
Last week was a busy week! It started with meetings on Monday of the Strategic Planning and Diversity Committees. Brian Kelly and the Strategic Planning Committee are making good progress and will have a set of goals for discussion at the next board meeting. Tracy Flood is moving forward on a couple fronts with the Diversity Committee. First, the Diversity Committee is doing great work on the membership survey, working with the vendor on cross-tabulations and pushing out the results to a wider audience. Second, James Armstrong and Susan Machler have volunteered to take the mentorship work done by the WLI fellows and see how that can be packaged and publicized to law schools, local bars and others who have or are considering mentor programs.
Tuesday, Dan Ford, Ken Masters, Pat Palace and I grappled with the changes that the Supreme Court has suggested in the proposed public records rule, GR 12.4. We were able to combine and simplify certain rules, but there are some difficult choices that pit privacy interests against transparency. These will be coming to the board meeting in January for discussion.
Thursday, Paula, Tracy and I attended the Juvenile Justice Roundtable Meeting. It is clear that there is new energy behind dealing with racial disparities in the system and focusing on the schools to try and keep kids out of the pipeline. The Minority and Justice Commission released new data yesterday about racial disparities that will help focus further discussion.
Happy holidays to each of you. I hope you find time to spend with friends and family and feel a sense of renewal as we head into 2013.