LAW WEEK: What do you see as the role of the Sam Cary Bar within the legal community, as well as your role as president?
VANESSA DEVEREAUX: What I see as Sam Cary’s major role, and the reason why it was first formed, was to establish a professional organization for African-Americans to support one another, both professionally and emotionally. We have continued that tradition throughout because when it was first founded, there were very few African-American attorneys. They came together and were able to share stories or problem-solve different issues that were occurring within their life.
I think it’s still the same concept now, today. It’s a very close-knit community, we support one another, we are able to talk about issues that impact us directly, indirectly, things that are going on within our profession.
This year, I think one of the most pressing issues that we’re facing, and something that we talked about a lot during our gala on Oct. 6, was that there are very few African-American judges and very few people of color on the bench, but specifically African-Americans here in Colorado. We’ll have Judge [William] Robbins retiring in January. And [this week] the governor appointed Darryl Shockley to the Denver District Court. Had he not been appointed, there would have been zero African-American judges on the Denver District Court. We also have one Court of Appeals judge, Karen Ashby, who is going to be retiring at the beginning of 2019, and there will be no African-American judges on the Court of Appeals.
I think that we need to do a much better job of making sure that the judges better reflect the demographic that they’re serving. That that’s been our No. 1 issue right now.
Other things that I focused on were providing more CLEs; we started the mentorship program at Sam Cary this year, and we offered three free CLEs to our members, the last of which was a “how to become a judge” panel.
I think a lot of people within our profession don’t realize that you need to start early. And there are certain key things that go into this journey to the bench, even though people have many different paths to the bench.
We also have what we call our homecoming event in the spring and we have a roll call. We go from the most recently barred attorneys and students, and then we go up to our oldest members, and they talk about their past experiences, and we get to learn about each other as a community. It helps to introduce professionals to other professionals that are in their specific area of law.
LAW WEEK: Just to back up a little bit to this point about the number of African-American judges on the courts and trying to address that gap, can you tell me a little bit more about the significance of not having a bench that reflects the community?
DEVEREAUX: I think that in our court system, there is disparate impact on minorities and on African-American defendants or parties who are going through the court process, whether it be criminal, family, etc. So when you have diversity on the bench, they are more in tune with what the community is going through, and, hopefully, more aware of some of these implicit biases or culturally sensitive issues that arise within the law and within the court.
LAW WEEK: How do you see the legal community doing with diversity and inclusion efforts overall?
DEVEREAUX: Back in January, there was a panel with all the diversity bar leaders, and they discussed what was going on within their communities, what were the leading issues facing their membership, their members, and they’ve talked about the recidivism within firms or other workplaces and not only hiring practices, but retention of attorneys. There are two kinds of different discussions on that issue though, so I think it definitely always has to be a work in progress. And it’s something that needs to continually be addressed and re-addressed and talked about and part of the conversation, because the minute you stop talking about it, you’re not doing it justice, and you’re not being proactive enough to effect positive change.
A lot of the discussion within the panel was along those lines, like, “Yes, we have come a long way, but we still have a long way to go.” Along those lines, we created a best practices worksheet taking in mind that this is a working document, and that is constantly going to be changed depending on the organization or the times because that’s a really important issue. And I think that needs to continually be discussed and should be incorporated into people’s evaluations, because what we’ve seen happen is leadership, or the people at the top saying, yes, this is important to me, and then, you know, the people in the middle making hiring decisions, and so not seeing the results that we need to see. And so if we were to be able to incorporate those sorts of things and make it so that it’s as important to the middle person as it is to the leadership, I think you could impact a lot of people and effect positive change.
LAW WEEK: Is that something where you’ve seen some of these changes happen? Are there steps toward changes in the local community?
DEVEREAUX: I think that things like the [CBA/DBA President’s] Diversity Council are great steps in the right direction. And I found that with the diversity bars, some of them are much smaller than others. And so they don’t have as many resources, but they’ve really been good recently about coming together and supporting one another, and having these conversations and stimulating more thought and discussion on these type of issues, so that you get a more well rounded end product.
For example, when we did our little best practices worksheet, we started off as a template provided to me by [Gordon & Rees co-managing partner] Franz Hardy. We took that and we kind of specialized it to Sam Cary Bar Association and the membership and were able to discuss it at the Diversity Council table. And I think all of those things make a huge difference. That’s in the right direction. Because when you have more people from the diversity communities coming together and talking about what’s facing each of their members, you’re able to paint a better picture so that you can address certain issues that are reoccurring.
LAW WEEK: How do you describe the value of the bar association to prospective members?
DEVEREAUX: The way that I sell the organization is that the reason I became president was because I felt that I had to give back to an organization that has given so much to me. I was a scholarship recipient back when I was in law school, and I would probably credit the Sam Cary Bar Association for at least getting me in the door or introducing me to every single position that I’ve had within the legal profession.
I think of the Sam Cary Bar Association as a close-knit community, almost like a family, and they’re very supportive. They are very open-door policy if you have an issue. And it’s a wonderful support group. Although we haven’t had a formal mentorship program for a while, and we’ve restarted it this year.
There’s always been an informal mentorship that occurs with older members and younger members and even members of the same age and experience because that’s the beauty and the power of Sam Cary is that you can always feel free to contact someone, one of your colleagues and you always know that you’ll get the support and the resources or redirection that you need.
— Tony Flesor