Law Student Division - Student Lawyer September 1999

The ABA’s Board of Governors has approved the Law Student Division’s decision to offer the National Native American Law Students Association (NNALSA) trial affiliate status. As a result, a NNALSA representative will be a nonvoting liaison to the LSD’s Board of Governors.

That representative will join liaisons from other student organizations that already hold either regular or trial affiliate status: the National Association of Women Lawyers, National Black Law Students Association, Hispanic National Bar Association, National Jewish Law Students Association, and National Association for Public Interest Law.

At its meeting last spring where the LSD Board of Governors voted overwhelmingly to grant the Native American group trial affiliate status, the board also approved resolutions urging Congress to reform the tax code to allow young lawyers to repay student loans with pretax dollars and encouraging diversity in federal judicial clerkships. The board also allocated $8,000 to continue funding of the Professionalism, Ethics and Diversity (PED) Fund. (See page 51.)

Bennett Miller, last year’s LSD chair, presided over the meeting where the NNALSA vote took place and strongly advocated for trial affiliate status for the Native American group.

"When I became chair, we reached out to groups we wanted to involve," Miller said. "NNALSA was one such group."

Miller stressed in a message transmitting the results to the ABA Board of Governors that "approval of this request provides the [LSD] with the opportunity to continue its mission in promoting diversity in the legal profession."

Leona Colegrove, a third-year law student at the University of Washington School of Law and director of media relations for NNALSA, spoke at the spring meeting and expressed enthusiasm at the news of the LSD’s vote.

"This is an important step for NNALSA, because the people in the ABA are people we will be working with for the rest of our professional lives," Colegrove said. "It is important for us to get to know them and know them as friends."

NNALSA president Darren Pete agreed. "The relationship between NNALSA and the ABA is important because it gives us an opportunity to dispel the myth that the standard [among graduating Native American law students] is not there," he said. "There are excellent Native American lawyers coming out of law schools across the country, and they are not only going back to the tribes, but are doing great work in both the public and the private sectors."

In offering NNALSA trial affiliate status, the LSD Board of Governors waived guidelines in the Division’s bylaws that usually require an affiliate organization to have more than 250 law students at 25 chapters in a majority of Division circuits. Pete estimates that NNALSA currently has approximately 200 members in more than 20 chapters nationwide, but believes that many law students don’t acknowledge their Native American ancestry. Miller echoed that sentiment, noting that the relationship between the LSD and the national organization for a historically underrepresented minority "came naturally."

NNALSA’s primary goals are to encourage young Native Americans to become lawyers and to set up a support network for Native American law students and lawyers, according to Colegrove. She said she would also like to see more Native Americans take positions as lawyers for Indian tribes.

"Someone who has lived on the reservation is going to be a little more sensitive [to people’s needs]," she noted. Pete added that NNALSA would also like to expand its networking beyond the Indian community to give young Native American lawyers the best legal career options possible. •