The core mission of the Philadelphia Bar Foundation is to remove barriers to justice as it engages the community in support of civil legal aid. Most of you know about the grant making arm of the Foundation and that is a critical part of who we are and what we do, but are you aware of all the other programs that the Foundation supports? In addition to making unrestricted grants to dozens of nonprofit partners, we also administer programs which are vital to our core mission and help to support the removal of barriers to the civil legal aid system in Philadelphia.

Let me tell you about some of these important programs. We recognize that one of the most essential things that we can do now is to ensure that the Bar Foundation and the nonprofit world develop the next generation of board leadership. We have created the Board Observer Pogram with that sole purpose. This program is designed to teach young lawyers the nuts and bolts of how to be effective members on the boards of nonprofit entities and gives them the skills needed to ably serve on boards of directors. They learn how boards are governed, how they are supported and best practices for board members. This program has been so successful that it has been replicated by other states.

The R. Nicholas Gimbel Fund for Legal Excellence is a program administered through the Bar Foundation to provide legal skills training at no cost. NITA-style trial advocacy, deposition, and writing skills are provided at no cost to lawyers, who work for our nonprofit partners. The program which is done in collaboration with Rutgers Law School includes an intensive three-day immersion experience which ensure that these lawyers have the trial skills they need to advocate for their clients no matter the venue.

The Bar Foundation honors the memory of Judge Albert W. Sheppard, Jr., through the Honorable Albert W. Sheppard, Jr. Scholarship Fund which provides support for year-long law student clerkship positions with the Commerce Case Management Program. This fund was established by the Foundation and the Philadelphia Bar Association’s Business Law Section Business Litigation Committee.

We also honor the memory of Judge William M. Marutani who was the first Asian American judge to serve on the bench of the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas and was the first Asian American judge to serve in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. The Judge William M. Marutani Fellowship, which is a collaborative program of the Bar Foundation and the Asian Pacific American Bar Association of Pennsylvania, offers a stipend to law students to subsidize a public interest summer internship position with a nonprofit organization or with a federal, state or municipal court judge, or with a governmental entity in the Greater Philadelphia area.

Reentry into society after having served a prison sentence is extremely challenging for most people. The Bar Foundation helps to mitigate some of those difficulties through the administration of the Judge Alfred Luongo Fund which supports the “Supervision to Aid Reentry” or STAR program of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. This Fund was established by the Honorable Gerald Austin (Jerry) McHugh of the Eastern District in honor of Judge Luongo who was one of his mentors. This program helps ex-offenders transition back to the community and has recently been expanded to also help those who participate in two specialized courts in the Eastern District which are the Mental Health Protocol and Relapse Prevention Court. These programs help those who are facing mental health issues and substance abuse problems. Funds are administered through this program with the explicit intent of keeping people from returning to jail.

Along with the Philadelphia Bar Association, the Bar Foundation has established The International Law Lyon Internship Fund (the ILLI Fund) which provides a stipend to law students, in the Philadelphia area, who in participate in the Philadelphia Bar Association-Lyon France Bar Association exchange program.

I thought it important to highlight these programs for you to emphasize how essential the work of the Philadelphia Bar Foundation is. Yes, we continue to support our non-profit partner work as their work is critical. We also recognize that they are currently in crisis as they all face draconian funding cuts which are turning their respective worlds upside down. As the year goes along, we will be discussing more ways that we can help our civil legal aid partners. However, many of you might ask why you should be giving to the Bar Foundation when you can give directly to the nonprofit organization of our choice. The answer to that question is that by continuing to support the Bar Foundation, both through Unified Giving and individual gifts, you enable us to continue to direct monies in a fair and equitable manner to all our non-profit partners, who so desperately need help. With your support, we can also continue to support the other programs that we offer and insure that the work we do in the margins for civil justice can continue and that all who rely upon us for civil justice can continue to see the Philadelphia Bar Foundation as a beacon of light.

P.S. I have just finished The Last Painting of Sara de Vos by Dominic Smith. I needed an escape from the world and this beautifully written book provided that. It tells a story about a little-known painting by a Dutch Golden Age painter who was a woman. The book drifts among The Netherlands in the 1600s, a forgery of the painting in New York in the mid-20th century, and the unraveling of the forgery in current day Sydney.

**Last month's column had a typo - the correct name of the author of the book, James, is Percival Everett.