Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg to Present Inaugural Belfer Lecture

United States Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg will present the inaugural Ira M. Belfer Lecture on Thursday, November 16 at Brooklyn Law School. The Lecture will begin at 4:00 p.m. in the Jerome Prince Moot Court Room, 7th floor at Brooklyn Law School, 250 Joralemon Street.

Justice Ginsburg's lecture, “The Bar's Responsibility to Provide Representation When Needed: Pro Bono Service by Lawyers,” will address the recent declining trend in pro bono work by major law firms. Despite the ABA-mandated minimum of 50 pro bono hours a year, it is estimated that attorneys in the top 100 law firms are spending on average only eight minutes a day on pro bono cases, well below the minimum requirements. Nationwide, Time magazine has reported a decrease of 63% over the last seven years in hours spent on pro bono cases by major firms.

Legal analysts point out that as our society has become more materialistic, so has the legal profession – prompting lawyers to focus more on fees and billing than clients. The same analysts are critical of the law firm culture that bases attorney promotion decisions predominantly on how much money junior associates produce, with little, if any, consideration given to how much public service they perform.

Justice Ginsburg's address is made possible by the generosity of Ira M. Belfer's son, Dr. Myron L. Belfer, a Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, Department of Social Medicine. He currently serves as the Senior Consultant in Child Mental Health for the World Health Organization in Geneva, Switzerland. Ira M. Belfer is a graduate of Brooklyn, Law School, class of 1933.

About Justice Ginsburg
Ruth Bader Ginsburg was born on March 15, 1933, in Brooklyn, New York. She attended Cornell University, and Harvard Law School, and a member of the Harvard Law Review. After Harvard, Ginsburg was employed as a law clerk for Edmund Palmieri, a U.S. District Court Judge for the Southern District of New York. In 1963, Ginsburg became only the second woman to join the law faculty of Rutgers University. In 1972, she joined Columbia Law School’s faculty, where she became the first tenured woman law professor. Ginsburg was appointed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia by President Jimmy Carter in 1980. With the resignation of Justice Byron White in 1993, President Clinton nominated Ruth Bader Ginsburg to the Supreme Court of the United States. Her appointment was confirmed by the Senate, 97-3, and she took the oath of office on August 10, 1993.