Washington Lawyer - June 2020 - 15

FEATURE
of growing up in Connecticut, clerking for Judge Jerome Frank in New
York, becoming the first woman lawyer at Arnold & Porter, and working
with the Neighborhood Legal Services Program, and then in the Justice
Department.
After she left the D.C. Circuit, her law clerks would get together on
occasion to express our affection for and gratitude to her, perhaps most
memorably in November 2013 when she received the Presidential Medal
of Freedom from President Obama. I had the great pleasure of working
with her closely after the clerkship when we served together as board
members of both the American Constitution Society and the Historical
Society of the D.C. Circuit. She died last year, and her memorial service
was packed as her family, friends, and admirers gathered for an absolutely
beautiful celebration of an extraordinary life. I will cherish my memories
of her always.
When did you first become involved with the D.C. Bar?
When I was at the Justice Department, I worked on the complicated issue
regarding the extent to which the D.C. Rules of Professional Conduct
ought to apply to lawyers for the federal government. In particular, there
was a lot of concern in the early 1990s about federal lawyers overseeing
undercover investigations and the threat posed by state bar rules that
could make such investigations unethical under certain circumstances.
That work really introduced me to the Rules of Professional Conduct and
to the complex interplay between various and competing interests. In
2001, six years after leaving the Justice Department, I was invited to join
the D.C. Bar's Legal Ethics Committee. I served on that committee for
seven years and chaired it for the last three. It was a terrific introduction
to the work of the D.C. Bar, and serving on that committee remains one
of the highlights of my career.
After that experience, from 2010 to 2012, I chaired the Bar's Clients'
Security Fund Study Committee, which helped to ensure the fund
would remain solvent and available to compensate clients who have
been defrauded by unscrupulous members of the Bar. From 2014 to
2018, I served on the Global Legal Practice Task Force, which studied
and recommended changes to our admissions rule to make our Bar
more welcoming to lawyers who have been educated abroad. And
since 2018, I have been a member of the Bar's Pro Bono Task Force,
which is working on very practical solutions to bring pro bono legal
assistance into our local courts and into the specific court divisions
where the need is greatest.
As one of your initiatives, you're looking at establishing a pro bono
appellate program to help low-income people get representation
in the Court of Appeals. Can you tell us more about it?
As a member of the Pro Bono Task Force, under the leadership of
former D.C. Bar President Ron Flagg, we have been exploring ways to
encourage and promote pro bono services in areas of particular need
in our local courts. The task force's Appellate Working Group, under the
guidance of Nancy Drane of the D.C. Access to Justice Commission, has
been focused on how we can best address the fact that our Court of
Appeals considers many hundreds of cases a year where at least one
party is proceeding pro se.
I would like to build on the work that we've already begun by exploring
how the D.C. Bar can play a constructive role in finding pro bono representation for these pro se appellate litigants. Such a program would
further the three principal missions of the Bar - to enhance access to

Klineberg clerked for D.C. Circuit Judge Patricia Wald from 1991 to 1992.
justice by providing representation to those who might otherwise not be
able to afford a lawyer; to improve the legal system by ensuring that our
Court of Appeals has the benefit of briefs and arguments by lawyers; and
to empower our members, many of whom (particularly in the early stages
of their careers) are looking for opportunities to brief and argue cases
before our highest court.
Last year, I was contacted by the D.C. Bar Pro Bono Center to assist in
an appeal of a complicated Medicaid case, and I worked with one of
my firm's associates who briefed and argued that case before the Court
of Appeals earlier this year. While that proved to be a great opportunity
all around, it was very ad hoc, and I am hoping that we can find a way
to establish a more reliable program to match the need for pro bono
assistance with the amazing capacity and generosity of our D.C. Bar
community.
All credit is due to my predecessors, Esther Lim and Susie Hoffman,
for supporting this task force. I'm very much in favor of continuing that
work. The appellate side is just the one piece that I've become most
involved in, so I can't take credit at all for this plan. But the idea of trying
to promote and develop that into a real program would be one of
my goals.
What does access to justice mean to you?
Access to justice means empowering everyone to use the legal system
to vindicate their rights, regardless of their wealth or power. For us
lawyers, this means, at a minimum, fulfilling our commitment under
Rule 6.1 of the Rules of Professional Conduct to "participate in serving
those persons, or groups of persons, who are unable to pay all or a
portion of reasonable attorney's fees or who are otherwise unable to
obtain counsel."
Of course, we can do that in myriad ways, whether through volunteering
our time or providing financial support for legal services organizations
committed to helping the poor. We are among the only professions that

JUNE 2020

WASHINGTON LAWYER

Washington Lawyer - June 2020

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