[SIDE CONVERSATION]
Good afternoon and welcome.
I'm John Levi.
I'm privileged to serve as the 10th chair
of the board of directors of the Legal Services Corporation.
I know it's a very busy day up here on Capitol Hill,
and so we very much appreciate your coming
to attend this significant briefing
on the importance of civil legal aid to American business.
I want also thank Alaska Senator Dan
Sullivan for helping to make this event possible.
Many of us heard him speak so eloquently this morning.
He's a true champion for legal services nationally
and in Alaska.
I also want to thank the distinguished members
of our panel, corporate council who've
come from across the country from some of our nation's
leading companies, who will be introduced shortly
by the panel's moderator, LSC's outstanding and longest-serving
president Jim Sandman.
LSC has convened similar briefings
during the past few years in the House,
Senate, several forums we have sponsored across the country.
These events signify the importance of civil legal aid
to American business.
Our panelists will discuss their own views
on how our economy depends on the successful functioning
of our society, which requires access to justice
and the protection of legal rights.
The bedrock for business, as for our democracy,
is the rule of law.
And the rule of law is threatened with equal access
to justice is not available to so many Americans.
As Donald Rumsfeld observed nearly 50 years ago while
testifying before Congress as the first Republican director
of the Office of Economic Opportunities legal services
program that he saved, "We cannot expect respect
for the rule of law if we as public officials do not assure
access to the legal process.
To fail to do so would break faith with those Americans,
rich and poor alike, who have confidence
in our legal institutions and the notion that disputes
are better resolved in courtrooms than on the street."
Pepperdine School of Law Dean Deanell Reece Tacha
echoed those sentiments a few years ago
in talking to our board in San Diego, quote,
"When the great majority of the individuals
and small businesses of this nation
no longer can or believe they no longer can get a lawyer,
be represented effectively, go to court,
settle their disputes in a fair and impartial way,
and be treated like every other citizen,
we quite simply have lost the guiding
principle of our republic--
equal justice under law.
When that goes, the rule of law goes.
And when that goes, the great dreams
of those patriots who founded and fought for this republic
go with it, never to be reclaimed.
Something must be done."
Unquote.
Well, we're trying to do something with your help.
Our board, Jim, the Legal Services Corporation,
and its grantees across the country
are working as hard on behalf of the country
as they possibly can.
But we need your help, too.
And that brings us to the panel, being moderated
by Jim Sandman, former managing partner of the law firm
of Arnold and Porter.
Former President of the D.C. Bar,
General Counsel for the District's public schools
before joining LSC in 2011.
My pleasure to introduce my friend,
LCS President Jim Sandman.
[APPLAUSE]
Thank you.
Thank you.
Good afternoon.
I'm Jim Sandman.
I'm president of the Legal Services Corporation.
Our topic today is why legal aid is
important to American business.
I'd like to start with the basics.
What is legal aid?
What is the Legal Services Corporation?
Why are these people here?
Legal aid is free legal assistance to low-income people
in civil matters.
A civil matter is a non-criminal matter.
It's a matter like family law, child custody, child support,
matters of housing, evictions, and foreclosures.
It's protection orders for victims of domestic violence.
Most Americans don't realize that you
have no constitutional right to a lawyer in a civil case.
They don't realize that you can lose your home,
you can have your children taken away from you,
you can be a victim of domestic violence in need
of a protection order, and you have no right to a lawyer.
Studies show that Americans think the opposite.
They think you do have a right to a lawyer
in those circumstances.
I have my own theory for why people have that misimpression.
I think most Americans get their knowledge of the legal system
from television shows.
Most television shows are about the criminal justice
system, not the civil.
I think many Americans could give you
a reasonable approximation of a Miranda warning,
including that part about having a right to a lawyer and one
being appointed to represent you if you can't afford
to pay for one, with no understanding that there is
no such right in a civil case, because people don't understand
the distinction between the civil justice
system and the criminal.
That's a lawyer's distinction.
It's meaningless in everyday society.
