Commission Launches Pro Bono Survey
The Access to Justice Commission is partnering with the American Bar Association’s Center for Pro Bono to survey Arkansas attorneys about your views on pro bono service. Whether you currently do pro bono or not, we want to hear from you! The results of this survey will be used to help us better understand how we can provide meaningful pro bono opportunities to attorneys across the state. The survey takes about thirty minutes to complete.
Your time is valuable. If you complete the survey and provide your name and contact information (which will not be linked to your answers), you will get one free registration pass for a lunchtime April webinar on the state of access to justice in Arkansas and related ethical rules (1 hour of ethics CLE credit pending). You will have two dates to pick from, and we will contact you to provide registration information in March.
If you have any questions, please contact our Program Coordinator, Jordan Rogers or call 501.492.7174. Please share this survey with other attorneys!
Please complete survey by Feb. 28th.
Supreme Court Appoints Justice Robin Wynne, Judge Robert McCallum to Commission
The Arkansas Supreme Court has announced the appointments of Justice Robin Wynne and Circuit Judge Robert McCallum to the Arkansas Access to Justice Commission. Justice Wynne succeeds retired Arkansas Supreme Court Justice Annabelle Tuck, and Judge McCallum succeeds Judge Leon Jamison. We are grateful for the tremendous contributions that our outgoing commissioners have made to our efforts to improve access to the civil justice system for all Arkansans.
Inaugural Fendler Fellows Selected for Commission Service
The UALR William H. Bowen School of Law and Professor Frances Fendler announced the appointment of two law students who will serve as inaugural Fendler Fellows, according to the most recent edition of the Bowen Alumni Connection newslettter. Lindsey Kuehn and Furonda Brasfield will each serve a semester for the coming 2013-14 year.
The Oscar and Patricia Fendler Access to Justice Fellowship, awarded to a law student for each academic semester, is supported by the Oscar and Patricia Fendler Endowment for the Advancement of Ethics and Professionalism established at UALR by Professor Fendler and her brother, Tilden P. Wright III.
Commissioner Waddell Awarded Equal Justice Distinguished Service Award
Arkansas Access to Justice Commission member Bill Waddell is the 2013 recipient of the Arkansas Bar Foundation‘s Equal Justice Distinguished Service Award, according to the Foundation’s Executive Director Ann Pyle. The award, which was presented at a June 12, 2013 awards banquet, is given each year in recognition of commitment to and participation in equal justice program for the poor, including pro bono efforts through legal services programs.
Mr. Waddell is a partner with Friday, Eldredge & Clark, where he leads the firm’s Commercial Litigation and Regulation Practice Group. Drawing from his leadership and experience with the practice group and his dedication to pro bono service, Mr. Waddell has committed to providing two attorneys from his practice group to lend their legal expertise twice monthly in the town of Clarendon where the Mid-Delta Medical-Legal Partnership holds a free legal clinic for area residents seeking legal assistance. He is also a member of the Volunteer Organization for the Center for Arkansas Legal Services (VOCALS) and the Equal Access to Justice Panel (EAJP). In the past year alone, he has performed over 120 hours of pro bono service for individual clients—this in addition to the outreach work he has put into the Clarendon MLP.
Over the course of his career, Mr. Waddell has handled over 300 pro bono adoption cases for Bethany Christian Services of Arkansas, which honored him in October 2012 with a service award during the 10th Annual Bethany Golf Classic. He has also assisted with several private pro bono adoptions, charging only court costs. In February 2013, Mr. Waddell was honored with the Living Legend Award from Philander Smith College for his social justice work.
Deeply committed to his faith and his church, Mr. Waddell serves as legal counsel to the Arkansas United Methodist Church’s clergy and is presently the national legal advisor to the United Methodist Church’s Council of Bishops. He has further served his church as Chancellor to the Arkansas Conference of UMC, as the Volunteers in Mission Coordinator, and currently teaches a young adults class at St. James UMC in Little Rock.
Since his appointment to the Arkansas Access to Justice Commission in 2008 by bar president Rosalind Mouser, Mr. Waddell has led a number of statewide efforts to expand access to justice. He took a leadership role in developing and implementing the first statewide campaign to raise significant private funds for legal aid. His days of devoted work on this project made it a major success including, for the first time, major corporate gifts of over $100,000 to legal aid.
But Mr. Waddell’s efforts to aid the administration of justice did not stop with the fund development campaign alone. He recognized the need to have an organization which could accept and distribute the funds raised to the two legal aid organizations in Arkansas. The Commission itself, being a creature of the Arkansas Supreme Court, could not function in that capacity. He thus set about preparing organizational documents to create The Arkansas Access to Justice Foundation, Inc. and securing nonprofit status for the organization from the IRS. Mr. Waddell and other members of his firm donated many hours pro bono to this effort. The end result is a permanent operational arm of the Commission that can accept and distribute funds in such a way as to positively impact the access to justice for all Arkansans.
Bill is a Fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers and has served as chair of the Financial Services Committee and the Legal Services Committee of the Arkansas Bar Association. He is currently a commissioner of the Arkansas Access to Justice Commission and is chair of the commission’s Pro Bono Committee. He is also the president of the Arkansas Access to Justice Foundation. He recently received the 2013 Living Legend Award from Philander Smith College for his social justice work.