Frank B. Strickland, Chairman | Lillian R. Bevier, Vice Chair | David Hall | Michael D. McKay 
Thomas A. Fuentes | Herbert S. Garten | Robert J. Dieter | Thomas R. Meites | Florentino A. Subia

LSC's New Chairman
Atlanta's Strickland plans to move nonprofit agency 'up the learning curve'

It was almost two decades ago when Frank Strickland received the judicial S.O.S.

Thousands of Mariel Cubans had entered the country in the Freedom Flotilla at the invitation of President Carter, and 1,100 of them wound up being held indefinitely at the federal penitentiary in Atlanta. After U.S. District Judge Marvin H. Shoob granted their habeas petitions, the Eleventh Circuit reversed and directed that the petitions be dismissed. Judge Shoob believed the situation was inequitable, having already determined that the detainees posed no danger and deserved to be released. Further legal efforts, however, appeared unlikely because the detainees could neither afford representation nor, in most cases, speak English. So Shoob decided to pursue an alternative approach.

Strickland was President of the Atlanta Bar Association in 1985 when Judge Shoob requested to meet with him at the Atlanta courthouse. At the meeting, the judge placed a tall order: Would the Atlanta Bar assemble a panel of pro bono attorneys to represent the Cuban detainees in administrative proceedings? “The Atlanta Federal Pen was a maximum security prison—not a play camp,” Strickland recalls. “In the 1930s, it housed Al Capone. Imagine if you were in a Spanish-speaking country and placed in a maximum security prison; you’d probably feel like the situation was hopeless.”

It may have been if not for Strickland, who evinced an early understanding of the value of partnerships between bar associations and legal services programs. Strickland was serving on the Board of LSC-funded Atlanta Legal Aid Society at the time, so he contacted Executive Director Steve Gottlieb to propose collaboration. Gottlieb still remembers the cryptic call from Strickland proposing they meet about an undisclosed topic.

“Can you give me a hint?” Gottlieb asked.

“One word: Cubans,” Strickland replied.

Strickland converses with New Mexico Supreme Court Justice Pamela Minzner this April at the Board meeting in Santa Fe where he was elected LSC Chair. "I've been very pleased with the way the Board has come together as a unit," he says. "Having been appointed by President Bush, we all want to serve with distinction." photo credit: Jerry Goffe

Strickland circulated a letter to the entire membership of the Atlanta Bar, which then consisted of 4,500 attorneys. He also made contacts with friends in numerous Atlanta law firms. The Atlanta Bar raised resources, assigned a staffer to oversee the process, and 400 local attorneys ultimately agreed to take on about 800 cases. “The project just took on a life of its own,” Strickland recalls. “Any time you can get that kind of rate of return, you are doing well.”

Gottlieb still remembers how impressed he was with Strickland’s willingness to put politics aside to do what was right. “As I remember it, I said ‘Frank, all of those folks in Washington want to get conservative bar leaders like you to put the brakes on crazy legal aid directors like me, and here you are asking me to help you represent the Mariel Cubans.’ Frank, in fact, even took some of the cases himself. Ever since then, he has been a real friend of Atlanta Legal Aid and of legal services in general.”

As a result of the Atlanta legal community’s extraordinary effort, the new Cuban arrivals received their first taste of how a democracy treats vulnerable populations, and the Atlanta Bar won the American Bar Association’s Harrison Tweed Award for the country’s outstanding pro bono project of 1987.

In the 18 years to follow, Strickland established himself as one of the most active public interest leaders in Georgia, serving for seven years on the Board of Directors of the Georgia Legal Services Program and four on the Board of the Atlanta Legal Aid Society. This April, Strickland’s longstanding commitment to equal justice was recognized at the national level when his fellow Board members elected him to serve as LSC Chair.

Today, the Bush Administration relies on Strickland’s judgment to oversee the Board of the national legal services program. Congres­sional reforms of 1996 limit the types of advocacy in which federal legal aid programs may engage, and Strickland is not eager to undo the restrictions with larger problems looming.

“It seems to me,” Strickland says, “that there are an overwhelming number of low-income citizens whose basic legal needs are not being met. As long as that remains true, federal legal services programs have plenty of work to do without undertaking more exotic claims that immediately alienate some members of Congress. It doesn’t make any sense when they’ve just been through some rough sledding in the mid-1990s and survived. We’ve got to be smart and move up the learning curve.”