The Legal Services Corporation is the country's single largest
funder of civil legal aid programs
for low-income Americans.
Legal aid programs provide assistance
to people who can't afford a lawyer.
We fund 133 independent legal aid programs
with more than 800 offices serving every county
in every state, the territories, the District of Columbia,
and Puerto Rico.
No matter where you are in the United States,
there is an LSC funded legal aid program providing assistance
to low-income people.
We are the backbone of the civil legal aid system in the United
States we ensure that there is some level
of legal assistance available to low income people everywhere.
There is no other organization like us in the United States.
We were created by an act of Congress in 1974,
signed into law by President Nixon,
and we've enjoyed bipartisan nonpartisan support ever since.
Our panelists today are from American businesses.
Our mission is about serving low-income Americans.
Why would they care?
Why are they here?
So I'd like to introduce our panelists
and ask them to begin to answer that big question.
To my right is Max Laun, who is Vice President and General
Counsel of Arconic, a new name in one of the oldest and best
known of American businesses.
Arconic was until recently part of Alcoa.
They develop and manufacture high-performance, engineered
products for the aerospace, industrial gas turbine,
commercial transportation, and oil and gas industries.
To my left is Teresa Wynn Roseborough
who is Executive Vice President, General Counsel and Corporate
Secretary of Home Depot.
You've all shopped at Home Depot.
As do I.
And to Teresa's left is John Schultz,
who is Executive Vice President, General Counsel,
and Corporate Secretary of Hewlett-Packard Enterprise.
You all use Hewlett-Packard products.
So I'd like to start.
I'm going to start with Teresa by asking the question--
I'd like you to introduce yourself to the audience.
Why did you become a lawyer?
What has your career path been?
Why are you, as a senior executive in one
of the best-known of American businesses here today
to talk about your concern about civil legal aid?
OK, why did I become a lawyer?
I grew up in Memphis, Tennessee--
can everybody hear me?
So the question was why did I become a lawyer?
I grew up in Memphis, Tennessee in the Bible Belt south,
and started my school career in segregated schools.
I was born four years after the decision in Brown versus Board
of Education.
You don't have to do the math yourself.
Yes, I'm very old.
And I grew up with an acute appreciation of the impact
that that decision had on my life and the life of my brother
and sister, as we were among the first African-American children
in Memphis to go to desegregated schools.
In fact, the elementary school I went to,
my brother and I were the first African-American students.
And we remained the only ones until our baby sister joined us
there four years later.
But our parents made us appreciate the role
that the judiciary played, and made it possible for us to go
to great schools in Memphis.
And so I was keenly aware of the ability and power of the courts
to change the course of lives.
And I wanted to be a person that helped other people.
And I wanted to be a person who knew
how to use the law as a tool to help other people lead
successful lives.
The course of my legal career--
I was fortunate enough to do a couple of clerkships
after I graduated from law school,
and then to go work for a law firm.
Could you talk about you clerkships, please?
I clerked first on the Fourth Circuit for Judge Dixon
Phillips, who once berated the three of us law clerks
for having overcharged the federal government $0.10
on our federal reimbursement forms,
and impressed on us the importance of being guardians
of the public fisc.
He was not very pleased to find out we were not thieves
for $0.10.
We had simply been too stupid to read a,
map properly and gone through the same toll twice.
I'm not sure which story he liked better.
But suffice to say, he was a gentleman that impressed on us,
as you all are, servants of our government,
the important and high duty you have to protect
the fisc of the government.
My second clerkship with was Justice Stevens on the United
States Supreme Court, also an amazing human being,
a very humble servant of this country,
a deep patriot with military service
and public service, who impressed
on us the guardianship we had as people
who helped make the law right, and looking
for the right answer in every case
without regard to which side was going to benefit
from the correct answer, but always looking for the law
as a tool to serve good.
So I had the benefit of incredible mentors,
and that continued when I started in private practice
with a firm that very much prided itself
on its public service and its bar service,
and got a chance to start doing volunteer work for Atlanta
Legal Aid and to work with people.
