ABA President Barbara Howard says association will continue to prioritize the defense of democracy
It’s been a busy few months for Barbara Howard.
As the ABA’s president, Howard has worked to protect voting rights and urged her fellow members to do the same. She vowed to fight assaults on civil rights, which include critical threats facing unaccompanied children and other immigrants. She also spent three weeks in Europe, where she talked with lawyers in London and Copenhagen about the association’s efforts to defend the rule of law.
Howard, principal of Barbara J. Howard Co. in Cincinnati, is serving a one-year term that ends in August. She has a long history of leadership in the association, which includes being a member of the House of Delegates since 1986. She is also a past chair of the House.
In a conversation with the ABA Journal on Monday, Howard talked more about her first tasks as ABA president and what she plans to focus on in the months ahead. Our interview has been edited for length and clarity.
It’s been a few months since you became the ABA’s president, and about a week since the midterm elections. You’ve said that you want ABA members to help protect the right to vote. Why is that important?
I’ve put out two statements, one in September and one in October, and in both of them, I pointed to the role that we as citizens play in our democracy. As many before us have said, with democracy, it’s not one and done. It needs to be actively pursued and defended every day. It’s not the kind of thing where you can just sit back on your laurels and say, “Well, we’ve got our democracy.” And we all realized that. I think that’s what we saw as a country.
Voting is one of the most important responsibilities of an American citizen. It’s how we give our citizens the opportunity to hold our lawmakers and our officials accountable, and it’s how we have our voices heard. So for me, the focus was very much on getting out messages and encouraging lawyers around the country to talk with their fellow citizens, to engage with them, to assure them that our voting systems are very secure and that they should exercise the right to vote.
How have you been involved in those efforts?
Well, I spent Election Day as a poll worker. This was my fifth year. I worked the same polling place as I did last year. So that means on Monday night spending an hour, two hours setting up all the equipment, getting everything ready. Then it was about a 15-hour day, from roughly 5:15 in the morning until 8:15 at night. And we had probably about a 25% increase in the number of people who voted from the year before.
You’ve also expressed a need for the ABA to continue its fight against attacks on civil rights. What has that work looked like so far?
So far this year I’ve really been focused on the elections because we’ve had to be. As we now move past the elections, we need to be sure all the members of Congress are able to take their seats in January.
Another issue right now is immigration. We have seen some very negative developments with respect to the representation of especially unaccompanied minor children, but immigrants in general. ProBAR has had its funds pulled, and the entity with whom it contracts, Acacia, has had its grant terminated. There has been some money generated to allow ProBAR to set up a hotline for unaccompanied minor children to call in to get direction in terms of how they can get legal representation, which is required by Congress. That’s called the DORY hotline. Shelters have refused to give the phone number to minors who have asked for it. That’s a matter that is going to need some immediate attention.
There is also the overall issue with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services saying that rather than award a new grant to Acacia or someone else, it is going to internalize its representation so that the government is both representing the minor children and making the decisions on who stays and goes. That is an apparent, if not actual, conflict of interest. There’s a letter going out to Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. urging him to reassess that whole process. We will continue to monitor that very, very closely.
Turning to the ABA itself, many of its leaders have focused on how to make the association more efficient and serve its members better. What changes do you hope to see moving forward?
The Board of Governors has taken on what we’re calling “the renovation project.” It has become apparent as I’ve sat through several budget cycles and in talking to incoming section, division and forum chairs and staff directors, as well as others in the ABA, that we are too complex. We’ve gotten so complex that it’s made it really hard for new members, especially younger lawyers and potential new members, to navigate the ABA. When they get frustrated, they just give up. Because we’re seeing the nonrenewal rate of first-year lawyers is so much greater than for the rest of the association population, it’s crying out for reform.
We have five teams that are making their phone calls to entities, whether it’s a section, division, forum or a standing or special committee or commission. We are looking at all aspects of the association to see where we can make some changes that hopefully will simplify the structure, eliminate both silos and duplication of effort, and make it easier for people to find their way to their home or homes. We will be having an open forum at the midyear meeting for people to express their thoughts and ideas. We will really start working right after midyear on some proposals for revising our structure.
The first goal of the strategic plan is that the ABA is a home for all lawyers. So this is to help make that happen. The third goal is that we have a strong financial foundation to take us forward into our next 150 years as an association. So this is also to help in that effort.
I can imagine that is a big priority. Are there any others you’d like to mention?
The other one is the middle goal of the strategic plan, which is that we are the voice of the legal profession and defender of the rule of law. I have spoken a lot about the rule of law, both across the country and overseas. Lawyers overseas are very, very focused on what’s happening in the United States. We carry a great weight with our colleagues, and it’s important to them that they know what we’re doing to make sure that our democracy thrives in the face of some real attacks.
I have no preconceived idea that we are on an easy street now that the elections are passed. I think there will be continued efforts to dismantle parts of our democracy, and we will continue to defend it. That will certainly be a priority.
What have you enjoyed about the job and found most fun?
I’ve really enjoyed talking with people and helping create solutions. That is what we as lawyers do best—we solve problems. So helping advance the mission of the ABA and solve problems for either lawyers or entities within the ABA has been very rewarding. And I’ve certainly enjoyed traveling and getting to know both ABA members, and again, our colleagues around the world who are very much interested in the work of the ABA.
You’ve been an ABA member for a long time, and you know a lot of people well. But what is one thing other members might not know about you?
I am a third-generation lawyer. My maternal grandfather was also mayor of the city of Toledo, where I grew up, for 10 years. As a child, it was kind of fun walking down the street with him. People would greet him as Mr. Mayor. And then my paternal grandfather was not only successful in his practice, but he was also appointed as a probate court judge for a while.
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