ABA House of Delegates Chair to Deliver W&L Law Commencement Address
Linda A. Klein, a 1983 graduate of the Washington and Lee School of Law and chair of the American Bar Association House of Delegates, will deliver this year’s commencement address during the 2012 graduation exercises at her alma mater.
Commencement is scheduled for Saturday, May 5 beginning at 11:00 a.m. on the lawn between the Colonnade and Lee Chapel. The event is open to the public. A complete schedule of events is available at the commencement website.
The ABA House of Delegates is the policy-making body of the largest voluntary membership professional organization in the world. The House of Delegates includes more than 550 members and meets twice each year to set association policies on issues ranging from service to the legal profession to national policies related to the law.
As chair, Klein presides over meetings of the House for a two year term that began in February 2011. Klein has demonstrated leadership in the ABA in a range of positions, from chairing a section devoted to the substantive law of tort trials and insurance and the association’s Coalition for Justice, to chairing the association Committee on Rules and Calendar and membership on the Standing Committee on Delivery of Legal Services, which strives to increase access to legal assistance for persons in every income group.
Klein is managing shareholder of the Georgia offices of Baker, Donelson, Bearman, Caldwell & Berkowitz, P.C., with offices in five states, the District of Columbia and London. Her practice concentrates on litigation, alternative dispute resolution and counseling business owners.
A past president of the State Bar of Georgia, Klein is committed to increasing access to legal services for Georgia’s indigent. She devised and executed the plan to achieve the first state appropriation of tax dollars to support legal services. She is vice-chair of the Georgia Supreme Court Commission on Access to Justice, which works for increased access to courts, and a member of the Supreme Court Commission on Civil Justice.
Klein also has worked to uphold judicial excellence, and served as co-chair of a state Judicial Evaluation Committee, a member of the state’s Judicial Nominating Commission, and a member of a committee established by former Sen. Max Cleland to advise on filling federal judicial vacancies in the Northern District of Georgia.
She has held leadership positions in the Atlanta Legal Aid Society, the Atlanta Bar Association and the Georgia Association for Women Lawyers, and is a founding as well as a member of the Georgia chapter of the National Asian Pacific American Bar Association, the Gate City Bar and the Georgia Association of Black Women Attorneys.
Klein received her law degree from Washington and Lee University School of Law in Lexington, Va., and her Bachelor of Arts degree from Union College, Schenectady, N.Y.
News Contact:
Peter Jetton
School of Law Director of Communications
pjetton@wlu.edu
(540) 458-8782
