Posted April 16, 20128:54 am
Washington, DC - Legal Aid Society of Cleveland Executive Director Colleen Cotter is one of six legal services program directors selected to participate in a White House forum examining the state of civil legal assistance for low-income Americans. The forum, co-hosted by the Legal Services Corporation (LSC), will take place on Tuesday, April 17.
Other speakers will include: U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder; Deputy Chief of Staff to the President Mark Childress; former Pennsylvania Governor and U.S. Attorney General Richard Thornburgh; U.S. Department of State Legal Advisor Harold Hongju Koh; Department of Veterans Affairs General Counsel Will A. Gunn; White House Counsel Kathryn Ruemmler; Justice Jess H. Dickinson of the Mississippi Supreme Court; Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan; American Bar Association President William T. Robinson; LSC Board Chairman John G. Levi and Harvard Law School Dean Martha Minow, who is also vice chair of the LSC board.
"The Legal Aid Society of Cleveland is a national leader," said LSC President James J. Sandman, who will moderate a panel of directors from LSC-funded programs. "From neighborhood-based legal clinics sponsored by private law firms, to a thriving medical-legal partnership, to the thoughtful use of data to improve service delivery, they constantly strive to provide access to justice to the many low-income individuals and families in the Cleveland area with no place else to turn."
Cotter is one of six directors chosen from among the 135 organizations nationally that receive federal funding through LSC. In addition to Ohio, other states to be represented on the panel are Arizona, Georgia, Montana, Washington and Virginia.
Listen to the forum here (presented without President Obama's address).