And I'm sure some of you have had the experience
through legal clinics or through your own pro bono efforts,
of simply writing a letter to someone on letterhead,
and having a problem be corrected merely
by having the problem stated on a lawyer's letterhead.
What an amazing thing.
It is to know the power you have as a lawyer,
that merely signing your name to a piece of paper
helps make something right for someone who's been wronged,
and far more when you get a chance to go into court
and help making something right for someone wronged.
Now why does that matter to me as the general counsel
of the Home Depot, where my principal obligation is
to our customers, associates, and shareholders,
and make the world safe for power tools?
If you don't laugh at that, then I'm really having a bad day.
We care because we care about our associates.
We care about our associates' ability
to resolve problems in their lives
with successful and helpful people
to make sure that they can lead the best lives possible.
We care for our customers.
You may not know this, but we have
over 1.5 billion transactions in our stores every year.
Most of those go incredibly, but a few don't go well.
We end up with about 6,000 lawsuits a year.
It is much better for us, it's much better
for our shareholders, it's much better for those customers who
remain our customers even when they are litigating
against us if they are represented by counsel,
if they have the opportunity to have someone help them
sue the right entity, serve the right people,
identify their claims correctly.
That protects the judicial resource in its efficiency.
It helps us get to appropriate resolution of the claim
more quickly.
And the same applies to the kinds of cases
that legal aid does--
to help people in housing circumstances
to identify the right defendant, to know the right solution
to the problems, to articulate their problems
in the right way that allows them
to use the judicial resources efficiently to get us
to a successful resolution.
And we as the Home Depot cannot depend on the judicial system
to help us resolve our conflicts with others,
whether they are big class actions or commercial disputes,
or small disputes with customers,
if all of us don't trust and rely on the judicial system.
And to exclude someone from that resource
is the same as to deny them the rights
that those resources were intended to protect.
We depend on it.
So we want them to be able to defend it and use it
respectfully and efficiently.
Thank you, Teresa.
Max, what about your career path,
and how did you get interested in this issue in light
of your business involvement?
See if this is working?
Working?
Here Max, we'll trade.
All right, thanks, appreciate it.
Teresa's again proven why she's such a tough act to follow.
I really can't follow with a story
about being a child of Brown versus Board of Education,
though we all are.
I'm from a small town in western Pennsylvania.
My father was a college English professor.
My mother also got her doctorate in English.
She was a she was a Holocaust survivor.
My maternal grandmother managed to make it out
of Germany in 1938.
They spent the war in London and came to the US and in '44.
My maternal grandfather, who did not make it out of Germany,
was a lawyer in Hitler's Germany and lost his right
to practice there.
So on that side of the family there
was a strong sense of doing the right thing
and trying to find solutions to some of the world's
most intractable problems.
I say that with being the child of two academics,
I was raised by pinko wolves.
In some sense very--
and so my career path into being a corporate lawyer
would feel a little strange.
In fact, when I interviewed with Alcoa way back when--
and it's more than 30 years ago at this point--
one of the questions was, well, aren't you just going
to go off and teach?
Why do you want to be a practicing lawyer?
But the real reason that I wanted
to be a practicing lawyer was because I saw lawyers
as problem solvers.
And whether they're small transactional problems
or big transactional problems or societal problems,
I saw lawyers rolling up their sleeves
and getting involved in things that
were important in the lives of people.
Alcoa's-- now our long retired CEO,
Paul O'Neill, who went on to, after he retired from Alcoa,
went on to be the Secretary of the Treasury in the Bush
administration, once said and made his mantra,
that we want to see all Alcoa employees go home from work
at the end of the day in the same good condition that they
came to work.
And a big piece of that is environment, health,
and safety.
It's our providing the necessary conditions,
the necessary protections for them to do it.
But another piece of that that I think is very important
is that if you're working on a job,
you have to be able to put any distractions you have
from your home life aside in order to concentrate
on the job at hand.
And if you're engaged in personal problems--
you have kids who are in the legal system, brother-in-law,
sister-in-law, whatever, those are all things that affect
your ability to do the job.
