CBA Record September-October 2024

CBA RECORD

EDITOR’S BRIEFCASE BY JUSTICE MICHAEL B. HYMAN, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Pro Bono in Motion: 20th Annual CBA-CBF Pro Bono Week C all me the Pro Bono Week whisperer. As CBA president in 2005, I proposed that the Association and Bar Foundation annually extol the virtues of pro bono service during the third week of October. I created the first theme, too, “Pro Bono Week: Hope and Justice in Action.” I have hatched the week’s theme ever since. In my President’s Page column in October 2005, I quoted from “Apolitical Intellec tuals,” a poem by Guatemalan revolutionary Otto Rene Castillo: “Que hististeis cuando los pobres sufrian? (What did you do when the poor suffered?), adding, “No lawyer, ever, should be unable to respond when asked, ‘What did you do when the poor suffered?’” My co-chair for the initial celebration, the incredible Margaret C. Benson, then and now Executive Director of the Chicago Volunteer Legal Services Foundation, helped to get Pro Bono Week established along with extraordinary CBF Executive Director Bob Glaves and CBF Associate Director Dina Merrell and their talented staff. Indeed, for two decades, Glaves and the CBF staff have taken the lead in planning, organizing, and coordinating the event, ensuring each year outdoes the last. In 2008, the theme was “Do Right!” I noted in these pages, “Nothing, I repeat, nothing, is as gratifying as doing right by representing the less fortunate.” The following year, communities across the country joined the CBA-CBF by repli cating Pro Bono Week, after the American Bar Association introduced a national pro bono celebration inspired partly by our success. About the theme in 2012, “Pro Bono: A Gift, Not a Chore,” I wrote, “the poor and near poor become more or less outcasts, marginalized by the system and likely to fall through the cracks.” I viewed pro bono “not as a matter of choice but as a matter of necessity. Not a chore but a gift, by lawyers to strangers in distress. Not a burden but a source of pride. Not a sacrifice but a sanctification of justice and fairness.” October 2014 marked the 10th anniversary. The theme, “Lifting Lives, Strengthen ing Access,” drew inspiration from CBA President Dan Cotter’s participation in power lifting competitions to raise money for Lawyers Lend-a-Hand for Youth. I explained that pro bono “can strengthen lives by lifting the legal burdens of the poor and, in the process, make the justice system more accessible.” “Caring, One Person at a Time” for 2016 Pro Bono Week, emphasized that one-on-one involvement with pro bono was transformative. “There is a dynamic that takes place in which you feel worthwhile and needed, and the pro bono client feels heard and not alone. You both gain some understanding and appreciation of the other and [their] world.” The 2017 theme, “For the Sake of the Community,” was that “the benefits of pro bono representation go well beyond the attorney and the client; they can be felt in the everyday of our community.” Five years later, in 2022, “Empowering People, Empower ing Communities” called forth “the expansive reach of pro bono work and its ability to influence, equip, advance, and liberate, in a word, ‘empower,’ people and communities.” This year’s theme honors Pro Bono Week as a catalyst for fostering a culture of ser vice and compassion within the legal profession. “Pro Bono in Motion” recognizes more than past achievements; it inspires continued momentum and commitment to justice, arousing the spirit of pro bono work, which offers a partial answer to the question, “What did you do when the poor suffered?”

EDITORIAL BOARD EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

Justice Michael B. Hyman Illinois Appellate Court

ASSOCIATE EDITOR Anne Ellis Council of State Governments Justice Center SUMMARY JUDGMENTS EDITOR Daniel A. Cotter

Dickinson Wright PLLC YLS JOURNAL EDITORS

Joanna Kopczyk Attorney at Law Nikki Marcotte Kirkland & Ellis LLP

Carolyn Amadon Samuel, Son & Co. Daniel J. Berkowitz Cruser, Mitchell, Novitz, Sanchez, Gaston & Zimet LLP Jacob B. Berger Tabet DiVito & Rothstein LLC Amy Cook Amy Cook Law LLC Nina Fain Janet Sugerman Schirn Family Trust Anthony F. Fata Kirby McInerney LLP Clifford Gately Quarles & Brady Meredith A. Geller Northwestern Pritzker School of Law Judge Jasmine Villaflor Hernandez Circuit Court of Cook County Kaitlin King Hart David Carson LLP Theodore Kontopoulos Internal Revenue Service John Levin Kathryn C. Liss DePaul University College of Law Bonnie McGrath Law Office of Bonnie McGrath Clare McMahon Reed, Centracchio & Associates, LLC Pamela Sakowicz Menaker Clifford Law Offices Kathleen Dillon Narko Northwestern Pritzker School of Law Alexander Passo Latimer LeVay Fyock LLC Adam J. Sheppard Sheppard Law Firm, PC Richard Lee Stavins Robbins DiMonte, Ltd. Rosemary Simota Thompson Judge E. Kenneth Wright, Jr. Circuit Court of Cook County THE CHICAGO BAR ASSOCIATION Sharon Nolan Director of Marketing

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