As we build on the quality work reflected in our Open Letters, Statements and our various calls for professional ethical accountability, as well as for leaders of the Bar, deans of law schools and heads of law firms to fulfill their professional oaths to protect and defend the constitution and laws of the nation, we recognize that volunteer efforts alone, as noble and impactful as they have been, are not enough to help LDAD play the kind of potential remedial role we feel is achievable.

At the end of July, I made a special request for donations from you, our loyal “base”, so we could hire and budget for our first Interim Executive Director beginning September 1.

Your response allowed us to ask Lauren Stiller Rikleen, a member of our Steering Committee, to fulfill that role, on a part-time basis. For 2 months, she has performed with exceptional energy and skill, totally fulfilling our hopes and expectations (see, for example, her most recent opinion piece in the Boston Globe, along with a Bloomberg piece she co-authored with two of our Steering Committee members.)

As we recently informed you, LDAD led a coalition of DC lawyers to file an ethics complaint with the DC Bar against Jeffrey Clark, the Acting Chief of the DOJ Civil Division at the end of the Trump administration. Today, in response to the refusal by the Office of Disciplinary Counsel to docket the complaint, we filed this response. All these efforts take significant internal coordination and support.

This past two months being prologue, I ask you to join me in helping provide the resources to sustain the program quality and operational momentum she has generated as we await a response from the IRS to our 501c3 application.

Your support now, in whatever amount you deem feasible, will enable LDAD to continue to try to be part of the solution to the national dysfunction we face as citizens in our democracy. And, more specifically, your support will help us continue to try to mobilize against what, to date, has been the chilling silence from the leadership of our profession in the face of this continuing systematic assault on core principles, values and norms of the rule of law and our democracy.

I deeply appreciate and value your support.

Keep The Faith,

Scott Harshbarger
Chairman, LDAD