Linda Klein (lawyer)

Linda Klein is an American lawyer, president of the American Bar Association,^[1] and senior managing shareholder at the Baker Donelson law firm.^[2]

Education and Academia

Klein received her bachelor's degree, cum laude, from Union College in 1980, and a J.D. from Washington & Lee University in 1983.

Klein, the first woman to serve as president of the State Bar of Georgia,^[3] currently holds numerous board of director positions, including Southface Energy Institute, and serves on the executive committee of the Buckhead Coalition and advisory boards of Best Lawyers in America and Super Lawyers. Klein is a past president of the Board of Directors' Network, the Caucus of State Bars, and past chair of the Institute for Continuing Legal Education in Georgia and the Lawyers Foundation of Georgia.

Klein has authored numerous published works and has lectured in France, Sweden, Spain, Russia, Great Britain, Canada and throughout the United States. Klein is a member of the American Law Institute, and serves as a mediator and arbitrator.

Professional History

State Bar of Georgia

In June 1997, Klein became the first woman to serve as president of the State Bar of Georgia. During Klein's term, she devised a proposal and advocated for the state to allocate funding to help indigent victims of domestic violence get legal help. She organized a statewide group of community organizations and local and minority bar associations that together convinced the General Assembly to appropriate $2 million. Since then, the annual appropriations have helped thousands in Georgia with legal issues related to domestic violence.

American Bar Association

Klein is current president of the American Bar Association (ABA), one of the largest voluntary professional membership organizations in the world. As the national voice of the legal profession, the ABA, founded in 1878, works to improve the administration of justice, promotes programs that assist lawyers and judges in their work, accredits law schools, provides continuing legal education, and works to build public understanding around the world of the importance of the rule of law.

Klein previously served in many capacities for the ABA, including chair of the ABA's House of Delegates, the association's policy making body; chair of the Tort Trial and Insurance Practice Section; chair of the committee on Rules and Calendar of the House of Delegates; chair of the Coalition for Justice, and chair of ABA Day, the association's Congressional outreach effort. Klein was also a recent member of the Council of the ABA Section of International law and served as a columnist and member of the Board of Editors of Law Practice Management Magazine.

Klein's priorities include a major effort to mobilize lawyers on behalf of enhanced legal services for the nation's veteran. In August 2016, she launched a Veterans Legal Services Initiative,^[4] led by a 20-member volunteer commission that will build a comprehensive online resource that informs veterans of legal issues that could affect them and direction to relevant local resources and legal providers.

Other priorities include the ABA Blueprint, an initiative to help members be more efficient and productive; a non-partisan voting initiative that encourages political participation; and a new education commission that will study and report on the growing legal concerns from families struggling with a substandard education system

Law firm

Klein is senior managing shareholder at Baker Donelson and served a six-year term on the firm's Board of Directors. Her practice includes most types of business dispute resolution, including contract law, employment law and professional liability. She has worked extensively with clients in the construction, higher education and pharmaceutical industries.

Cuba Consortium

Klein is an advisory board member of the Cuba Consortium,^[5] an assembly of companies, non¬profit organizations, investors, academics, and entrepreneurs organized to track and examine the normalization process in the US and Cuba to inform and prepare its members for opportunities to engage Cuba. They are complimented by foreign policy, political, economic, international development, legal, and cultural experts who have specialized knowledge of the diplomacy, politics, and economics of the normalization process.

The Cuba Consortium is organized by The Howard Baker Forum,^[6] a bipartisan convener of public policy conferences and roundtables founded by the late US Senator Howard Baker and designed to advance sound foreign and domestic policies.

References