The National Bar Association (NBA), the nation’s oldest and largest national network of predominantly African-American attorneys and judges held its 94th Annual Conference in New York City during the week of July 21.
According Justice Sylvia G. Ash, a Trinidadian-born judge of Grenadian and Vincentian parentage in Kings County Supreme Court, the conference began with a judicial memorial service at the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem on July 21.
At that event, Justice Ash said lawyers and judges paid tribute to judges of color who died in 2018-2019.
“In attendance were over 100 judges of color from over 25 states throughout the US,” she told Caribbean Life on Monday. “After the church service, there was a judicial procession through the streets of Harlem for a luncheon at the historic Schomburg Center.”
The NBA, which was founded in 1925, said it represents the interests of about 65,000 lawyers, judges, law professors and law students.
The organization said it is organized around 23 substantive law sections, nine divisions, 12 regions and 80 affiliate chapters throughout the United States and around the world.
According to the New York Law Journal, the NBA’s next president-elect will be Atlanta-based Tricia “CK” Hoffler.
Joseph Drayton, a partner at Cooley who is the NBA’s current president, said at the sidelines of the group’s annual convention in New York that Hoffler was elected as the group’s next president-elect.
Lonita Baker, Lamont Bailey and Nathaniel Lee were elected as vice presidents, Drayton said, and Tamara Lawson, Anne-Marie Clarke and attorney Sekou Gary were elected to at-large board member posts, the New York Law Journal said.
It said Hoffler, a Buffalo, New York, native, is a trial lawyer who runs her own law firm in Atlanta.
Baker is an attorney with Louisville, Kentucky-based Sam Aguiar Injury Lawyers, Bailey is the managing partner of New York-based Bailey & Bailey, and Lee is a senior partner at Indianapolis-based Lee Cossell & Crowley.
The New York Law Journal said Lawson is dean of the St. Thomas University School of Law in Miami Gardens, Fl; Clarke recently retired as commissioner of the St. Louis City Family Court; and Gary is a partner at Gary, Williams, Parenti, Watson & Gary in Stuart, Fl.
