and various other school organizations while at Rutgers University, Achebe was recognized as a student leader with a strong record of community service. He is currently a first-year law student at Harvard Law School.

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Allison Castellanos Aguirre Allison Castellanos Aguirre graduated magna cum laude with a B.A. in political science and a B.A. in communication in 2013 from the University of Southern California. She became interested in law when she was an intern in the Civil/Small Claims Department at the Orange County Superior Court. Additionally, she became interested in public relations while interning at the British Broadcasting Company. As a first-generation Mexican-American law student, she hopes to combine both her interests in media consumption and public policy to help advance minority representation in the mass media. Aguirre is currently a first-year law student at the University of Southern California Gould School of Law.

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Lloyd M. Johnson, Jr.

Scholarship

Arias did a summer internship at Lord Bissel & Brooke LLP (now Locke Lord LLP after a 2007 merger with Locke Liddell & Sapp PLLC) in downtown Atlanta, coincidentally where MCCA’s former Southeast regional offices were located. She would often get lunch with former MCCA employee Connie Swindell-Harding who oversaw the scholarship program.

Arias graduated from Emory Law School in 2008.

“Because of MCCA I was able to go to this great school and not have loans when I graduated,” she says. “I got to do basically every lawyer’s dream: I got to go and clerk. So I clerked for the Honorable

Awards Program

HOW DID I GET THIS SWEET GIG AT HP DIRECTLY FROM LAW SCHOOL? I REALLY HAVE TO POINT TO THE SCHOLARSHIP...

Tori Anderson 34

Tori Anderson graduated from Stanford University with a B.A. in political science and a minor in creative writing.

She worked for two years at an education tech start-up in Mountain View, CA. Anderson maintained the company’s social media, scholarship outreach, and data management initiatives. She worked as a research assistant for a professor at Portland State University’s Graduate School of Education.

Anderson hopes to use her background in education and advocacy to help clients access legal resources. She is currently a first-year law student at Harvard Law School.

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Cecilia M. Altonaga on the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, and then I did another clerkship on the federal level with the Honorable Allyson K. Duncan in Raleigh, North Carolina, on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.”

After her clerkships she found herself interviewing at the Department of Justice. She credits the mentors and opportunities provided by MCCA. She worked in the Antitrust Division at the DOJ for two years before moving to the Federal Trade Commission where she works in privacy and data support.

Arias still thinks back on the phone call that changed her life and career trajectory. “From then on it’s been all open doors because I haven’t had the debt that can normally saddle folks who pursue a law school education,” she reflects.

Now celebrating its 10th class of scholars, the program provides money for highly qualified but economically challenged students who have an interest in practicing corporate law. The program has impacted the lives of more than 130 law students to date. It annually grants 15 scholarships of $10,000 to students for their first year of law school. MCCA, on an annual basis and at its discretion, may award

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Yelena Petrvona Bosovik Yelena Petrvona Bosovik graduated magna cum laude with a B.A. in finance and economics with emphasis on entrepreneurship and global studies from Drury University.

In college, she held multiple leadership positions in campus and community organizations and served as the editor-inchief of the Mirror, the campus newspaper, for two years.

Bosovik is a first-generation college student whose family immigrated from Ukraine to the United States to escape religious persecution when she was eight years old. She is passionate about working with young women and founded a blog, Lovely Thoughts, for Christian twenty-somethings.

Bosovik is currently a first-year law student at the University of Missouri School of Law in Columbia, MO; she is interested in going into public service and practicing international corporate law.

Monica Bruzzio Monica Bruzzio graduated cum laude with a B.A. in global studies in 2012 from the University of California, Los Angeles. As a first-generation Guatemalan-American, Bruzzio is interested in using her legal education and understanding of the struggles of the immigrant community to advocate for immigrants seeking residency in the United States. Bruzzio is currently a first-year law student at New York University School of Law.

Alice Chung Alice Chung graduated in 2011 with a B.A. in political science, minor in public policy, and certificate in entrepreneurship & technology from the University of California, Berkeley. As a first-generation American whose family were Vietnamese war refugees, Chung aspires to use her law degree to provide pro bono legal services for the Asian Pacific American community and advocate for immigrants confronting language and cultural barriers.

Chung is currently a first-year law student at Cornell Law School.

