2012 Biennial Conference for Legal Services Managers

Special Guest Presenters:
“Building a Better Business Case for Legal Aid,” by Jim Sandman, President, Legal Services Corporation
Civil legal services programs save government and society money. They are a good investment. Averted foreclosures and evictions, for example, avoid homeless shelter costs, and civil restraining orders in domestic violence cases can avoid future hospitalizations and unemployment. But the data available to quantify the economic benefits of legal aid are often spotty and years old, and many states have no data at all to demonstrate the financial value of legal aid. Jim Sandman will explain why a broad, robust, disciplined, and continuous effort to track the results achieved by legal aid programs and to quantify their value is necessary to educate the public about the benefits of legal aid and to increase funding from all sources.

Jim Sandman has been President of the Legal Services Corporation since January of 2011. From 2007 to 2011, Jim was General Counsel of the District of Columbia Public Schools under Chancellor Michelle Rhee. From 1977 to 2007, he was with the international law firm of Arnold & Porter LLP, and he served as the firm’s Managing Partner from 1995 to 2005. Jim is a past President of the District of Columbia Bar. He is currently chair of the DC Bar’s Pro Bono Committee and co-chair of the Standing Committee on Pro Bono Legal Services of the District of Columbia Circuit Judicial Conference. He has served on the boards of the University of Pennsylvania Law School, Wilkes University, the Neighborhood Legal Services Program, and Whitman-Walker Health, among other organizations

“Managing Difficult Conversations,” by Deborah Goldstein, Triad Consulting Group
Legal aid managers face difficult conversations every day - managing expectations of hopeful clients, allocating scarce resources, operating in a constrained budget environment, giving feedback to colleagues. Handling these conversations efficiently is no longer just a good idea –it’s integral to the success of each manager, and ultimately, the entire organization. And failure comes at high cost – conflicts that fester consume energy, sap creativity, and destroy teamwork. Based on ten years of work at the Harvard Negotiation Project, and the book, Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most, this interactive plenary will provide a framework for understanding why some of our most important conversations are so hard and offer advice for how to navigate these conversations in a more fruitful way.

Debbie Goldstein is a Principal and the Managing Director of Triad Consulting, and specializes in the field of conflict resolution. She is a faculty member at the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School, an adjunct professor at Georgetown Law School, and a Lecturer at Tufts University School of Medicine.
Debbie’s varied clients include Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Capital One, Merck, Prudential and Proctor & Gamble; students and alumni at Harvard Business School, Duke’s Fuqua School of Business, Harvard Kennedy School of Government, and the Daniels College of Business at the University of Denver; and, internationally, government leaders in Dubai; Members of Parliament in Ethopia; and public policy students from across the globe in Cyrpus. In the public sector, she founded and ran a free legal aid clinic called LINK (Legal Initiative for Kids) for the patients at Massachusetts General Hospital’s Chelsea outpost. Her writing has appeared in the Boston Globe Magazine, and the Management Information Exchange Journal.

“Mindfulness Communication Skills: Powerful Tools for Building Social Justice and the Greater Good, “ by Valerie Brown, LeadSmart Coaching
This highly interactive plenary session provides practical application of mindfulness for legal aid lawyers and managers. The focus of the session is on one of the core elements of mindfulness: positive communication skills to promote greater understanding and enhance well-being. Mindfulness meditation, the practice of nonjudgmental awareness of what is happening inside and around us in the present moment, is innate to every person. It enhances awareness and wisdom and helps people live each day with greater ease. Decades of clinical research support the use of mindfulness practices, which have been widely adapted across disciplines. In the legal profession, whose culture emphasizes speed, stress, and adversarial energy, meditation’s capacity to positively impact one’s view and style of work provides an especially attractive possibility. Practicing meditation and incorporating a meditative perspective can have a transformative effect on law practitioners and on the practice of law. It helps us to approach situations with a fresh perspective and to transform tendencies toward anger and self‐righteousness into the energy needed to serve one’s clients and justice more effectively.

Valerie Brown is a certified leadership coach, leadership educator, and Principal of Lead Smart Coaching, LLC in New Hope, PA. Her work and writing point toward powerful transformation through mindful awareness, and her passion is for creating greater trust, authenticity and integrity among people. Her expertise spans over two decades as a successful attorney-lobbyist representing legal and educational institutions, including Legal Services of New Jersey and the New Jersey State Bar, giving her a keen client-centered, results-oriented perspective. Trained at Center for Transformational Leadership at Georgetown University, the Center for Courage & Renewal, the Center for Mindfulness in Health Care, Medicine and Society, and Chestnut Hill College (PA) Program in Holistic Spirituality, Valerie understands the importance of emotional IQ in shaping leaders and creating trustworthy relationships. . She teaches mindfulness at retreat centers throughout the U.S and Canada. An accomplished author, her new book is entitled The Road that Teaches: Lessons in Transformation through Travel