California Lawyers Association
California Lawyers Foundation Continues its Duty of Service
January 2024
By Jeremy M. Evans
It is the middle of December 2023 as I write this. California Lawyers Association and its nonprofit arm, the California Lawyers Foundation (CLF), are well into celebrating the holiday season. A season of giving time, talents, and resources to those less fortunate. However, it is always the holiday season for the CLF as its mission and duty of service consistently call for its benefactors, board, volunteers, and staff to serve its three tenets of civic engagement, access to justice, and improving the legal profession and community for fairness and equal opportunity. At CLF, we celebrate service and begin 2024 with the same call: give back.
When the CLF Board of Directors met in December, we set out our goals for the year. The first was to pass a budget, which was successful. Next was discussing implementation and processes for onboarding the newly hired Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of CLA, Chris Nguyen, who will also oversee CLF. Then, we laid out the vision for the year, which will include supporting the award-winning California Law Pathways (CLP) program. CLP continues to be an innovative statewide diversity pipeline program that begins in tenth grade and ends in law school. With 23 high school law academies, 29 California community colleges, 16 undergraduate universities, and 15 ABA-accredited California law school partners, CLP is considered the country’s most comprehensive educational diversity law pipeline program.
We will also be introducing a new mentorship golf tournament that will raise funding to support CLF’s mission and programs. The annual tournament will bring together judges, lawyers, law students, and college students to play golf, support a wonderful cause, network between generations, and encourage the next generation to serve their communities through the law and become attorneys. It will be the first-of-its-kind opportunity to bridge the knowledge gap between dreaming of becoming an attorney and reaching the goal.
CLF will also host significant programming in 2024, including continuing the Signature Series webinars and in-person programming at CLA’s 2024 Annual Meeting. We need leaders and citizens who practice good values, civility, and ethics. With the new civility oath and MCLE requirements in mind, what else can the legal profession do to continue to instill good ethics and morals in their lives and practices? CLF is hosting a webinar on Wednesday, January 17, 2024, at 5:00 p.m. PST to help serve that exact purpose. Register here for “The Future of the Legal Profession: Values, Civility, and Ethics in the Law” program. Our two speakers are model citizens when it comes to ethics and values. The audience will hear about their best practices and solutions for a better legal industry and possibly the world with a focus on the love of humankind.
We hope you will join us in serving the California legal profession. Wishing you a wonderful Happy New Year and hope you celebrated a terrific holiday season!
With Appreciation,
Jeremy M. Evans
President, California Lawyers Foundation
Immediate Past President, California Lawyers Association