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Lloyd M. Johnson, Jr.

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Christopher Lee Chike Croslin 36

Chike Croslin graduated from Washington University in St. Louis in 2011 with a B.A. in political science and a minor in institutional social analysis. As an undergraduate, he volunteered in Costa Rica, Argentina, and Chile. He was the recipient of the Alumni and Friends of the LSE in the USA Scholarship for 2011-2012, and graduated with distinction from the London School of Economics with an MSc in anthropology and international development in 2012.

He served as a White House intern in the Domestic Policy Council during the spring of 2013. Croslin is interested in law as an instrument of social change and hopes to use his legal skills to promote openness, equity, and democracy in social institutions--a goal for which he takes much inspiration from his grandfather, a flight surgeon for the all-black 332nd Fighter Group, the Tuskegee Airmen. He is currently a first-year law student at Harvard Law School.

Christopher Lee graduated from Yale University with a B.A. in political science. He developed an interest in the law through various experiences in both the public and private sectors, and hopes to build a career at the intersection of law, business, and policy. As a first-generation college graduate, he hopes to help underrepresented communities develop economically and improve access to healthcare and education. Lee is currently a first-year law student at Yale Law School.

Della Fok Della Fok graduated from Yale University in 2011 with academic distinction in political science and East Asian studies. As a first-generation Asian-American, she and her family are from Hong Kong. Prior to law school, Fok studied abroad in China and worked at Goldman Sachs. She is currently studying at Harvard Law School.

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Creating Pathways to Diversity® Conference The Washington Hilton | Washington, DC

July 24, 2014

Conference attendees will have the opportunity to LEARN, CONNECT and BE INSPRIED by MCCA’s extensive network of leading lawyers at legal departments and law firms.

MCCA’s Creating Pathways to Diversity® Conference is a full-day educational event promoting the advancement of diversity and inclusion in the legal profession. Pathway’s provides programs focused on global diversity, inclusive leadership and talent optimization. It offers practical development tools and resources for individual lawyers and organizations. This premier diversity and inclusion conference hosts over 500 legal professionals and experts. Prior attendees have included thought leaders from companies like American Airlines, Bank of America, Chevron, Deloitte, DuPont, General Electric, JPMorgan Chase, Microsoft, Nationwide, Prudential, and Walmart.

Creating Pathways to Diversity® Conference

The Washington Hilton | Washington, DC

Honorary Co-chairs

Ricardo A. Anzaldua Exec. Vice President and General Counsel MetLife, Inc.

Jane Sherburne General Counsel and Corporate Secretary BNY Mellon

Conference Tracks • Talent Optimization

• Global Diversity & Inclusion

Brackett B. Denniston, III Senior Vice President, Secretary and General Counsel General Electric Company

• Inclusive Leadership & Management

Plenary • OPENING : General Counsel Forum • AFTERNOON: 2014 Vashon Awards & Reflections on the 60th Anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education and the Civil Rights Cases of 1954

Special Programs • The Exchange

• Blueprint Program

For more information visit our website: www.mcca.com/pathways

MORE THAN ANYTHING, SHE ATTRIBUTES HER SUCCESS TO THE LLOYD M. JOHNSON JR. SCHOLARSHIP AWARDS additional money to scholarship recipients for their second and third year of law school.

The LMJ Scholarship is open to students who have been accepted to an ABA accredited law school for a full-time Juris Doctorate degree. The scholarship is available to diverse individuals who: have overcome obstacles, are outstanding and promising scholars, have an interest in corporate law, and possess a commitment to diversity and inclusion.

The applicant must have earned an undergraduate cumulative G.P.A. of 3.2 or higher.

The 15 recipients in the 2016 LMJ Scholarship graduate class are: Chike Achebe, Allison Aguirre, Tori Anderson, Yelena Bosovik, Monica Bruzzio, Alice Chung, Chike Croslin, Della Fok, Dennise Martinez, Colinford Mattis, Nicolas Molina Jr., Christopher Lee, Daniel Pyon, Salmah Rizvi, and Avion Tai (learn more about them in their profiles).

