OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT

MEMORANDUM

Enclosed is a summary of our conversation in San Diego on March 31, at the National Dialogue on Gender and Justice.  We appreciate your participation in the dialogue and your thoughtful contributions to the meeting.  Your comments on the summary are welcome.  Please email them to phanrahan@lsc.gov or to Marc Holladay at m.holladay@nlada.org.

     We wanted to share with you a development that is partially an outgrowth of our San Diego session.  Although LSC has been exploring over the past year ways we might guide state planners on diversity and leadership, our meeting on March 31 helped catalyze action.  Beginning in early April 2001, LSC has included the following language in our state planning feedback letters.  It reminds planners of their duty to create legal services delivery systems that “pay careful attention to assure that programs that constitute the delivery system and their leadership reflect the diversity of our client communities.  We encourage and expect efforts to help ensure that top levels include women and minorities.”  

The March 31 meeting would not have been as productive as it was without the work of several individuals.  LSC is very appreciative of Judy Perry Martinez’ thoughtful guidance of the March 31 meeting.  Judy volunteered to facilitate our session and additionally provided very useful pre-conference and post-conference assistance in developing the agenda and reporting on the meeting.  Claudeen Bates Arthur and Lillian Johnson were also generous with their time in helping to clarify the “race matters” component of our summary in post-conference telephone calls; their comments on the entire document were also valuable and improved the final product.   

LSC’s series of conversations on diversity, initiated this year with the first conference in March, are the result of President John McKay’s deep commitment to insuring that all voices in the legal services community be heard as we strive to create communities of justice that strengthen and expand the assistance we offer low-income people.  We thank John for his commitment to equality and efforts to insure that a portion of the LSC budget and staff activities are devoted to pursing these critical diversity conversations.  

Our March 31 dialogue inaugurated a series of meetings on diversity in the legal services community that will occur throughout the year.  This month, LSC and NLADA are holding Conference on Diversity in the Legal Services Community that brings together fifty participants for a two-day examination of a range of diversity issues, e.g., disability, age, gender, race, ethnicity and sexual orientation. Over the next months, the two organizations will hold additional conversations on these topics, including a second focused on gender.

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