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Bar News - March 5, 2004 ABA President~Elect Nominee Michael Greco Has NH Connection Pro Bono Champion in Line for Presidency MICHAEL S. GRECO, a Boston attorney with a long history of championing the legal needs of children and the poor, has been nominated president-elect of the American Bar Association. Greco’s name was placed in nomination by Portsmouth attorney Stephen Tober, New Hampshire State Delegate to the ABA House of Delegates at the ABA’s Annual Meeting last month. Tober, along with ABA Association Delegate L. Jonathan Ross — both NHBA past presidents — worked with Greco in the mid-1980s to marshal the organized bar’s opposition to congressional attempts to curb federal funding for programs representing poor people. Greco and Ross, then presidents of their respective state bar associations, teamed with bar leaders from other states, including Bill Whitehurst of Texas to form a grass-roots organization, Bar Leaders for the Preservation of Legal Services for the Poor, to focus the attention of local, state and national legal organizations on resisting attempts to impose crippling cuts on the Legal Services Corp., which funds many local legal services organizations. Other NH Bar leaders, including current NH Supreme Court Chief Justice John Broderick, also participated in keeping legal services’ funding on the ABA’s priority agenda. (Broderick eventually was appointed to the board of the Legal Services Corp. by President Clinton and has become one of its longest-serving members.) Tober, in his nominating speech, said, "For more than 30 years Mike has dedicated time, energy and resources to protecting the liberties and rights of individuals, to the administration of justice, and to the needs and hopes of lawyers. Time and time again we have turned to him for leadership, and time and again, he has served us with distinction." The Nominating Committee of the ABA House of Delegates then endorsed Greco, and he will run unopposed. The entire House will vote on the nomination in August at the Annual Meeting in Atlanta. Greco will become ABA president in August 2005, at the close of the ABA Annual Meeting in Chicago. Greco, a partner in the Boston office of Kirkpatrick & Lockhart, LLP, is a trial lawyer with more than 30 years of litigation experience in business, employment and real estate law. He has also served as mediator and arbitrator in complex business and other disputes on both the state and national levels. He joined Kirkpatrick & Lockhart in 2003, after 30 years as partner with Hill & Barlow of Boston. "In this great country, more than 80 percent of the legal needs of the poor go unmet each year," said Greco. "This is simply unacceptable in a democracy. As lawyers, we have an obligation to help meet those needs, and to help make access to justice available to all. We are committed to redoubling our efforts to ensure that adequate funding for legal services is made available, and that other necessary resources are devoted to serving those who cannot protect themselves. To ensure that rights guaranteed by the constitution are protected, we cannot afford to do less." Greco has long been active in working to ensure that the legal profession and federal government meet the legal needs of the underserved in America. As president of the Massachusetts Bar Association in 1985, Greco and the Governor jointly appointed a blue-ribbon Commission on the Unmet Legal Needs of Children, whose report and recommendations led to enactment of new statutes protecting the legal rights of children in the state. Greco also chaired the first-in-the-nation Massachusetts Legal Needs for the Poor Assessment and Plan for Action, and co-founded Bar Leaders for Preservation of Legal Services for the Poor. The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court also appointed Greco as chair of the court’s committee on Massachusetts lawyers’ obligations to provide pro bono legal services. Within the ABA, Greco has served in the House of Delegates since 1985 and as State Delegate from Massachusetts since 1993. He has chaired the association’s Standing Committee on Federal Judiciary and Section of Individual Rights and Responsibilities. After the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, Greco was appointed to the ABA Task Force on Terrorism and the Law, which provided analysis of legislation that resulted in the US Patriot Act, and he helped develop ABA policy regarding the use of military tribunals to try suspected terrorists. He also served on the ABA Standing Committee on Law and National Security. Greco is interested in the important balance between effective national security and the preservation of constitutional due process through an independent judiciary and independent legal profession, and will work on those issues during his year as president. 
Michael Greco
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