Submit a Nomination for the 2022 Scoutt Prize by March 25
We are now accepting nominations for the 2022 Jerrold Scoutt Prize, awarded annually to an exceptional legal services attorney in the District of Columbia. Nominations must include a cover letter and the nominee's curriculum vitae. Supporting materials, like articles of interest or letters of support, are highly encouraged. Nominations made for the 2020 and 2021 prizes will be reconsidered. Those who submitted nominations in those years are encouraged to update their nomination materials.
Send nominations and supporting materials to nominations@dcbarfoundation.org by 5:00 PM THIS FRIDAY, March 25, 2022.
Our Call to Action Campaign – 90% There!
Each year through our Call to Action initiative, local law firms, businesses, and faith communities generously fund legal aid for District residents in need. To help build robust legal aid networks that meet the needs of our community's financially disenfranchised residents, we're asking DC firms, corporations, and faith communities to step forward in raising $535,000. Currently, we are 90% of the way to our goal. Will your workplace help us get to the finish line? To see a complete list of this year's Call to Action participating firms, and learn more about the campaign, visit our website.
Recap: DC Legal Aid Transformations Network March 9th Convening
On our March 9th Quarterly Convening, 40 Network members built community, heard presentations from Network members, and deepened our understanding of how to transform legal services by focusing on "upstream" approaches and centering anti-racism, wellbeing and anti-poverty. Kirra Jarratt shared about the ongoing work of the Design Team, the Network Manager hiring process, and plans for client focus groups in April to improve the intake/referral process. Gabby Majewski (DC Affordable Law Firm) and Gabby Lewis-White (DC Bar Pro Bono Center) co-presented a "Network of Networks" idea: to connect smaller cohorts to make collaboration easier among people who don't yet know each other, to clarify roles, and to move forward Jonathan Smith's (Washington Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs) idea to reach out to community members (not just providers) so that community members guide the Network's work. Network members pointed out that past survey data can help Network members understand what our different groups are doing, and suggested that identifying members' non-legal service partners would be critical. Amanda Beacom (Visible Network Labs) discussed the Network Survey Report 2021 and encouraged people to reach out to her with questions. Members discussed the difference between "upstream" work, which identifies problems at their root cause, and "downstream" work, which addresses immediate needs that are the symptoms of those root causes, and people wrote down their expansive visions of upstream work, as well as the barriers to those visions becoming real. George Jones (Bread for the City) named that racism is why we focus so much time on downstream work, and invited people to Envisioning an Anti-Racist D.C.'s March 15th panel event, part of an anti-racist organizing effort that is asking every sector to address racism in their sector. The next Quarterly Convening was shortened and is June 8, 1:00 - 4:00 PM Eastern. Registration will open shortly.