John G. Roberts Jr. Supreme Court Nomination

First National Survey of Lawyers' Pro Bono Activity Released by ABA Committee

CHICAGO, July 28, 2005 — According to a new survey, 66 percent of lawyers gave free legal assistance to people of limited means and organizations serving the poor, volunteering an average of 39 hours of such work during a year. As part of its efforts to increase access to justice for the poor, the American Bar Association Standing Committee on Pro Bono and Public Service today released “Supporting Justice,” its report on the first national survey of lawyers’ pro bono activity. The survey quantifies lawyers’ pro bono work and their attitudes about it. The committee will use this data to track pro bono activity and inform strategies for increasing pro bono work in the future.

The survey has not been reviewed by the ABA’s policy-making House of Delegates, and its findings do not represent official policy of the association unless otherwise stated in the report.

“The legal needs of the poor go largely unmet,” said ABA President Robert J. Grey Jr. “Despite the worthy efforts of legal services and pro bono lawyers, indigent people do not have adequate access to justice. This survey helps us understand pro bono and will allow us to develop more effective strategies to better meet the needs of the poor.”

The survey queried lawyers about their pro bono activity during the course of a full year. The survey then asked about lawyers’ attitudes about pro bono and factors that influenced their pro bono activity.

“This is the first survey ever to poll lawyers from every state, in every practice area, and of every age and experience level about their pro bono activity,” said Debbie Segal, chair of the committee. “It will be a powerful tool in devising new approaches to encourage pro bono work and reduce inequalities in access to justice.”

Rule 6.1 of the ABA’s Model Rules of Professional Conduct defines pro bono as free legal service to the poor and organizations serving the poor and substantially reduced-fee work for such groups, as well as civil rights, civil liberties, public rights, charitable, religious, civic, community, governmental and educational organizations.

The survey found that most lawyers perform some type of pro bono work during a year. Sixty six percent of lawyers provided free legal services to people of limited means or organizations serving the poor, and another 18 percent did pro bono work meeting other aspects of the ABA’s definition. Few respondents, 2 percent, reported pro bono activity not meeting the ABA’s definition, and only 14 percent said they had not performed any type of pro bono activity.

The average lawyer in the survey performed about 39 hours per year of free legal service for the poor or organizations serving the poor. Almost half, 46 percent, of lawyers polled met the ABA’s aspirational goal of providing at least 50 hours of free legal services in a year.

The survey also provided insight into factors affecting lawyers’ decisions to engage in pro bono activities. When asked for the top two factors encouraging pro bono activity, 70 percent of lawyers reported a sense of professional responsibility and personal satisfaction, while 34 percent cited recognition of the needs of the poor. In contrast, when asked about the top two factors discouraging pro bono work, 69 percent of lawyers reported a perceived lack of time, while 15 percent named pressure to work a minimum number of billable hours and 12 percent cited cost concerns.

The survey also measured how variables such as practice area, gender and age impact pro bono activity. The report is available at http://www.abaprobono.org/report.pdf.

The survey was conducted by an independent polling organization, Calo Research Services, based in Cincinnati, Ohio, and the sample consisted of 1,100 lawyers, with a margin of error of +/- 3 percent. The survey used a representative sample with proportional allocations based on estimates of the United States lawyer population from the American Bar Foundation’s 2000 Lawyer Statistical Report. The survey was conducted through telephone interviews and asked lawyers about their pro bono activity during the period from November 2003 to November 2004.

The attorney sample spanned four practice settings: private practice (81 percent), corporate counsel (9 percent), government (8 percent) and academic (1 percent). Because the survey targeted practicing lawyers, the sample excluded retired and inactive lawyers. The sample also excluded members of the judiciary, due to real and perceived limits on their ability to perform pro bono activity, and legal aid, public defender and private association lawyers because they already deliver legal services to the poor and represent a relatively small proportion of the lawyer population.

The American Bar Association Standing Committee on Pro Bono and Public Service and the ABA Center for Pro Bono provide national leadership in policy, outreach, implementation and technical assistance activities designed to encourage, activate, expand and improve pro bono activities and programs.

With more than 400,000 members, the American Bar Association is the largest voluntary professional membership organization in the world. As the national voice of the legal profession, the ABA works to improve the administration of justice, promotes programs that assist lawyers and judges in their work, accredits law schools, provides continuing legal education, and works to build public understanding around the world of the importance of the rule of law in a democratic society.

Full Study: Harris Poll – Voting Accuracy and Reform

Full Study: Harris Poll – The Majority of Americans Could Use a Civics Refresher Course

ABA Awards 2005 ABA Medal to Crusading Chicago Civil Rights Lawyer George N. Leighton

CHICAGO, June 23, 2005 –The 2005 American Bar Association Medal, the association’s highest award, will be presented to George N. Leighton, a retired federal trial court judge in Chicago whose ongoing career of protecting human rights in Chicago has spanned nearly 60 years. He will receive the award during the ABA House of Delegates meeting Aug. 8-9 in Chicago.

