Members who inspire. Righting injustices
| Author | Lorelei Laird |
| Pages | 62-64 |
ABA JOURNAL | SEPTEMBER–OCTOBER 2019
62
ABA Insider edited by
LEE RAWLES
lee.rawles@americanbar.org
Members Who Inspire is an ABA Journal series profiling exceptional ABA members. If you know members who do unique
and important work, you can nominate them for this series by emailing inspire@abajournal.com.
Photo courtesy of Minami Tamaki
MEMBERS WHO INSPIRE
Righting
Injustices
ABA Medal recipient Dale Minami
has built a career around
inclusion and civil rights
for Asian Americans
BY LORELEI LAIRD
Dale Minami didn’t know
what the ABA was for the
rst nine years of his legal
career. Then, in 1981, an
invitation came.
The ABA was hosting a nation-
al institute of minority lawyers in
Washington, D.C., along with several
afnity bar associations. Minami was
invited to help hash out reforms within
the profession to help attorneys of
color and their clients. But the sub-
text—based on Minami’s recollections
and contemporary coverage from the
ABA Journal—was an apology for
past discrimination and an appeal to
minority lawyers to join forces with
the association.
The event prompted Minam i and
others to form the rst n ational bar as-
sociation for Asian Paci c Americans .
Though that effor t failed, he says, it
planted the seed for the Nat ional Asian
Pacic America n Bar Association,
which was founded in 1988.
“And now we have an organization
that was inspired by the ABA, truth-
fully, in many ways,” says Minami,
who practices at Minami Tamaki in
San Francisco and has been an ABA
member for some 30 years. “They set us
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