PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE
A COMMUNITY COMMITMENT
“
The Impact of Lawyers Who Give Back
By Jacquelyn H. Saylor
The Saylor Law Firm LLP
“We were also fortunate to learn
from Jonathan Rapping, our
Celebrating Service speaker,
about the need to support
overworked public defenders
who represent those accused of
crimes too poor to hire a lawyer.”
M
embers and friends of the Atlanta Bar Association
were fortunate to learn about the many civil pro bono
and community service projects that the Atlanta Bar,
Legal Aid and the Atlanta Volunteer Lawyers Foundation
honored at our Celebrating Service Luncheon on Friday,
October 17, 2014. We were also fortunate to learn from
Jonathan Rapping, our Celebrating Service speaker, about
the need to support overworked public defenders who
represent those accused of crimes too poor to hire a lawyer.
He also issued a challenge and emphasized the need to
change the present public defender system in Georgia. 1
Rapping explained that “the lawyer is the vehicle necessary
to ensure justice. [You] can’t have equal justice if poor people
don’t have the kind of lawyer you and I would pay for.” 2
Rapping is the President and Founder of Gideon’s Promise,
previously known as the Southern Public Defender Training
Center. He recently received the 2014 MacArthur Foundation
4 THE ATLANTA LAWYER
November 2014
“Genius Grant” because of his efforts to transform the public
defender system in the South. For the past seven years he
has also been an Associate Professor of Law and the Director
of the Honors Program in Criminal Justice at Atlanta’s John
Marshall Law School. Rapping is on leave from teaching to
help reorganize the Maryland Office of the Public Defender. 3
Rapping was the first training Director for the Georgia Public
Defenders Standards Council (GPDSC), from 2004-2006
where he developed the Council’s Honors Program. The
purpose of the program was to recruit public defenders
throughout Georgia and train and support them so that the
indigent defense representation would be transformed in
those jurisdictions. 4 Jessica Stern, Chair of the Criminal Law
Section of the Atlanta Bar, was trained in that Honors Program.
Rapping told a story about four clients that taught him that
criminal defense work is about people. Rapping said, “It took
The Official News Publication of the Atlanta Bar Association