Young Lawyers Division 2000-2001

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 1999

The Legal Opportunity Scholarship Fund

by Christine Cartwright

ABA President William G. Paul of Oklahoma City announced the creation of the ABA Legal Opportunity Scholarship Fund to enable persons of color to attend law school and become lawyers.

"The legal profession is the connecting link between government and the rule of law and society," said Paul in announcing the scholarship fund. He observed, "Right now, society is about 30 percent persons of color, and it is moving quickly toward 50 percent. The legal profession is 92 percent white. If the connecting link is not reflective of all society, people will lose respect for the rule of law and it just will not work."

Paul set a goal of at least $1 million by the end of the first year of the fund. Within two weeks after its creation and on the day of its first official public announcement, lawyers, law firms, and corporations had already contributed more than $300,000 to the fund. Paul and his wife, Barbara, along with his firm, Crowe & Dunlevy of Oklahoma City, contributed $100,000. The ABA Section of Business Law presented Paul with a check for more than $100,000 and other ABA sections, law firms, and Oklahoma corporations have contributed the balance.

Paul said he hopes to present the first minority scholarship next year, and that in subsequent years the fund will increase to many times the $1 million goal.

Paul is making diversity in the legal profession a key theme of his year as ABA President. He announced the creation of working groups within the ABA to address diversity in legal education, in corporate legal work, and in law firms and bar associations.

In another prong of his presidential initiatives, Paul hopes to spur development of technological applications to assist lawyers in delivering services to a wider spectrum of the public and to assist them in improving their office practices.

Paul took office for a one-year term in August 1999 during the ABA Annual Meeting in Atlanta. Before returning to his current law firm, with which he had been affiliated earlier in his career, he spent eleven years as general counsel of Phillips Petroleum Company.

Christine Cartwright is an associate editor of The Affiliate and practices law with Dinker Biddle & Reath in Princeton, New Jersey.