"Tikkun olam"—the “repair of the world.” This is not just an aspiration. For Jews, it is a sacred obligation. At least it was in my family. My parents, one of whom was a refugee from Nazi Germany, took this obligation very seriously. They were what might today be called “activists.”
When Nina Olson retired from the Internal Revenue Service in 2019, she knew her work wasn’t finished. “I kept saying, ‘I’m privileged and lucky to have been in the IRS for 18 years, and to have a sense of how the IRS works,’” she says. “I needed to share it in some way.” That same year, Olson started the Center for Taxpayer Rights.
Updated: A fired income partner at Thompson Hine has filed a gender bias lawsuit against the law firm alleging that a former vice chair of litigation ruled the firm’s New York office “like a toxic boys club locker room.”
The mission of the new Above the Line Network is to bring together incubators, socially conscious law firms, nonprofit law firms and legal aid organizations to transform the delivery of legal services for the underserved middle class.
In 2020, GC Fatheree III began what became his most notable pro bono case, representing members of a Black family in their quest to secure “Bruce’s Beach,” a stretch of oceanfront property that was taken from their ancestors nearly a century earlier by officials in Los Angeles County who cited eminent domain. It was unprecedented because, according to Fatheree, stolen property had never been returned to a Black family or community in the United States.
Large law firms are showing their ideological leanings in U.S. Supreme Court amicus briefs filed on behalf of likely pro bono clients, according to a study by a law professor at the University of Notre Dame.
It’s been a busy 12 months for the ABA Young Lawyers Division’s Disaster Legal Services program. According to Amanda Brown, the director of the program, Disaster Legal Services helped survivors navigate the aftermath of a record 23 federally declared natural disasters in 2023.
In our final story of the year for our Children & the Law series, we are focusing on the needs of older foster youths about to transition out of care and what supports and services make a difference in their lives. Here are three ways that organizations around the country are helping with this essential work.
In this year’s Members Who Inspire series, the ABA Journal featured 12 exceptional ABA members who impressed and invigorated us through their good works.
My daughter was diagnosed with cancer on Nov. 2, 2020. She had just turned 3 months old. I was visiting my family in Idaho while on maternity leave from my BigLaw job in Washington, D.C., when we got the news. Devastated and confused, we took her to St. Luke’s Children’s Cancer Institute in Boise and barely emerged for months.
A Columbia Law School professor has been banned from depositions in a trademark case after a former employee who was set to be deposed alleged that his post-traumatic stress disorder partly stemmed partly from the professor’s actions.
Updated: The U.S. Department of Justice has partnered with technology platform Paladin Partners to boost DOJ attorneys’ engagement with pro bono work, the company announced Monday.
Labor rights icon Dolores Huerta has simple but sage advice for attorneys: Get engaged in your community. “We need more attorneys to get involved in civic life and be out there with the rest of us, doing the work that we need to get people elected and to change the laws, do the advocacy that we need.”
The ABA Journal wants to host and facilitate conversations among lawyers about their profession. We are now accepting thoughtful, non-promotional articles and commentary by unpaid contributors.
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