This week’s P.S. column features a group of current and recently graduated law students starting early in giving back to the legal profession, two firms that have achieved high scores among two diversity groups and new leadership at the Texas Access to Justice Commission and Texas Access to Justice Foundation, including a new executive director and board member.
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— The Dallas Women Lawyers Association 2023 Leadership Class, which comprises 14 current or recently graduated law students, has partnered with the mock trial team at the Judge Barefoot Sanders Law Magnet, a Dallas Independent School District high school, through providing financial support and mentorship to the team in a larger effort to elevate the standing of young women in the Dallas legal profession. Many of the students on the law magnet’s mock trial team are females who come from underprivileged backgrounds.
The leadership class members served as judges in the school’s 2023 mock trial competition and are currently raising funds for the team, called the Barefoot Mockers. The group aims to raise $10,000 for the Barefoot Mockers by Oct. 31 to financially support the mock trial team throughout the school year and cover the costs required to send students to the state mock trial competition.
Contributions of any amount are welcome, but those who give at least $500 will receive special recognition. To donate, visit this link for more information.
The 14-member leadership class comes from seven law schools — five of them in Texas — including Southern Methodist University, Baylor, the University of Texas, Texas A&M and the University of North Texas.
— Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher has been honored with the Minority Corporate Counsel Association’s 2023 Thomas L. Sager Award for law firms with more than 650 lawyers. The award recognizes law firms committed to building a more diverse, equitable and inclusive legal industry. Gibson Dunn was among 20 law firms shortlisted as finalists in the 650 lawyer-plus category. Selection was based on the firm’s submission of MCCA’s U.S. Law Firm Diversity Survey, the longest-standing diversity survey in the legal industry, and the answers to which create a diversity scorecard.
Gibson Dunn is currently defending the Fearless Fund, a venture capital firm, in its lawsuit brought by Edward Blum, who was behind the party that won the U.S. Supreme Court’s blockbuster affirmative action decision, SFFA v. Harvard — as well as a flurry of more recent lawsuits filed against private businesses challenging their DEI programs. Blum is challenging the Fearless Fund’s grant program for Black women business owners on allegations that it unlawfully practices racial discrimination. In July, Gibson Dunn also formed a workplace DEI task force, which helps firm clients assess litigation risk and defend their DEI programs in private litigation and government enforcement actions as they arise, and also helps clients develop creative approaches to DEI objectives that are both practical and lawful.
— Former Texas Supreme Court justice Deborah Hankinson has been reappointed as the Texas Access for Justice board chair for a new three-year term by the Supreme Court of Texas. TAJF is the largest state-based funding source for pro bono civil legal aid in Texas and funds the operations of the Texas Access to Justice Commission.
As the fifth chair of TAJF’s board, Hankinson is the first woman to serve in this position. In addition, Jose “Pepe” Aranda Jr., has joined TAJF’s board of directors and Shell in-house lawyer Travis Torrence has been appointed to another three-year term on the board.
Aranda is a real estate brokerage owner and former mayor of Eagle Pass, Texas. More recently, he served as Maverick County Judge, where he oversaw construction of a new water plant and water distribution system as well as a 650-bed detention center that created 180 new jobs in the community.
Torrence, who was recently promoted to managing counsel of Shell’s U.S. litigation, has been with the company since 2013. Before his current role, Torrence was Shell’s global litigation bankruptcy and credit team lead.
— In more Access to Justice News, the Texas Access to Justice Commission, which carries out the pro bono work TAJF funds, has hired April Faith-Slaker as its new executive director. She will also serve as director of the State Bar of Texas’ legal access department. Faith-Slaker will begin her new job in late October.
Faith-Slaker arrives in Texas from Michigan, where she had served as the executive director of the city of Detroit’s Office of Eviction Defense. Before that, she was the associate director of research innovations of Harvard Law School’s Access to Justice Lab. Faith-Slaker succeeds Trish McAllister, who served as the Commission’s executive director for more than 12 years. Travis County District Judge Lora Livingston is currently serving as interim executive director.
— For the fifth year in a row, Baker Botts has attained Diversity Lab’s “certified plus” status for its Mansfield Rule, a well-regarded certification program aimed at diversifying the power structure of law firms and legal departments. It’s widely considered the standard by which law firms measure the structural changes and steps taken to ensure the path to leadership is more accessible to diverse attorneys in an equitable and inclusive way. The “certified plus” status is the highest ranking status in the Mansfield system.