Bench & Bar March/April 2025

2025 ANNUAL CONVENTION OVERVIEW ON PAGE 4

The Stand-To Veteran Leadership Program “targets accomplished leaders (active-duty military service members, veterans, military spouses, and civilians) from a wide range of sectors who are working to improve out comes for veterans and military families through professional and/or community engagement.” 9 The Program provided me with access to a diverse network of scholars, peers, and resources focused on improving the lives of military families and veterans throughout the United States. Scholars were expected to come into the Program “with a Personal Leadership Project [PLP] in service of an issue they are deeply passionate about related to veterans and military families. These projects are designed to allow them to implement what they learn in the pro gram in service of improving outcomes for veterans and military families across the United States.” 10 Solidifying a way to improve the quality of legal services pro vided to Kentucky’s veterans was the basis for my application and the goal of my PLP.

While researching available resources, I noticed mutually exclusive extremes where competent legal resources are available to some, but not all, of Kentucky’s 217,000 veterans. 3 At one end of the spectrum, approximately 17 percent of Kentucky’s veterans have retired from active-duty military service. Pursuant to 10 U.S.C. §§ 801 and 1044, retirees—whether officers or enlisted—and their families are entitled to legal representation in civil matters by the DOD’s Staff Judge Advocates (SJAs), located on military installations through out the United States and abroad, for the remainder of the lives. 4 At the other end, there are about eight percent of the Com monwealth’s veterans whose financial circumstances qualify them for services at one of Kentucky’s regional Legal Aid offic es. 5 These offices provide legal assistance to veterans who have a critical need but lack the financial resources to hire an attorney. The remainder of Kentucky’s veterans—the 75-percenters, as I refer to us—are those who honorably served but did not retire from active-duty military service, as well as those who have stable financial resources but continue to experience difficulty obtain ing legal representation by attorneys who understand military life, reintegration challenges, military/veteran terminology or nomenclature, and other quality-of-life conditions created by U.S. military service. Prior to becoming a licensed attorney, I experienced a number of legal situations that I was forced to struggle through as a layperson. I needed legal representation while attempting to repair my credit after returning from deployment in the Middle East; when I separated service and needed to prematurely terminate a lease in one state to relocate to another for employment with out being on military orders; while going

through a divorce from an active-duty mil itary member; and when I purchased my first VA-backed home. In every instance, having an attorney who understood the quality-of-life conditions created by mil itary service would have made all the difference. Thus, I keenly understand the need for competent attorneys to serve mil itary service members, veterans, and their families. As one of the 75 percenters—who is now a licensed attorney—I could not simply raise awareness about the issue with out attempting to seek a solution. The opportunity to not just seek a solution, but to become a participant in a national movement to better the lives of military members, veterans, and their families was afforded to me by the George W. Bush Presidential Center’s Stand-To Veteran Leadership Program. 6 As a Scholar of Cohort Six (dubbed ‘the Classix’)—and one of two Kentuckians invited to join the 2024 Cohort 7 —I was provided an extraordinary opportunity to engage with 33 other leaders working in the military and veterans’ sphere on a national platform, who also seek to do more than highlight the needs of America’s veterans and military families. 8

For six months, I joined the other 33 mem bers of the Classix, initially online and thereafter in Dallas, Texas, at the George W. Bush Presidential Center on Southern Methodist University’s campus (SMU), and finally in Washington D.C. During the five in-person modules, the Classix became a family, as we discussed, engaged, interacted, examined, analyzed, and commiserated over the issues we have all faced—to vary ing degrees—as military service members, veterans, family members, or professionals in leadership positions focused on improv ing the lives of veterans.

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