Winners: Law Day 1997

These Law Day programs were awarded the 1997 Outstanding Law Day Activity Awards. The programs were successful in carrying and interpreting the message of the "Celebrate Your Freedom" theme to large, varied audiences. Feel free to implement some of their ideas in planning your own celebrations for this year's Law Day!

The Dade County (Florida) Bar Association's Young Lawyers Section
This ambitious program orchestrated activities over a two-week period. These included a pre-law minority career conference, a TV show on domestic violence, a radio show on civil rights history in South Florida, field trips for students, Pro Bono clinics, lawyers in the classroom, court tours, and charitable drives.
Click here to read more about this program.

The Houston (Texas) Bar Association
Their programs focused on providing legal information to non-English speaking residents of Houston. They published a free, Spanish-language handbook on family law that covers important issues in laypeople's terms, held a series of programs in five languages on the new immigration laws in branch libraries through the city, and co-sponsored a naturalization ceremony for 1400 new citizens. Other activities included sponsoring poster & essay contests for students in all 24 area school districts, offering an information booth at an International Festival, and putting on a nine-hour call-in program where volunteer lawyers staffed phone lines and answered calls from the public on legal questions.
Click here to read more about this program.

The Law Guild of Beverly Hills, California
This group offered activities for everyone from students to senior citizens. Attorneys spoke to high school government classes, police officials spoke to senior citizens on personal safety/consumer fraud, and the Guild coordinated several contests for students, a library display, and court tours. The Law Guild is one of scores of affiliates of the national American Lawyers Auxiliary.
Click here to read more about this program.

The Legal Referral Service
This program was co-sponsored by the Association of the Bar of the City of New York and the New York County Lawyers' Association. Its creative efforts centered on a mobile van that carried volunteer attorneys to various New York City neighborhoods to assist nearly 2,000 residents by providing free legal information (via free one-on-one consultations and myriad educational legal pamphlets), acquainting them with their rights and responsibilities, and informing them how the law influences daily life.
Click here to read more about this program.

The Stamford (Connecticut) Regional Bar Association
This bar offered seventeen activities that reached all members of the community, from senior citizens to elementary school students. Included were a school art and essay contest and the grand opening of the first judicial information counter in the state. Other activities included a college symposium, adopt-a-class, a high school mock trial competition, bookstore/library displays, speeches to seniors and five charitable drives.
Click here to read more about this program.

The Teens Speak Out Program
This was a cooperative effort of the Young Lawyers' Division of the Pima County (Arizona) Bar Association, the Arizona Superior Court in Pima County, the Pima Prevention Partnership/Pima County Teen Court, and the Pima County Juvenile Court. It provided a forum in which hundreds of teens could directly communicate their solutions for community issues to lawmakers, judges, administrators and the media. This creative program provided students with resources to investigate legal issues that affect them, and offered a format by which students could succinctly present contrasting views of legal issues.
Click here to read more about this program.

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