And so one of the things that Alcoa has done,
and Arconic continues with that tradition,
is we encourage people across the company
to get involved and deeply involved in their communities,
as I know HP and Home Depot do as well.
And we encourage our lawyers to do
pro bono legal service, or frankly
any public service that--
whatever it is they're passionate about,
we want them to do.
Because it makes them better people.
It makes it makes us a stronger company.
It gives us it gives us a more central role
in the many communities in which our operations are.
I don't have judicial clerkships in my background.
I started with Aloca straight out of law school.
And literally the day I walked in,
they said oh, the person who was the assistant pro
bono coordinator has just gone out on maternity leave,
so that's you.
So I got sucked into doing pro bono work,
coordinating pro bono work, got involved with the local Legal
Aid Society, as well as with the local County Bar Foundation,
who organized the volunteer pro bono attorneys almost literally
from the day that I started with the company,
nearly 30 years ago.
And I've continued that because I see the importance of it
to the everyday lives of people in my company,
the everyday lives of the people that I run into and touch.
And as Teresa said even more eloquently than I can,
in order for our communities to be to be successful--
and I'm in Pittsburgh, so we've had our share of ups and downs.
And we saw the steel and the coal industries
dry up in the 1970s and 1980s.
And we've come back much more in a service economy kind of mode.
But there's great disruption that
accompanies those sorts of societal changes.
And lawyers have a central role in that.
And we have an obligation to give back to our communities,
to make our communities stronger,
so that our employees, our customers, and everybody
around us has the ability to succeed.
Max, you mentioned that you're involved
with your local legal aid organization, which
is funded by the Legal Services Corporation in Pittsburgh.
Can you say something about what the nature of your involvement
has been, what they do, and why you
volunteer your time with them?
Sure, thanks Jim.
I'm the immediate past president of the board of directors
of Neighborhood Legal Services Association, which
is the legal aid organization in the greater Pittsburgh area.
As I said, I've known the people there
for nearly my entire legal career.
They provided training to myself and my colleagues
as we did elder law cases, originally.
We have a protection from abuse team.
We do a community legal clinic.
We do a variety of direct representations.
And about nine or 10 years ago, I was asked to join their board
and sort of progressed through that.
NSLA is an organization that really meets the needs
of the most unfortunate.
They, like every other legal aid organization out there,
has to do income screening on their on their cases.
And so they wind up representing the poorest of the poor
who really have nowhere else to turn.
And they've done a tremendous job doing that.
I have a tremendous amount of respect
for the work that the attorneys there do,
as well as for the training for those of us
who are in companies or in the private bar, who
will go out and try and extend legal services
to that same population by giving of our time.
John, what about you?
Can you tell everyone about your career path,
why you became a lawyer, what you've
done since you became a lawyer, and why and how you
are involved in the issue that brings us together today?
Can we hear?
I think I may need yours.
Perfect.
I'm going to stand up, so maybe that side can see me.
So I grew up in the Pennsylvania Dutch country of Pennsylvania.
No one in my family was a lawyer.
We didn't know any lawyers.
So it wasn't an obvious career choice.
But I think, really early on, I always
had a keen interest in justice.
I think that's sort of what drove me in that direction.
My family would slightly disagree.
They would tell you that I like to argue with people,
and I figured out someone was willing to pay me to do that.
And so this was like a perfect fit.
And so I found myself at the University of Pennsylvania Law
School, which I would say really had the most formative
experience of my legal career.
And that was participating in a law
clinic with a remarkable woman by the name of Lori McKinley,
who is associated with the legal services
organization in Philadelphia, and running the clinic
at the time.
And we worked together in representing
a young woman who was mentally and physically challenged,
and whose mother was seeking to have her forcibly sterilized,
so that she would not become pregnant living in a community
environment.
It really impressed upon me that lawyers
play an incredibly pivotal role in dealing
with folks who candidly have no ability to represent themselves
in any form or fashion.
