From the YLD President, 1219 GABJ, GSB Vol. 25, No. 3, Pg. 10

• Author: WILL DAVIS YLD President State Bar of Georgia
• Position: Vol. 25 3 Pg. 10

From the YLD President

Vol. 25 No. 3 Pg. 10

Georgia Bar Journal

December, 2019

2020 Signature Fundraiser to Support Georgia Legal Services Program

WILL DAVIS YLD President State Bar of Georgia

The Young Lawyers Division will hold our 2020 Signature Fundraiser on March 21 with a St. Patrick’s Day theme. Over the years, our Signature Fundraiser has been highly successful in providing an evening of fun for Bar members and guests, in addition to the primary purpose of generating significant financial support for a worthy Georgia nonprofit organization selected by the YLD Board of Directors.

This year’s beneficiary of the YLD Signature Fundraiser is the Georgia Legal Services Program (GLSP), which for almost 50 years now has provided civil legal services to low-income residents in the 154 Georgia counties outside the immediate metro-Atlanta area. GLSP is a most appropriate choice as our 2020 beneficiary, as it was actually the brainchild of a group of visionary members of the YLD (then known as the Younger Lawyers Section) in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and it also happens to be where I began my career as a young lawyer a decade ago in Albany.

In 1968, Georgia young lawyers initiated a study of the pressing need for low-income Georgians to have access to legal representation. That study concluded there was a distressing disproportion between the actual need for legal services by those who could not afford them and the present supply of legal services available to them. In addition, the study found that lawyers tended to concentrate in urban areas, whereas many of the “indigent” lived in rural areas where legal help was less available.

This first step was followed the next year by another extensive report aimed at promoting “provision of legal services to indigent persons to the fullest extent possible,” including a draft of Articles of Incorporation of Georgia Indigents Legal Services, Inc. It was through the efforts of Georgia’s young lawyers that the Georgia Legal Services Program was created in 1971.

All Georgians have a right to high-quality legal services regardless of their ability to pay. Our state’s population growth and economic prosperity has not and will not close the justice gap. As we get ready to turn the calendar from 2019 to 2020, the need for GLSP—whose mission is to provide civil legal services for persons with low incomes, creating equal access to justice...