ABA President Robert J. Grey Jr. said, “It is an honor for the ABA to recognize this valiant champion of human dignity. As a lawyer, he put his own career on the line for the sake of his clients, to the point that he faced indictment for inciting a riot because he fought in court to secure safe residency for an African-American family attempting to move into a segregated Chicago suburb in 1951. He represented those accused of crimes and those denied their rights, with a passionate commitment to assuring that government operates according to law. As a judge, he upheld the free speech rights of African­ Americans and Nazis, protecting the rights of all.”

“George Leighton’s path to the law was extraordinary,” said Grey. “He was the child of immigrants from the Portuguese Cape Verde Islands off the coast of Africa, a youngster who left school after the sixth grade to work on an oil tanker sailing from Massachusetts to Aruba and who never attended high school, but who earned the right to attend and to graduate from Harvard Law School.”

After working as a ship cook’s assistant, and in restaurant kitchens, Leighton took correspondence and night school classes in New Bedford, Mass. He won conditional admission to Howard University in 1936, when for the first time he used English as his primary language, rather than the Portuguese dialect spoken in his childhood home. He was graduated magna cum laude from Howard in 1940, and elected to Phi Beta Kappa. He was granted a scholarship to Harvard Law School, where his attendance was interrupted by three years’ service in the U.S. Army.

Leighton arrived in Chicago in 1946, and practiced civil rights and criminal defense law until he was elected judge of the Circuit Court of Cook County in 1964, and appointed to the First District Appellate Court of Illinois in 1969. He was appointed to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois in 1976.

As a practicing lawyer, Leighton has been active in the NAACP, the American Civil Liberties Union, the Independent Voters of Illinois, the Cosmopolitan Chamber of Commerce, the Citizens Committee for the Adoption of the Fair Employment Practice Act, the Committee for the Adoption of an Open Occupancy Statute and the Mayor’s Citizens Committee on City Revenue and Expenditures.

Leighton has represented more than 200 criminal defendants in bench and jury trials, and handled more than 175 appeals and reviews in civil and criminal cases in state and federal courts, including the Supreme Court of the United States. Among them were successful challenges to an Alabama constitutional amendment establishing a constitutional knowledge test as a prerequisite to voting, and to a segregated public school system in Harrisburg, Ill. In 1951 he won a ruling that prosecutors had violated the rights of a youth under life sentence in the murder a Western Union guard by failing to disclose evidence of his innocence, and that the defendant’s confession had been coerced. After a retrial ended in acquittal, the Illinois General Assembly awarded the defendant the unprecedented payment of $51,000, which was personally delivered by the governor. At one point, Leighton was appointed as post‑conviction counsel to all men held on death row in the Cook County jail.

After retiring from the bench in 1987 at the age of 75, Leighton returned to legal practice to try civil and criminal cases. He began teaching law students at John Marshall Law School in 1964, and continued until last year. He also has taught lawyers for the National Institute of Trial Advocacy, and grade and high school students for the Constitutional Rights Foundation of Chicago.

The ABA Medal is given only in years when the ABA Board of Governors determines a nominee has rendered exceptionally distinguished service to the cause of American jurisprudence. Among previous recipients are legendary justices of the Supreme Court of the United States, including Thurgood Marshall, who defended Leighton against the 1951 indictment, and Oliver Wendell Holmes, Felix Frankfurter and William J. Brennan Jr., and Sandra Day O’Connor, who serves on the court now.

With more than 400,000 members, the American Bar Association is the largest voluntary professional membership organization in the world. As the national voice of the legal profession, the ABA works to improve the administration of justice, promotes programs that assist lawyers and judges in their work, accredits law schools, provides continuing legal education, and works to build public understanding around the world of the importance of the rule of law in a democratic society.

Editors Note: Accredited reporters are welcome to attend and cover all events during the 2005 ABA Annual Meeting. Credentials will be available in the ABA Press Room in the Hyatt Regency Chicago, Riverside Center, Purple Level, East Tower beginning at noon Aug. 4. Reporters may register for the meeting online at http://www.abanews.org.

ABA Standing Committee on Federal Judiciary: Investigations of Supreme Court Nominees Criteria and Ratings

ABA Task Force Supports Attorney-Client Privilege as First Line of Defense Against Corporate Corruption

CHICAGO, June 15, 2005 — An American Bar Association task force report released today warns that government policies eroding the corporate attorney-client privilege reduce rather than increase the ability of corporations to cooperate with government.

Pressures on the privilege put public confidence in the corporate community at risk, said ABA President Robert J. Grey Jr., who named the task force last October. The task force report does not constitute association policy. It will be presented to the ABA House of Delegates for consideration as policy in August.

