By Brooke Lierman, an attorney at the civil rights firm, Brown, Goldstein & Levy LLP in Baltimore, Md. Ms. Lierman is on the Executive Committee of the Maryland Lawyer Chapter of ACS.
The White House recently added to its growing list of Champions of Change, a group of 16 individuals working, in the words of Attorney General Eric Holder, “to address and to overcome our most pressing legal challenges and to live up to our nation’s highest ideals.” 
The event, last week, was the latest in a series sponsored by the White House Office of Public Engagement (OPE), which seeks (in the words of the Office’s director Jon Carson) to shine a spotlight on the good work that Americans are doing every day in their communities.
This event was organized jointly by OPE and the Department of Justice Access to Justice Initiative, an office created by Attorney General Holder (pictured) to ensure that basic legal services are available and accessible to everyone in the country.
Attorney General Holder offered some prepared remarks discussing the important work that the honorees perform in their communities. The 16 individuals, listed below, represented all spheres of the legal community – from professors to directors of legal services programs to general counsel of a major corporation. The White House and Department of Justice honored them and invited them to participate in roundtable discussions about the challenges facing today’s legal system.