W&L Alumna Linda Klein ‘83L Named President-Elect of the American Bar Association
Linda Klein, a 1983 graduate of Washington and Lee’s School of Law, was named president-elect of the American Bar Association during its annual meeting this week.
Klein will serve a one-year term in this role and then become ABA president in August 2016. She previously served as chair of the ABA House of Delegates, the association’s policy making body.
Klein is managing shareholder of the Georgia offices of Baker Donelson. Her practice concentrates on litigation, alternative dispute resolution and counseling business owners.
In her address during the conference, Klein urged her colleagues to work together to ensure access to justice for all.
“We’re all in this together,” Klein said. “Lawyers, judges, law students. We fight for justice, the future of legal education, protecting our courts, diversity in our profession.”
When she assumes the presidency next year, Klein will become the seventh W&L Law graduate to lead the ABA. Only Harvard and Columbia have produced more ABA presidents than W&L. Most recently, Robert J. Grey ‘76L served as ABA president in 2004-05. A partner at Hunton & Williams and executive director of the Leadership Council on Legal Diversity, Grey received the ABA’s Spirit of Excellence award in 2014.
A past president of the State Bar of Georgia, and the first woman to hold that post, Klein worked to increase 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 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.
Among her numerous awards and honors, Klein was the recipient of the ABA’s 2010 Fellows Outstanding State Chair Award and was honored with the Randolph Thrower Lifetime Achievement Award 2009 from the State Bar of Georgia, which recognizes Georgia attorneys for their achievements in promoting diversity in the legal profession. In 2015, she received the State Bar of Georgia’s Distinguished Service Award and the Daily Report’s first ever Lifetime Achievement Award.
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.
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