“I created this task force because the privilege is the first line of defense against corporate corruption. It helps corporate management get sound legal guidance to comply with the law and it fosters internal investigations and compliance programs that identify and attack problems,” said Grey.

The report of the ABA Task Force on Attorney-Client Privilege urges support for preserving the privilege and the work-product doctrine, and acknowledges that clients can voluntarily waive either the privilege or the doctrine. It opposes government polices that erode the privilege and doctrine while supporting policies, practices and procedures that recognize their value.

R. William Ide III, task force chair, said current government policies that leave corporations no practical option but to waive the privilege and work product doctrine have the unfortunate effect of chilling the use of counsel by corporations to prevent and detect violations of law.

“The effective assistance of counsel is dependent on confidentiality and allowing lawyers to create their work product in conjunction with providing assistance of counsel. Corporations are entitled to these same rights that our justice system affords to individuals, but overly aggressive government practices that require waiver operate to deny these rights,” said Ide.

The risk is that corporations will respond with greater reluctance to employ counsel or to confide fully in counsel, undermining the public policy goal of encouraging legal compliance through guidance of informed counsel, says the report.

Ide said the task force has initiated discussions with federal agencies about the proper balance of policy concerning voluntary waiver and safeguards against abuse.

With more than 400,000 members, the American Bar Association is the largest voluntary professional membership organization in the world. As the national voice of the legal profession, the ABA works to improve the administration of justice, promotes programs that assist lawyers and judges in their work, accredits law schools, provides continuing legal education, and works to build public understanding around the world of the importance of the rule of law in a democratic society.

ABA Urges Congress to Strengthen Right to Counsel, Reject Attempts to Curtail Claims of Innocence

WASHINGTON, D.C., July 13, 2005 — The American Bar Association today urged Congress to strengthen the right to counsel in criminal cases, not make it harder for defendants to assert their rights and claim innocence. The ABA asked Congress to reject a bill that would keep federal courts from reviewing habeas corpus claims, including claims of innocence. If Congress wants to streamline the criminal justice process, the ABA testified, ensuring competent counsel is the best strategy to keep cases moving and ensure justice for all litigants.

In testimony submitted to the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, Eric M. Freedman, a member of the ABA Death Penalty Representation Project Steering Committee, urged Congress to reject S. 1088, the “Streamlined Procedures Act of 2005.” He said that the “bedrock definition of justice…is that the legal system function reliably to punish the guilty and acquit the innocent.” To achieve justice expeditiously, Freedman continued, the ABA has recognized that government should provide competent counsel to indigent defendants and that habeas corpus proceedings must focus on relevant substance, not legal technicalities. “S. 1088 attacks both of these core principles,” said Freedman.

Freedman noted that S. 1088 proposes to dilute states’ obligation to provide competent counsel to the indigent by shifting the responsibility for reviewing habeas corpus petitions from the courts to the Attorney General. This policy would “allow states with inadequate systems for the provision of counsel to erect more barriers to reviewing the results of trials that are simply unreliable in ascertaining the truth.” Instead, Freedman said, Congress should provide more resources to states to implement the ABA’s Guidelines for the Appointment and Performance of Defense Counsel in Death Penalty Cases.

Of equal concern, Freedman testified, are provisions of S. 1088 that seek to remove state court decisions from “the scrutiny of their constitutional merits that federal habeas corpus was designed to insure in the first place.” The result, Freedman said, would be that evidence of innocence, which often only emerges over time and with the assistance of effective counsel during the course of the criminal justice process, would frequently not be found and would be prevented from reaching court.

Freedman concluded that rather than streamlining the process, as S. 1088’s title suggests, “speed and accuracy both will be impaired by the enactment of a bill that diverts the courts from the merits while inviting numerous challenges to the validity of its provisions.” To achieve the goals of expeditious and accurate justice, Congress should instead focus on the provision of competent counsel.

Eric M. Freedman served as the reporter for the ABA’s Guidelines for the Appointment of Defense Counsel in Death Penalty Cases and currently is a member of the steering committee of the ABA’s Death Penalty Representation Project. He is the Maurice A. Deane Distinguished Professor of Constitutional Law at Hofstra Law School and is a nationally recognized expert on the constitution and death penalty issues.

With more than 400,000 members, the American Bar Association is the largest voluntary professional membership organization in the world. As the national voice of the legal profession, the ABA works to improve the administration of justice, promotes programs that assist lawyers and judges in their work, accredits law schools, provides continuing legal education, and works to build public understanding around the world of the importance of the rule of law in a democratic society.

Statement Re: Resignation of Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor

July 1, 2005 – The American Bar Association is profoundly grateful to Justice Sandra Day O’Connor for her service to the nation as Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, for her dedication to justice, and for her commitment to our courts and juries, as demonstrated by her leadership as the honorary chair of the ABA Commission on the American Jury. Our nation, and in fact the world, have been improved by Justice O’Connor’s service. We may all draw inspiration from her example.