They don't have the physical means,
they don't have the mental means in some instances,
they don't have the financial means.
And it was truly a life changing experience.
And so as I move through my career as a law firm partner,
and then ultimately into corporate life,
I never lost touch with the notion that the role of lawyers
is an incredibly special one in our society.
So fast forward to being at Hewlett-Packard Company,
and we most recently split into two companies.
But at that point in time, when I took over
as general counsel, $120 billion business
in 140 countries, 300,000 employees.
I saw firsthand what it meant to try
to do business-- whoop, yeah.
I saw firsthand what it meant to try to do business in countries
in which you do not have a solid legal system,
and people frankly don't trust the judiciary
and the government.
It's incredibly difficult.
I think we take for granted the competitive advantage
that we have, which not withstanding
all of the troubles that show up on the front page,
people generally trust our system.
They trust the government.
They trust the judiciary.
And that makes all the difference
when you're trying to build businesses,
and candidly when you're trying to improve people's lives.
And so I have always looked at this
as a scenario in which I believe the access to the legal system
is no different than the access to health care.
And I don't understand why we think about it differently.
And there would be an incredible outcry
right now if we were talking about doing away
with Medicaid and Medicare and all of the benefits
that currently provide the health care system.
And yet we won't bat an eye when we talk about taking away
the right of folks who can't afford
to access the legal system.
This isn't just a legal issue.
It's not just a lawyer issue.
This is a societal issue.
And we need people to understand how important it
is, not just because it's the right thing to do,
which it is--
it's the smart thing to do for Hewlett-Packard Enterprise,
for Home Depot, for Arconic, for all of the companies that
signed the general counsel letter that we sent
to Congress a couple of weeks ago, over 200
signatures of the largest companies in America.
We need people to engage at that level on this issue.
And I'm so glad you're here and willing to engage
with us on that, so thanks Jim.
Thank you, John I'd like to follow up on some points
that you alluded to and explain something
about the realities of our civil justice system
for people today who can't afford a lawyer.
In the United States today, in civil cases, more than 70%
of litigants do not have a lawyer.
They go to court alone.
Typically across the United States today.
95% of tenants facing eviction have no lawyer,
even though more than 95% of landlords do have a lawyer.
Typically, more than 90% of parents seeking child support
have no lawyer.
More than 2/3 of foreclosure defendants have no lawyer.
If you go into a courtroom in the United States today
alone, without a lawyer, what you face
is a legal system that was designed largely by lawyers,
for lawyers, constructed at every turn on the assumption
that you have a lawyer.
Everything about the law assumes that you have a lawyer,
from the terminology that's used,
to the forms that are used, to the rules of civil procedure,
to the rules of evidence, they make
no sense to someone who has had no formal legal training.
But that's what people are forced to navigate.
It's a system that works pretty well if you have a lawyer,
and not well at all if you don't.
It's a system that feels unfair and rigged
if you don't have a lawyer.
But that's the reality for so many litigants in the United
States today.
You all have lawyers.
You have lots of lawyers.
You have really good lawyers.
So you're not disadvantaged by the system.
But you seem to care about the issue.
Can you talk about the broader implications
for society, for the rule of law,
when we have a system where so many people are
unable, as an effective matter, to access it?
I'll take the first run at that.
There's an infrastructure that makes our government effective.
And John alluded to it, when he used comparative law
to compare the ease of doing business in the United States
to what it's like to do business in other countries.
But our democracy relies on an infrastructure
that's not just built on the structures of government
itself.
Sure it's the local government system,
the state government system, the federal government systems.
It's the federal agencies that are out there
doing good and enforcing laws and rights,
and putting together a regulatory structure to help
guide behavior and conduct.
But the judiciary plays the important role of making sure
that everybody has a secure access
to a vehicle for protection of rights, for resolving disputes,
and in making sure that there's an understandable path
and clarity to the results are going to be reached.
In different types of situations as much as possible.