The LMJ program is sponsored by 60 leading corporations and law firms. It has provided more than $2.6 million to law students since 2004. Nakeeta Covington, who graduated from Northwestern Law School in 2011, and who’s entire three-year tuition was underwritten by the scholarship, says Microsoft, one of the LMJ Scholarship supporters, played a pivotal role in her career development. “It was awesome being a Microsoft fellow,” she says. “A lot of the contacts throughout the three years came from [both MCCA and Microsoft].” Those contacts helped her secure a job at HP after graduation.

“How did I get this sweet gig at HP directly from law school?” Covington asks rhetorically. “I really have to point to the scholarship because without the scholarship I wouldn’t have been a Microsoft fellow, I wouldn’t have had that first summer, the exposure, the experience to even be considered for this job. It’s great that other people can have great experiences and have doors opened for them.” D&B

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Colinford Mattis Colinford Mattis graduated in 2010 from Princeton University with a B.A. in sociology and certificates in African American studies and urban studies. Raised in Brooklyn, NY, to Jamaican and Vincentian parents, Mattis is a first-generation college graduate. Prior to law school, Mattis joined Teach For America in New Orleans where he served as a middle school math and science teacher, coached football, and started a mentorship program.

He also worked as a consultant in the home mortgage regulation space and as a legislative aide to a Colorado state senator working on education and finance policy.

Mattis is currently a first-year law student at New York University School of Law; he is interested in providing legal counsel to business enterprises and helping to cultivate social enterprise as a driver of urban and economic development.

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MCCA's

Lloyd M. Johnson, Jr.

Scholarship Awards Program

Daniel Pyon

Dennise Martinez

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Dennise Martinez graduated with high college honors and cum laude with a B.B.A. in business administration from the University of Notre Dame. But, most importantly, she is a first-generation college graduate from a family of Mexican immigrants. As a senior, she was the recipient of the William G. Barth Award, a postgraduate scholarship for business students dedicated to public service. She subsequently became a 2011 Teach for America alumnus, completing her service in her hometown region in southern Texas. Martinez’s upbringing in an impoverished Latino neighborhood and the myriad of injustices her family, community members, and her students have suffered because of their race and legal status were the impetus for her enrollment in law school. Through her legal work, she desires to protect the rights and needs of underprivileged and underrepresented populations by creating opportunities for their upward mobility in society. Martinez is currently a first-year law student at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law.

Daniel Pyon graduated summa cum laude from California State University at Los Angeles with a B.S. in business administration in 2012. As the son of immigrant parents, he grew up watching immigrant and working-class families struggle to achieve their dreams. Those experiences fueled his desire to volunteer within the community through tutoring, mentoring, and various other opportunities. It also motivated him to get involved in student government at CSULA. As the vice president for finance, he was able to create a scholarship fund and develop programming to support the student body. During the year after graduation, Daniel worked on President Obama’s re-election campaign as part of its data operation. Pyon is currently a first-year law student at Harvard Law School and hopes to use his degree to improve the lives of people in the community who have taught and inspired him so much.

Nicolas Molina Jr. Nicolas Molina Jr. graduated summa cum laude from the University of California, Los Angeles where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and received college honors upon graduation with a B.A. in history. He is a native of California, born to immigrant parents. He is a first-generation college student who seeks to marry his passion of helping people with law.

Molina is currently a first-year law student at Yale Law School.

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Salmah Y. Rizvi Salmah Y. Rizvi double-majored in international relations and anthropology and minored in business entrepreneurship and management while at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, MD. There, she founded the humanitarian relief organization Vision XChange. As a social entrepreneur, Rizvi united diverse walks of student life to raise awareness of injustices overseas and solicit funds for victims of economic, social, and political oppression. She received her M.S. in foreign service and international security from Georgetown University and worked for the U.S. Department of Defense and Department of State. During her nine-year tenure, she tackled issues related to terrorist financing, human trafficking, counterintelligence, and nuclear proliferation. Rizvi also served as the first chairwoman of the department’s Islamic Cultural

Employee Resource Group. As a leader, she advocated for critical change with regard to educational diversity and inclusion efforts within the U.S. government. Externally, she published a number of high-profile opinion editorials for the American public on the positive roles played by Muslim Americans in the United States’ security regime post 9/11.

She is currently a first-year law student at New York University School of Law where she hopes to embark upon a career in international corporate law in ways that serve both public and private sectors. Rizvi is half-Guyanese and half-Pakistani.

