Firm News: Award for Legal Work During Operation Metro Surge
On Monday and Tuesday of this week, I attended the Elder Law Institute, one of the annual continuing education conferences for attorneys in my practice area. Every year on the first day of the Elder Law Institute, the Elder Law Section (of the Minnesota State Bar Association) gives out several awards. This year, I stayed for the awards. I often leave early to use the restroom or get lunch, but the first person being honored (Julian Zweber, recently retired) is one of the most important attorneys in the Minnesota elder law field. I wanted to watch him receive his honor (it was lovely and moving, and he received a well-deserved standing ovation for his years of service).
To my surprise, the next award offered was one I hadn’t heard of before: a “Special Recognition Award”—meaning, the Award Committee had made a one-time award. The presenter began to explain that this award was related to the Operation Metro Surge/ICE crisis earlier this year. The award was for an attorney who created opportunities for lawyers in our Section to volunteer and help immigrants in our community. “I wonder who?” I thought. “Surely not…” To my surprise, the presenter then announced that the recipient was me.
Now, I am predictably of two minds. I am very pleased and flattered, of course. You don’t get through law school without an ego (it is the nature of the profession). However, I remain skeptical of how much I deserve the honor. The nature of the work I did earlier this year—training attorneys, and connecting them with clinics and public servants working directly with immigrants—means that I will never know how many of those attorneys were actually able to provide legal assistance. What I do know is this year did show me how our entire community worked together to help those vulnerable to Operation Metro Surge—from social workers and teachers and medical staff on the front line, to neighbors buying groceries and setting up free “stores” in schools, to parents patrolling around schools, to constitutional observers making sure the laws were being followed and documenting when the laws were not followed, to donors helping others to pay for their meals and housing, to protestors in the street asking for our neighbors to receive basic human decency and the protection of our laws, to lawyers writing writs of habeas corpus and appearing in federal courts, and most of all, to our immigrant friends and neighbors, for not giving up on the American Dream and our values as a representative democracy. We all played a part, and I’ve never been so proud to be a Minnesotan.
Also, if I had known I was getting an award, I would’ve worn a suit.
