Miami attorney is new leader of ABA
Leader already chipping away at key initiatives
Hilarie Bass says she intends to lead the 400,000-member American Bar Association in a broader direction: providing the poor better access to the legal system, and stemming the loss of women from the legal profession. Sworn in last week, Bass discussed her ambitious agenda with the SunSentinel.
Miami attorney Hilarie Bass brings an ambitious agenda to her new term as president of the 400,000-member American Bar Association.
Bass, a longtime trial attorney and co-president at the prestigious law firm Greenberg Traurig, was officially installed last week as leader of the world’s largest voluntary professional organization.
While in the role, she plans to boost access to free legal advice for homeless children, study why female lawyers are leaving the profession in their 40s and 50s, create a website to clarify dubious legal assertions, and find out why bar exam failure rates are climbing.
And because the ABA appoints presidents for only a year, Bass knows she’s going to be busy.
She’ll be chipping away at her goals while carrying out duties that come with the role, including lobbying Congress, visiting law schools and state bar associations, and representing the nation’s legal community in gatherings of attorneys around the world, promoting bedrock legal principles such as rule of law, equality and democracy.
“It’s a tremendous investment of time for you as well as a departure from your clients and your firm,” Bass said Thursday in a telephone interview from a Canadian ABA conference she was attending in Montreal. “Most [ABA presidents] find a year is the longest they can maintain this pace.”
Bass is the ninth Florida attorney appointed to the position since 1878. Florida has sent more attorneys to the ABA presidency than any other state except New York, which has sent 21.
But that’s fitting because Florida attorneys are often first to grapple with emerging legal issues, says Stephen N. Zack of Boies Schiller Flexner LLP, who was ABA president in 2010-11.
“Most issues involving the legal profession occur in Florida first,” he said. “Her ability to guide and lead these discussions are important for the community and for the profession.”
Bass grew up in Miami, earned a B.A. at George Washington University in Washington D.C., then returned home to earn her law degree at University of Miami. She joined Greenberg Traurig as a summer associate between her second and third year of law school. “They offered me a permanent job and I never left,” she said.
One of her most celebrated achievements stemmed from her pro bono representation of two foster children. It led to the elimination of Florida’s ban on gay adoption and its declaration as unconstitutional.
She won tens of millions of dollars in settlements representing homeowners victimized by Chinese drywall, one of the largest construction defect cases in U.S. history and the first that held a Chinese manufacturer of defective drywall subject to U.S. court jurisdiction.
Her high-profile clients have included Goldman Sachs & Co., Microsoft, Hilton Hotels, and the governments of Brazil and Venezuela.
Her charitable work includes serving on the University of Miami’s Board of Trustees since 2005; chairing the Orange Bowl Parade in 2001-02; and serving in numerous roles in the American Bar Association since 1990.
“She has always been outgoing and civic minded,” Zack said. “She’s someone who listens well, is very generous in the way she takes time to talk to younger lawyers and people she has given guidance to. She’s always seen as a leader. She’s not shy about expressing her opinion, as you can see by the fact she was elected president.”
Bass has already started work on her key initiatives. she Under her direction, the ABA has created a 10-member Commission on the Future of Legal Education to look at whether law schools are properly preparing students for the profession. Bar exam passage rates among law students are slipping, and Bass said she wants to find out why.
Another of Bass’ initiatives is to provide free legal services to more than 500,000 homeless children in the U.S. by dispatching pro bono attorneys to more than 350 homeless shelters.
Access to an attorney “can make a real difference in the trajectory of their lives,” Bass said. “Whether it’s helping a homeless teen get back into school, or a member of the LGBT community who needs a birth certificate to get a driver license. Many of these problems are repetitious and can be easy for lawyers to solve.”
Bass also plans to spearhead a new website, ABA Legal Fact Check, to correct erroneous assertions about what’s legal and what’s not. Responding with web posts or advisories to errors that surface in the media and political speech, “it will put the ABA on the record as to what the accurate law is,” she said.
Further work will focus on addressing the public’s eroding confidence in the justice system by training judges, prosecutors, public defenders and jurors to recognize how inherent biases can influence their decisions.
Educational videos will aim to help the public understand how the criminal justice system works.