She serves as the 1L Representative for the Women of Color Collective at NYU Law.

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Avion Tai Avion Tai graduated magna cum laude from Princeton University in 2010 with a B.A. in Spanish and Portuguese languages and cultures. After graduation, she spent time teaching English on a Fulbright grant in Amazonas, Brazil.

Witnessing the English language serve as a vehicle for social mobility for her indigent students spurred Tai’s interest in the law as another tool for providing equal access to opportunity for the underprivileged. Tai is currently a first-year law

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student at Harvard Law School. She hopes to have a legal career serving the disadvantaged in both public interest and corporate settings. Regarding the latter, Tai would like to put her energies into pro bono initiatives and spend time working in a law firm’s regulatory practice representing taxexempt entities, such as social services agencies, cultural, and educational organizations, and national and international public charities. D&B

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ASSOCIATION FOCUS

BY JESSICA WEISS

GRASSROOTS BUILDS 21ST CENTURY MOVEMENT

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THE THREE ATTORNEYS WHO FOUNDED THE PUERTO RICAN LEGAL DEFENSE AND EDUCATION FUND IN NEW YORK CITY IN 1972 knew it wasn’t enough just to represent the city’s Puerto Rican residents and fight discriminatory practices through litigation. Inspired by the principles of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, the founders vowed also to create a pathway for Latinos to become attorneys and pursue legal careers.

More than 40 years later, as the Latino community in New York and the U.S. has grown and diversified, the renamed LatinoJustice PRLDEF is a national civil rights organization with a strong leadership and education focus.

Strengthening immigrant rights and expanding access to bilingual education are among the organization’s litigation and advocacy hallmarks. A nd its pipeline and education projects serve as many as 300 students a year.

“The work of LatinoJustice goes a long way toward addressing the broader issues of protecting the civil rights of a big segment of our American society,” says Sonji Patrick, director of education programs at LatinoJustice PRLDEF. “And it addresses the very small numbers of Latinos in the legal profession.”

While Latinos make up 16.9 percent of the U.S. population, just 3.7 percent of the country’s lawyers are Latinos, according to the American Bar Association.1 From 2011 to 2012, law school applications from Hispanics decreased by 3.9 percent, while the number of Puerto Rican applicants decreased by almost 10 percent.2 That’s why LatinoJustice has amplified outreach for its pre-law services, which include free or low-cost LSAT prep courses, workshops (on topics such as personal-essay writing, financing law school, relationships and law school), law school application advising and internship opportuniDIVERSIT Y & THE BAR®

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ties. The organization’s email and social media outreach now expands across the New York tri-state area, to Hispanic-serving institutions, area pre-law advisers and student organizations. LatinoJustice’s 31st annual Law Day last year attracted more than 300 students and 100 law schools from across the country— attendance numbers just slightly lower than in 2012. At the daylong event, experts such as María Pabón López, dean of Loyola University New Orleans College of Law and one of only four Latina law school deans in the country, share with pre-law students what to expect from the law school admissions process and what careers they can pursue with a law degree. Students also learn about the organization’s various opportunities, including its LAWbound program.

Launched in 2005 with financial support from the Law School Admission Council’s Office of Diversity Initiatives, LAWbound aims to increase the number of Latinos who successfully stay on the path to law school. It exposes current undergraduates and recent graduates to law school classes, LSAT prep and materials, and application workshops.

Former LAWbound participant Evelyn Perez, now a second-year associate in the labor and employment group at Kelley Drye & Warren LLP’s New York office, says the program gave her the “tools and the confidence” to pursue a legal career.

“Having been raised by a single mom and the first in my immediate family to graduate from college, the prospect of law school and all it entailed was daunting, to say the least,” Perez says. “LatinoJustice introduced me to many professionals in the field. I made wonderful connections with mentors, and I still hold on to my notes from that week eight years ago.”

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Inspired by LatinoJustice’s commitment to increasing the number of Latinos in the legal profession, Perez aids students with similar dreams to become attorneys. As part of her firm’s “Women at KDW” group, she helped organize a mockinterview workshop for female undergraduate students, in conjunction with the New York City Bar Association’s Diversity Pipeline Program. And she mentors current law students, both informally and via programs such as the Practicing Attorneys for Law Students (PALS) Program.

