Compilation charts ABA's influence on profession, society

The American Bar Association issued its first-ever ABA Impact Report this month to highlight the reach of the ABA’s good works domestically and abroad—and describe the tangible ways the association helps its members use the power of law to advance the legal profession’s voice for justice.

The report, compiled by the ABA Rule of Law Initiative and Center for Public Interest Law, highlights many of the ABA’s major achievements in the past year. Programs include:

• The ABA’s advocacy for student debt relief resulted in the Department of Education announcing a temporary waiver of certain rules of the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program, making more people eligible for loan forgiveness and the White House extending a pause on student loan repayments.

• The ABA’s Criminal Justice Section and Center for Human Rights’ Atrocity Crimes Initiative works at the intersection of law and policy to advance the prevention of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity and to ensure perpetrators are held accountable.

• The ABA Center for Children and the Law’s Education Barriers Project works to ensure children in foster care remain in their school district of origin even as they move to a new home.

• ABA Free Legal Answers, the first and only online national pro bono legal advice portal, has responded to more than 250,000 civil legal questions.

• In 2022, the ABA’s Death Penalty Representation Project surpassed 400 prisoners assisted by its pro bono firms since 1998. To date, more than 110 prisoners have been saved from wrongful execution with the help of the project’s pro bono attorneys, and hundreds of cases remain ongoing.

• The ABA Section of State and Local Government Law launched the Defending Democracy Initiative to educate the public on the important role that election workers play in the democratic process and the rule of law and promote the public’s trust in the electoral process — underscoring that the average election worker is non-partisan in their work.

The ABA’s four goals are to serve its members, improve the legal profession, eliminate bias and enhance diversity and advance the rule of law. “But goals are meaningless without action, and action is empty without impact,” ABA President Deborah Enix-Ross said.

View the ABA Impact Report at www.americanbar.org/content/aba-cms-dotorg/en/advocacy/rule_of_ law.