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26 Pass It On: Newsl. Gov't & Pub. Sector Law. Div. 1 (2016-2017)

handle is hein.journals/passit26 and id is 1 raw text is: Opprtunitis S t the B By Elizabeth Andersen BA members who volun- teer their time and exper- tise for the ABA Rule of Law Initiative (ABA ROLI) and other ABA international volunteer programs provide over $2 mil- lion in annual pro bono legal assistance. These contributions are a huge boon to the pro- grams, and they also provide members with a meaningful opportunity to give back. ABA volunteers work in more than 50 countries, supporting our colleagues' efforts across the globe to strengthen their justice systems. Volunteers Who Have Made a Difference Volunteering with ABA ROLI is a great way to contribute expertise on an international level, learn about another country's legal issues and meet others who care about our world. Two members who have made a difference working with ABA ROLI are Rebecca Fisher and Ron Wolfson. Fisher hails from St. Paul, MN, where her practice focuses on criminal defense and she is actively involved in the Minnesota Bar. Last year, ABA ROLI's colleagues in the Kosovo Bar Association (KBA) asked for advice on strengthening their programs. GPSLD council member and former chair Judge John Tunheim, Chief Judge of the Fed- eral District Court of Minnesota and chair of ABA ROLI's regional council for Europe and Eurasia, thought the Minnesota Bar might help. He sent some emails, and Fisher heard the call. She joined a group of Minnesota Bar members who funded their own travel to Kosovo last summer to assist with the project. Several areas of potential cooperation emerged from those meetings, including how the KBA could increase young lawyer participation in the bar. As a past president of the Young Lawyers Section of the Minnesota Bar, Fisher followed up on those in- person meetings with numerous telephone consultations with young lawyers she met in Kosovo to advise them on how to structure a section, fundraise and become actively involved in the bar. She has also tapped the Minnesota Bar's Criminal Law section for resources and information on criminal law training for the KBA and worked with Min- nesota bar members to raise $2,500 to support a visit by Kosovo bar leaders to Minne- apolis. Fisher's pro bono efforts have helped spawn an enriching sister bar relationship between the Minnesota and Kosovo bars that we expect to pay rule-of-law dividends for years. After retiring from a successful career as the Assistant District Attorney in Nevada County, California, Ron Wolfson learned about ABA ROLI through a family contact who had been doing rule of law work for the British Embassy in Georgia. Immediately intrigued, Wolfson applied for a pro bono opening in the ABA ROLI Europe & Eurasia (E&E) Division's Georgia field office, and in 2009 he was hired as a pro bono legal specialist. Wolfson's main assignment was to work with the Georgian Bar Association to prepare the defense bar for Georgia's 2010 Criminal Procedure Code (CPC), which introduced the adversarial system, inclusive of jury trials, for the first time in Georgia's post-Soviet history. Number 1, Fall 2016. © 2016 by the American Bar Association. Reproduced with permission. All rights reserved. This information or any portion thereof i any form or by any means or stored in an electronic database or retrieval system without the express written consent of the American Bar Association.

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