While co-president of the Latin American Law Students Association (LALSA) at Yeshiva University’s Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, Perez encouraged Cardozo’s administration to diversify its faculty, and worked to set up a mentoring program that paired Cardozo law students with CUNY Hunter College pre-law undergrads to offer candid advice on the law school admissions process. She also helped develop the inaugural MetroLALSA Pa’Lante Conference, a full-day event featuring panels on legal topics particularly relevant to the Latino community and networking opportunities for both students and practitioners.

Now entering its fourth year, the conference has evolved into an official enterprise comprised of Latin American Law Student Association chapters from 13 New York/New Jersey area law schools. Its mission is to organize and amplify the Latino voice in the legal profession.

Clockwise from top left: Jazmin Chavez, Evelyn Perez, Stephanie Cordero, Perez is among many young leaders coming out of Sonji Patrick the organization’s ranks, Patrick says. Cristina Jimenez, a LAWbound alumna who LatinoJustice honored recently tions. Interns, who also accompany staff lawyers to court with its “Young Trailblazer” award, founded United We proceedings and legislative hearings, are fully immersed in Dream, the large youth-led organization that advocates for the organization’s case load, which is focused on immigrant fair treatment of immigrant youth and families. rights, voting rights, redistricting, housing, education, LatinoJustice also offers internships that provide handsemployment, job discrimination, the treatment of day on opportunities to conduct research, write sections of laborers, and freedom of movement. briefs and memos, participate in client and witness interStephanie Cordero, who interned last summer, says she views and trial preparation, and conduct case fact investigalearned “how the law can be used as a force of positive MCCA.COM

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change for Latinos and other people of color.”

The internship also opened new doors: She attended a diversity reception at Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP honoring Latina state and federal judges. There, she met U.S. District Judge Dora Irizarry from the Eastern District of New York, for whom she now interns.

Being accepted to the LatinoJustice internship is “a vow of confidence—a message early on to Latino youth that someone believes in our capabilities and potential,” Cordero says. “And, it provides students like me with very concrete opportunities.”

Not all LAWbound participants to go directly to law school, instead choosing to lead and advocate for their communities. So LatinoJustice’s Youth Leadership Network (YLN) engages high school and college student leaders in the fight for social justice and equality in their community through leadership, new media advocacy and grassroots organizing techniques.

In 2013, YLN advocated for the end of New York City Police Department’s aggressive stop-andfrisk practices—of detaining, questioning and often frisking people on the street—an issue LatinoJustice was also working on 3 due to the policy’s targeting of minorities.

“We realized that in the larger coalition, there was a lack of youth representation, voices, and experiences, and we thought it would be an easy story to tell because so many youth have been stopped and frisked by police,” says attorney Jazmin Chavez, LatinoJustice’s coordinator of Communications, New Media and Youth Leadership Network. “Our youth were also focusing on educating their peers on knowing their rights when they are stopped by police officers in New York.”

In January, the city reached an agreement with civil rights lawyers who had challenged the divisive stop-andfrisk practices, effectively clearing the way for sweeping reforms to be carried out on the program. LatinoJustice lauded the decision, but said: “there still remains work to be done to correct unconstitutional practices in the police

department and restore confidence among Latino and Black citizens.”4 “Now we must go through the judge’s order for joint remedies,” Chavez says, which is a process that can last three to six years. “This means that the community must come together and work with the NYPD and the new commissioner to create policing strategies that benefit and work for our youth and our communities.”

This year, the YLN will continue to focus its efforts on stop-and-frisk, engaging youth to make sure their recommendations and needs are heard, work to get the DREAM Act (Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors) passed and to tell the stories of migrant youth.

Through the intersection of its education opportunities, youth and leadership development programs, and experiential impact litigation work through the legal division, LatinoJustice is working in a myriad of ways to —JAZMIN CHAVEZ serve the country’s growing Latino community. And in doing so, it is creating future leaders at the forefront of modern civil rights protection and promotion.

“Today’s successful movements or social justice campaigns require leadership, advocacy, civic engagement, and litigation,” Chavez says. “We need the organizers who are empowering and engaging the community on the ground, the online advocates who are creating media for specific targets, litigation to sustain the rights and leadership to meet with power players and stakeholders. They are all connected in order to build 21st century movements.” D&B

“TODAY’S SUCCESSFUL MOVEMENTS OR SOCIAL JUSTICE CAMPAIGNS REQUIRE LEADERSHIP, ADVOCACY, CIVIC ENGAGEMENT AND LITIGATION.”