And it is that clarity, that ability
to say, we have an infrastructure that
not only states that individuals have
particular rights, including the right to protection
of contract, the right to possession of property,
and to not having that property taken away
from you without due process of law,
the right to certain family relationships,
and to protection against harm in those relationships,
the right to enter a contract for housing,
and to have your rights as a tenant respected
by the people who lease you that housing,
to have the right to employment and the protection
from the loss of that employment from unfair factors.
And that infrastructure, the guardianship of those rights,
is important to making the economy work.
If we have a lot of people who are
disabled from their focus at work,
who are disabled from getting to work, who
are disabled from participating in the economy
because they have legal challenges and problems that
can't be resolved in an efficient way for them,
then we make sure that we disable a segment of society
that's very important to the effective functioning
of our economy.
To put it in basic terms, if the plumber that's
coming to Home Depot to buy the toilet that they're
going to install in someone's house,
can't do that, because the landlord has said that they
have to be evicted, because the rent's paid when the rent is
paid, and the dispute is over whether who
has to pay the utilities, and they
can't find a path to getting that dispute resolved,
they're not going to be at Home Depot buying the toilet,
and installing it, and getting the funds to buy
the clothing for their children or food
on the table for the family.
So we need the judicial system to work for those folks
so that they can be effective shoppers
in our stores at the most capitalistic center.
But all of us have to have the smooth function,
the infrastructure available to everybody, so all of us
can take advantage of it.
That's a great point.
We live in an integrated society,
where all the components are related to each other.
And it's a mistake to think that big businesses, like Home
Depot, don't have an interest in how
society is working for people who are less fortunate.
John?
So I think we've seen numerous examples in recent years--
what happens when communities believe
the system isn't working for them, and isn't fair.
And today we view those as isolated instances
that are someone else's community, someone else's
problem.
Maybe we talk about it at a dinner party.
But I think the frequency of them continues to grow.
And I think if we see the justice gap continue to grow,
we'll see more of the kinds of events that we've been seeing.
That isn't good for business that isn't good for anyone.
So I think this is really a pivotal moment
in time, in which we have to close this justice gap.
When I took my first trip to Russia,
to meet with my team in Russia, the very first question
they asked was, is your judicial system actually fair?
Are your justices corrupt or not?
I was floored.
I had been to 20 other countries before I had gone to Russia.
I'd been to Brazil.
I'd been to India.
No one had ever asked me that question.
In Russia, that was the first question they asked.
And the response I gave was obviously yes.
And I said, so why do you ask the question?
They said, because it isn't here.
We try to stay out of the courts.
We hear things, but candidly, here the system doesn't work.
I was floored by that.
But it left an indelible impression
upon me, which is, you can take for granted the situation
that we have here.
But I think if we do, we run the risk of losing it.
And when you have a conversation right now
in which you are talking about expanding the gap by taking
away LSC funding, I see that as a real threat to our ability
to continue to have the competitive edge
we have here, which is a stable, functioning society that
supports innovation and supports growth, and most importantly
supports opportunity.
So that's why we continue to be passionate about it,
and why we're so glad, Jim, that you're leading on this topic.
Can I just add one thing?
Sure.
Just to follow up on the point that John made,
it's worth pointing out that we're not here talking
about billions of dollars.
Last week, if you read the newspaper,
you would have seen that a private equity firm paid over
$3 billion for an online gourmet dog food company.
We're talking about Legal Services
Incorporated [INAUDIBLE] last year was $354 million.
That's with an m.
And we're talking about $350 million
that went to supporting the infrastructure
of our judicial system for those unable to access it.
We're talking about $354 million that
went to support the activities of the working poor,
to protect their housing, to protect their domestic safety,
to protect their access to basic services in the economy.
Talking about services to veterans.
This is the most dirt cheap investment
in making American democracy work for everyone
that you could possibly imagine.
It deserves to be supported by a number that starts with a B,
in the billions, but it's not.
And we are here begging to hold on to several million dollars
to make the government of the United States better.
I would just say very quickly, this administration
has talked a lot about the forgotten person.
That is who LSC's clients are.
