CEO Report – First Quarter 2025 Update

April 2025

By Chris Nguyen
Chief Executive Officer

We live in interesting times. In such situations, we sometimes lose sight of the basics. For CLA, our North Star is our mission: “Promoting excellence, diversity and inclusion in the legal profession and fairness in the administration of justice and the rule of law.”  We have adhered to this mission since day one, and 2025 has been no different. We can point to many examples during the first quarter of this year, and now as we head into the second quarter.

We have hosted excellent conferences such as the IP Conference, CIAW Conference, New Employment Practitioner Conference, and the Annual Privacy Summit, to name a few. We offer free and reduced webinars to our members. We continue to provide education on a wide range of subject matters from health and wellness to DEI to civility and ethics. We support organizations and events that promote fairness, education, and inclusiveness in the legal profession like the Bay Area Women Lawyers Network, the East Bay and San Francisco La Raza Lawyers Associations networking evening, and the CABL and Bar Bench receptions. We continue to reach out to California’s affinity bars in the spirit of cooperation and remain dedicated to increasing and supporting our membership.

CLA funds and offers scholarships to deserving law students, as we have for years. Several of our sections have done great work on this front. We partner with other affinity bar associations in celebrating scholarship winners. We support our charitable arm, California Lawyers Foundation (CLF), to raise money for scholarships and logistical needs to broaden opportunities for high school students, many of whom will be the first in their families to attend college. In fact, I had the honor of participating in their most recent Legislative Day, in February 2025, marking the second year for this event. Held by California Legal Pathways Collaborative (CLPC), a unit of our Foundation, seven law academies (specialized civics and government courses in high schools) sent 300 students to the capitol to hear from legislators and judges. These are transformative activities that will change lives and create the next generation of lawyers.

We accomplished much during the first quarter of 2025 to further our mission, led by our President, Betty Williams, and our Chair, Terrance J. Evans. As we enter the second quarter, we continue to reach out to other organizations to strengthen the profession, increase knowledge, and provide avenues for inclusion. An upcoming opportunity, the Immigration Conference (link), illustrates our continued commitment to our mission. This meeting will involve many CLA sections joining together to provide information, training, and networking for those working with, and related to, immigration. It is a timely topic because so many Californians were, or are, immigrants and a conference such as this serves the profession and the citizens of California. 

CLA’s mission is our direction and our purpose. It will continue to serve as our North Star, serving as a guide in good and bad times, in calm and tumultuous periods.