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Jessica Weiss is a freelance writer who lives in Bogotá, Colombia. http://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/migrated/marketresearch/PublicDocuments/lawyer_demographics_2011.authcheckdam.pdf http://www.lsac.org/lsacresources/data/ethnic-gender-applicants 3 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/juan-cartagena/latino-stop-frisk_b_1522893.html 4 http://latinojustice.org/briefing_room/press_releases/City_Pledges_to_Drop_Appeal_of_Stop_and_Frisk_Cases/ 1 2

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MOVERS & SHAKERS

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ANDREA BARTON REEVES

NONI ELLISON-SOUTHALL

CAROL WALLER POPE

MARSHA K. HOOVER

President/CEO HARC, Inc.

Assistant General Counsel and Head of Music Division Turner Broadcasting System, Inc.

Chairman Federal Labor Relations Authority

Partner Marshall, Gerstein & Borun

Andrea Barton Reeves is the new president and CEO of HARC, Inc., an organization serving people with intellectual and related disabilities in Greater Hartford, Conn.

She was previously the vice president of administration for HARC, Inc., a position she has held since September 2009. Before joining HARC, Inc., Reeves practiced law in the areas of civil litigation and insurance defense in major law firms in New York and Connecticut. She also represented abused and neglected children in a variety of courts in Connecticut, and was a program director with Lawyers for Children America, where she taught other attorneys to represent children pro bono in child protection matters. Reeves received a B.A. in English from Rutgers University and a J.D. from New York Law School.

Noni Ellison-Southall has been promoted to assistant general counsel of Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. She will also be head of the music division at the company. She joined the company in 2004 to lead the Turner Legal Department Music Team. Ellison-Southall has been instrumental in negotiating many of Turner’s music public performing rights licenses across the globe.

She is a founding member of the affinity group Black Professionals at Turner.

Ellison-Southall earned her B.A., magna cum laude, from Howard University and her J.D. from the University Chicago Law School.

The Federal Labor Relations Authority announced that Carol Waller Pope returned to the FLRA as chairman, after having retired as chairman in January 2013, a position to which she was designated by the President Obama in 2009. Chairman Pope stated that she is delighted that the FLRA is again able to issue decisions, and that she looks forward to working with her colleagues to fulfill the agency’s important mission.

She was first appointed as a member of the FLRA in 2000.

Prior to that appointment, Chairman Pope worked in the Office of the General Counsel of the FLRA in various positions, including assistant general counsel. She began her career as an attorney in the Department of Labor.

She received a B.A. from Simmons College and a J.D. from Northeastern University School of Law.

Marsha K. Hoover is now a partner at the law firm of Marshall, Gerstein & Borun LLP. The firm now has 44 partners. Hoover is an active participant in her clients’ IP strategies, helping them register, protect, and license their marks and creative works and avoid and overcome conflicts with the existing intellectual property rights of others in all types of media. She is included in the 2011 inaugural edition of the Martindale-Hubbell® Bar Register of Preeminent Women Lawyers™ as being among the women attorneys who have received the highest possible rating in both legal ability and ethical standards from their peers. Hoover earned both her B.S. from Northwestern University and her J.D. from Northwestern University School of Law.

Please send your submissions to our Movers & Shakers feature to kimhoward@mcca.com Please include a high-resolution photo (300 dpi or greater), along with an electronic version of the applicable announcement.

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job bank The place for Diverse Employment Connections in the Legal Profession!

Introducing the new and improved

job bank sary 1 Year Anniver

MCCA® Job Bank Many diverse job seekers and employers committed to diversity are discovering the advantages of searching online for industry jobs and for qualified candidates to fill them.

But when it comes to finding diverse legal professionals, the mass market approach of the mega job boards may not be the best way to find what you’re looking for.

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The Minority Corporation Counsel Association ( MCCA ) has created the MCCA®

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Search the resume database to contact candidates, and get automatic email notification whenever a candidate matches your criteria.

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Visit: http://jobbank.mcca.com today to post your your job or search job listings.