So it seems wholly inconsistent to me
to have a group of folks who espouse interest
in the forgotten person not funding LSC, whose clients are,
in fact, those people.
No, absolutely.
And just to just to build on what
both John and Teresa have said, as well as Jim's comments.
At the current funding level, LSC and legal aid
in general, can only meet about 20%,
in some cases 25% of the need.
There is such great need out there that is not being met.
And if we do away with funding for LSC,
it's not like there's a there are local and state sources
for funding that are standing by ready to jump in to serve
the poorest of the poor.
The investment in LSC funding has a tremendous return--
I mean it has a tremendous multiplier effect.
When you have people when you have people
who are able to keep their jobs and their homes,
it means that they can go to work, earn more money,
help their families.
It is very much a virtuous circle
in terms of returning the investment.
This is one of those things that is
so fundamental that those of us who
take a business view of it--
why wouldn't you invest in it?
And why wouldn't you invest more in it?
Thank you.
As you may have inferred, the administration
has proposed that funding for the Legal Services Corporation
be abolished.
Our current appropriation for grants to the legal aid
organizations that we fund amounts to less than Americans
spend every year on Halloween costumes for their pets.
John, you alluded to a letter that corporate general counsel
sent a few weeks ago about the issue of LSC funding.
I want to ask a broader question.
Are you folks ringers?
Are you the only ones we could get to come today?
Are you representative of corporate America,
or are you outliers?
You, I assume, have relationships
with other corporate general counsel,
other corporate executives, and are
in touch with the leadership of other major American
corporations.
What is your sense of what they think about this issue?
And can you say something about that letter?
So, we have over 200 signatures.
I would say that the hit rate has to be over 95%.
It wasn't like we sent it to 2000 people and we got 200.
We sent it to 200 and we got 200.
Candidly, it was instantaneous responses
when we decided to submit the letter,
and we started soliciting signatures.
So this is a situation in which, I think across the board,
whether you're a red state, blue state, regardless of what
industry you're involved in, how big your company is,
you recognize the importance of this.
It really is a nonpartisan issue.
And so I was very pleased by the response
from every sector of the economy,
from big and small companies, no matter what geography,
it was overwhelming and instantaneous.
So we're not the outliers
Can you say something about your personal involvement
with these issues?
Max, you spoke about your participation
with Neighborhood Legal Services Association in Pittsburgh.
John, I know that you're involved personally
in a number of issues, and Theresa, you too.
Can you say something about what you do and why?
One of the most important decisions
every very busy person makes every day
is how to spend your time.
That reflects something about your values
and your priorities.
I'd like to hear about how you make those decisions.
Sure.
Two of the core values of the Home Depot
are giving back and doing the right thing.
And we have lots of activations that
allow us to give back in our lives as Home Depot associates.
One of the ones you may have been familiar with
is Team Depot, which does community service projects that
are largely through our stores.
And our law department also participates in those events.
But our law department also offers strategic partnerships
with Atlanta Legal Aid, Pro Bono Partnership, Atlanta Volunteer
Lawyers Foundation, Street Law, and veterans organizations
in order to allow lawyers to--
and legal assistants, and even our administrative assistants--
to follow their hearts, and how those hearts
lead them to give back to the community.
And we try to follow their heartbeats and their hands
with our dollars, so that our Home Depot Foundation provides
support to Atlanta Legal Aid and the Pro Bono Partnership.
So that as our associates are investing their time
and their talent into organizations,
that they know that they'll be supported by dollars
from Home Depot as well.
And what I find for our law department
is that those opportunities not only
help make them better lawyers for the company--
exposes them to more issues, give them
more opportunity for client service and representation,
gets them exposed to a broader range of issues,
get to meet members of the judiciary
and to see how different courts function.
On a very practical level, it's a very skill enhancing thing.
But it also increases their investment in the company,
to know that the company serves for them
as a vehicle through which they can also give back to community
and family, and to serve all parts of themselves,
and all the reasons that all of us--
I'm assuming that many of you are lawyers.
We didn't become lawyers solely because we
enjoy document production.
