President-elect nominee Steve Zack is decided the American Bar Association (ABA) doesn’t surrender to ‘diversity fatigue.’ Zack will be the first Hispanic president of the American Bar Association in its 150 years. Unsurprisingly, Zack comes with an ongoing adoration for both the law but for the issue of diversity. Zack happens to be a Miami lawyer and Partner with Boies, Schiller & Flexner. Presiding over the 410,000 member ABA, the biggest voluntary bar association in the world, has been one of his lifelong goals.
Zack’s professional career reads like a example in trailblazing. In 1988, he served as the youngest president of The Florida Bar along with the first Hispanic president. His resume if filled with powerful and influential positions including former chairman of ABA’s House of Delegates; former general counsel to Gov. Bob Graham and former chairman of Florida Ethics Commission.
Talking one-on-one with Steve and going past the impressive resume was a pleasure as well as an honor. We’d an opportunity to explore how his experience as a Cuban American, Jewish immigrant shaped his opportunities and interest in diversity. Given my own background of a Jewish family anchored in island life (Bermuda) we had much to go over. Our grandfathers had both come from Russia to flee the pogroms, the state-sanctioned massacres of Jews throughout the late 1800s and early 1900s. My family came to America and ended up in Bermuda. Steve’s grandfather had ended up in Cuba. Steve joked that grandpa thought he was going to America but got around the wrong boat. Being unsure of either Spanish or English, he already were built with a pushke going by time he realized he wasn’t within the U.S. A pushke was a peddler’s cart, a typical tool for Jewish immigrants to make a living and begin a family business.
My family started a dry goods store using a horse & buggy as its ‘pushke. Steve’s family business in Cuba was a tannery. The tannery was absorbed by Castro within the 1961 revolution, as were many other businesses. Hundreds of Cuba’s Jews fled towards the United States. Steve noted that for his grandfather, it was the 2nd connection with as being a refugee. He didn’t be prepared to ever have a third time as a refugee; if America failed, there would be nowhere else to go. The ‘Jubanos’ established a synagogue in Miami as they adjusted to their new house. Steve now is associated with a far more modern Reform Jewish synagogue, a transition that my family also produced from its early immigrant roots.
Steve joked that I could talk about my loved ones and just insert his name. Not quite. When I asked Steve what made him go in the legal profession, his experiences as a 14-year old refugee were not the same as my experience visiting America. My trip from Bermuda was an eventful plane ride to Ny, well-populated by fellow Jews and where people spoke a language closely related to my very own British. He discussed the way the police, the Cuban equivalent of the Russian KGB, pulled his family from the plane, isolated them and interrogated them. He was separated from his parents for harrowing, terrifying hours. Steve describes the incident as “The moment that I knew I’d not allow that to happen again.” He never thought about being not an attorney and says, “I have a passion it.”
Steve talked about his years within the legal profession and just how he found his new ABA position. He fleshed out the credentials listed on his resume along with a story emerged of government service and professional leadership. Early in Zack’s career he served as aid to Florida Senator/Congressman Claude Pepper, spending several years in Washington D.C. Carrying out a few years inside a Miami law firm, he was asked by Governor Graham to again enter the political arena as general counsel in Tallahassee. Hooked on state, Zack also chaired their state Ethics commission. The next governor asked him to help re-work their state Constitution. Continuing along his leadership path, Steve became president of the Florida Bar association and then national president of state Bar presidents before getting involved in the Board of Governors of the ABA and leadership in the ‘Big Bar.’
My talk to Steve followed the ABA’s recent summit addressing ‘Diversity Fatigue.’ In the speech, Steve discussed arriving as an immigrant to some sleepy southern town in 1961 with all of the Southern prejudices that existed over the South. There were clubs and associations segregated by color, ethnicity and gender. Jews weren’t allowed in many places, nor would you speak Spanish. He wonders why we tolerated that discrimination. Seeking to the near future, he wonders what current practices we’ll look back on and see as discrimination.
Steve is passionate about preserving diversity within the legal profession. He concentrates on the young people out there and wants these phones see diversity as their issue, too. Central to that particular happening may be the affordability of a legal education for minority students without whom there will be no pipeline of diverse lawyers. He asks if minority law school graduates have appropriate mentors throughout their school years. Do they have opportunities in main lawyers and for partnerships? Recruitment is improving but retention is not. Many choose corporate law departments, bypassing the law firms where leading edge legal issues are tackled.
Unfortunately, a number of these graduates will have huge student education loans averaging $150,000. Their finances implies that they cannot to pay for to work for legal aid services. Currently 50% of calls for help, mostly from women and minorities, go unanswered. Zack notes the situation is only going to worsen given the current economy. Young lawyers, legal aid groups, their customers and society generally will suffer.
There’s visible progress on some diversity fronts. Today, over 50% of these admitted to law school are women. Talking about our Black president, Zack applauds the progress, expresses concern with regards to judges. “I believe that diversity around the bench is essential. The Court need to look like the people who come before it.” Zack is passionate about the rule of law and also the importance of the courts. He served as co-counsel during Al Gore’s election bid and it is proud that America turns to its courts and its democratic principles, not its generals.
Zack notes the ABA has a long good reputation for involvement in the international rule of law issues. For instance, the ABA organized marches in DC objecting towards the removal of Pakistani judges and also the arrests of Pakistani lawyers. He notes the internet has taken people out of their communities and also the isolation created by governments. Zack has spoken at law schools in China and Russia and reports that the students wanted to talk about the rule of law and freedom.
Steve’s passion and broad experience are combined with large measures of practicality and realism. The ‘Diversity Fatigue’ conference led to 17 slides of suggestions and projects. Zack is concerned the process of prioritizing those hundreds of good ideas, implementing them and assigning metrics to measure their success. He urges his colleagues to visit not for that low-hanging fruit as well as the most urgent needs. There’s little doubt he brings those needs into focus and set their implementation.
Zack will have plenty of company as he pursues his mission. Current ABA president, H. Thomas Wells Jr., described the consensus reached in the diversity summit. “Diversity encompasses a lot more than visible differences of gender and race, or even more subtle differences of disability and sexual orientation, to include differences of perspective and viewpoint. The legal profession will achieve its greatest potential if this draws on all these differences of humankind, and serves the requirements of all.”
