Illinois Attorney General, Federal Judges Among Speakers at LSC Board Meeting

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Washington, DC—The Board of Directors of the Legal Services Corporation (LSC) will have its formal, quarterly meeting in Chicago on October 16-18, as part of its longstanding tradition of visiting, on a rotating basis, the nonprofit legal aid programs that it supports. The Board has not met in Illinois since 1998.

Lisa Madigan, the Illinois Attorney General, and Judge Abner Mikva, who served on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, will speak at the Board’s luncheon on October 17. Illinois Supreme Court Chief Justice Thomas L. Kilbride and Chief Judge James F. Holderman of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois will address the Board at its October 18 luncheon.

On October 17, the Board also will hear from the executive directors of the three Illinois civil legal aid programs funded by LSC about the challenges they face in delivering civil legal assistance to low-income people in Illinois. In addition, the three executive directors and representatives from Illinois Legal Aid Online and LSC will brief the Board on the role of technology in providing self-help legal information and court forms to unrepresented litigants.

Board Vice Chair Martha Minow, dean of the Harvard Law School, will moderate a panel on October 17 on the importance of law school clinical education.  She will be joined in a panel discussion by Dean Daniel Rodriguez and Associate Dean Thomas F. Geraghty of Northwestern Law School; Dean Michael H. Schill and Acting Associate Dean Jeff Leslie of the University of Chicago Law School, and Dean Bruce Smith and Director of Clinical Education Nina W. Tarr of the University of Illinois College of Law.

On October 18, Jack L. Rives, executive director of the American Bar Association, will moderate a panel discussion on how ABA relates to LSC. The panel will include Robert E. Stein, chair of the ABA Standing Committee on Legal Aid and Indigent Defendants; Larry McDevitt, chair of the ABA Standing Committee on Pro Bono and Public Service; Mary Meixner, assistant counsel, ABA Standing Committee on Legal Assistance for Military Personnel, and the Honorable Lora Livingston, chair of the ABA Commission on Interest on Lawyers’ Trust Accounts. The Board’s Committee on the Promotion and Provision for the Delivery of Legal Services will be briefed on courthouse help desks for low-income and self-represented litigants in a discussion moderated by Bob Glaves, executive director of the Chicago Bar Foundation.

For more information on the Board’s meeting, please see the Federal Register notice.  Members of the public who are unable to attend may listen to open sessions of the Board and Board committees by telephone, using the instructions published in the Federal Register notice.

Members of the news media may contact LSC Media Relations at 202-295-1615 for additional information about the Board’s activities.

LSC is the single largest funder of civil legal assistance in the nation. LSC operates as an independent 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation that receives an annual appropriation from Congress to promote equal access to justice and to provide for the delivery of high-quality civil legal assistance to low-income individuals and families. About 95 percent of the appropriation is distributed as grants to 136 independent nonprofit legal aid programs in every state, the District of Columbia and the U.S. territories.
 

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