There are other reasons that we came to be lawyers as well.
And part of it was animating our ability to serve others.
And so through participation in these organizations,
we help make people better and more [INAUDIBLE]
when they're participants of their communities,
and better lawyers at the same time.
I've been affiliated with a number of organizations
nationally, Legal Aid and Defender Association,
on the board of the Equal Justice Works.
But I want to just talk a moment about another organization
that I was the past president of, and still the board.
And that's the Law Foundation of Silicon Valley.
The reason I think it's significant is right now,
Silicon Valley may be the most prosperous part of the US,
and arguably the most prosperous part of the world.
And yet there is a massive population
of at-risk, impoverished people, especially
in the city of San Jose.
People wouldn't think of that, but that is in fact the case.
And there is a justice gap in the heart of Silicon Valley.
The Silicon Valley Law Foundation
is dealing with foster youth.
They're dealing with predatory credit practices.
They're dealing with issues around,
in essence, forced slavery.
We've got a lot of human trafficking issues
in the Bay Area.
These are things that people don't think about and talk
about when they think of Apple, Facebook, Google,
Hewlett-Packard, et cetera.
So it really impressed upon me, coming to the Bay Area
eight years ago and getting involved
with this organization, that this isn't just an issue that
resides in a few places that you would traditionally
think of as struggling.
The truth of the matter is, is this
is in every community in which we work and live.
That gap exists everywhere.
And that's why we need the federal level attention
to this issue, because we need that level of coordination.
We need that level of efficiency.
We need that level of advocacy.
So I have been drawn to the LSC because I
see how much it makes a difference in all
the different aspects of the things that I'm involved in,
as well as my own team, which does
about 10,000 hours of pro bono work every year
around the world.
So LSC is an incredibly important part of our mission,
and why I'm so passionate about having it survive and thrive.
My common refrain is, "Building on what
John and Teresa have said."
[LAUGHTER]
I second almost everything they've said.
We really encourage our lawyers to do pro bono, in part
because it builds their skills as lawyers,
but most importantly it builds them as people.
I've had new lawyers come back and say, gee,
I just did my first protection from abuse case.
I had no idea that somebody who lived three miles from me,
was putting up with the circumstances
that they were facing.
I think one of the things it does
is it connects us in a way-- connects us
with pieces of our community that we wouldn't necessarily
see.
And that's essential for each of us as human beings.
But it's essential for the company as well, because if--
today it may be somebody who was unfortunate.
Tomorrow it may be one of our employees
who's going through something like that.
And we need to have people being able to access the system.
And we need people within the company
and within our organizations who have empathy,
and understand the real world problems that people face.
It's easy to jump in the car and drive home
and not think about it.
But when you stop off at the community clinic,
and you have people walking in with landlord tenant problems,
with problems involving a criminal drug conviction,
those are the real world things that we need to deal with.
And the funding that LSD gets, that it distributes out
to the legal aid organizations across the country
is essential to that.
All of our panelists put themselves out to be here
today.
John came from Silicon Valley.
Teresa from Atlanta, Max from Pittsburgh.
We had another panel yesterday at Georgetown University Law
Center that included senior executives of Microsoft
and Viacom, Cisco, making similar points.
These are not outliers.
They're not ringers.
There is a fundamental national interest
in the integrity of our justice system
and having a level playing field, fairness.
These are the most fundamental of American values.
They're about who we are as a country.
And what we hold ourselves out to the world to be.
Thomas Jefferson said, "The most sacred
of the duties of government is to do equal and impartial
justice to all its citizens."
That's what our founders thought, the framers.
You can find that value expressed over and over again
in American history.
In the closing words of the Pledge of Allegiance,
"Justice for all."
On the inscription on the Supreme Court
building just a block from here, "Equal justice under law."
This means something to all Americans,
including American business.
When anyone is left out, when the system isn't
working for anyone, we're at risk
of not having it work for all.
Would you please join me in thanking our panelists
for the effort they make to come here today?
[APPLAUSE]
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