Board of governors creates Access & Fairness Council
By a vote of 16-2 last month, the State Bar Board of Governors agreed to create
an Access & Fairness
Council devoted to increasing diversity in the legal profession. The 25-member
group will replace five existing access committees that are neither well-funded
nor well-staffed.
The council is an outgrowth of the bar's so-called "Pipeline Project," designed
to reach out to students from pre-school through college to introduce them
to the possibility of becoming lawyers. According to Ruthe Ashley, a board
vice president from Sacramento, the new group will "focus on policy and strategic
planning."
The five access committees, which focus on the concerns of women, ethnic minority,
gay and lesbian, disabled and senior lawyers, objected to the elimination of
their groups, saying they had not been consulted about the change. Their representatives
said, however, that they favor the pipeline effort.
As a result of a 1999 court decision, member dues cannot be used to support
the access committees' work. "We're limited in both dollars and staffing," said
deputy executive director Robert Hawley, who oversees compliance with the court's
ruling in Brosterhous v. State Bar. He said the committees, each dedicated
to a single diversity issue, had been "stripped of their purpose" by Brosterhous.
The board agreed to allow the committees to complete any ongoing projects
by March and to submit a list of priorities to the new council.
"We can find a home for the issues," said executive director Judy Johnson. "We
just don't need to preserve the structure."
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