Updated Aug. 5 to link to Gabe Friedman’s interview with Brown on Bloomberg BNA’s Big Law Business.

Congratulations to Paulette Brown, the 2015-16 American Bar Association president. She is a partner at Locke Lord and will be the first woman of color to serve in the top ABA post. Her term will begin after the ABA wraps up its 2015 annual meeting in Chicago on Tuesday.

Brown is a member of the Labor & Employment Practice Group at her firm, and “has held a number of positions, including in-house counsel to a number of Fortune 500 companies and as a Municipal Court Judge,” she says in her firm bio. For the past 25 years, she has focused on “all facets of labor and employment and commercial litigation.” She is based in the firm’s Morristown, N.J. office.

Brown earned her J.D. at Seton Hall University School of Law and her B.A. at Howard University.

ABA Ladder

Brown climbed the proverbial ABA ladder—a member of the ABA House of Delegates since 1997; and stints on the ABA’s Board of Governor, including the Executive Committee and Governance Commission.

Her ABA activity re: diversity included:
• The Commission on Women in the Profession.
• Co-author of “Visible Invisibility: Women of Color in Law Firms.”
• Chair of the ABA Council on Racial and Ethnic Justice (now Coalition on Racial and Ethnic Justice).
• Co-chair of the Commission on Civic Education in our Nation’s Schools.

In an interview with Gabe Friedman for Bloomberg BNA’s Big Law Business, Brown provided a roster of her priorities, which include advocating on behalf of the indigent; improving diversity within the ABA and the profession, and looking “seriously at alternative ways to finance legal education.” Check it out here.

Videos
• PBS: ABA President-elect
• The Margaret Brent Women Lawyers of Achievement Award
(ABA Commission on Women in the Profession)

Diversity Stats

Five women have served as ABA president so far. The first was Roberta Cooper Ramo (1995-96), now a lawyer at Modrall Sperling in Albuquerque, N.M. At the annual meeting in Chicago, she was awarded the 2015 ABA Medal, the organization’s highest award.

The other four are Martha Barnett (2000-01), Karen Mathis (2006-07), Carolyn Lamm (2009-10) and Lauren Bellows (2012-13).

The first African-American president was Dennis Archer (2003-04) and the first foreign-born president was Michael Greco (2005-06).

Completely unrelated but interesting: Three ABA presidents went on to be a member of the U.S. Supreme Court (William Howard Taft, George Sutherland and Charles Hughes); one became U.S. President (Taft). Source: Wikipedia.

Monica Bay is a fellow at CodeX and a freelance journalist for Bloomberg BNA Big Law Business. A member of the California bar, she was one of the few women and/or night students who were elected national officers of the ABA’s Law School Division in the 1980s. (She was vice-chair, 1981-82.)