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It is common scholarly and popular wisdom that racial quotas are illegal. However, the reality is that since 2020's racial reckoning, many of the largest companies have been touting specific, albeit voluntary, goals to hire or promote people of color, which this Article refers to as "racial targets." The Article addresses this phenomenon and shows that companies can defend racial targets as distinct from racial quotas, which involve a rigid number or proportion of opportunities reserved exclusively for minority groups. The political implications of the legal defensibility of racial targets are significant in this moment in American history, where race relations have become polarized and the conservative, pro-business U.S. Supreme Court may weigh in on the legality of voluntary goals set by some of the largest companies in the country. Large companies have historically been granted discretion to choose their strategies for paving the way toward equal employment opportunity for people of color. The Article grapples with whether this corporate-discretion ideal would inform the legal posture of racial targets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses articles in the issue on topics including the role of public defenders in combating structural injustices, the challenges faced by unrepresented parties in civil proceedings and strategies for advancing social change through litigation.

This Article's central claim is that disclosures can be used instrumentally to increase diversity in corporate America in terms of race, gender, sexual orientation, and disability. Until recently, scholars and policymakers have underappreciated this possibility because diversity was often omitted from the larger Environmental, Social, and Governance ("ESG") disclosures context, even though, as this Article empirically shows, public companies make diversity disclosures in that context. Diversity disclosures are important not only for shareholders' interests in transparency, but also for the benefit of other stakeholders, including employees, customers, and the communities in which companies operate, who want to know whether companies are diverse to determine where to work, what brands to buy, and what companies value. The literature has yet to explore the significance of diversity disclosures for the benefit of all these stakeholders. This Article argues that legal reform is needed to use disclosures to improve corporate diversity for the benefit of all stakeholders. Policymakers must go beyond the confines of the securities laws to translate disclosure into societal change. This Article examines contemporary law and policy approaches that fall short of having forward-looking provisions that would have an impact on improving diversity. It proposes disclosure rules with statistical and forward-looking provisions and mechanisms that shareholder and employee activists, and others, can use to pressure companies to improve diversity incrementally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Racial allies are white individuals and institutions that actively work to dismantle systems of racial inequality and the consequences of poverty that disproportionately impact communities of color and that are willing to both confer and share power with members of subjugated groups. There is no other sector of the legal profession that professes to be racial allies more than individuals and institutions within the public interest law sector. Yet, these institutions that address structural racism and disproportionately serve communities of color appear not to share power with racial and ethnic minorities. The public interest law sector has been at the forefront of economic and racial justice both historically and in modern times, including as abolitionist lawyers, civil rights lawyers, and lawyers challenging economic inequality, the eviction crisis, and immigration. Probably because of their perceived roles as racial allies, there has been scholarly and practitioner neglect to examine their allyship. In this Article, I make a number of groundbreaking contributions to the literature. First, I conduct the first systemic investigation of race and ethnicity using the largest dataset of the individuals and groups with relative power in the public interest law sector--CEOs, boards of directors, and large-firm pro bono partners and counsel. The novel dataset contains 650 institutions and over 10,000 individuals. I also interviewed a subset of CEOs and board members. With these data, I show--for the first time--the lack of racial and ethnic diversity among the CEOs of public interest legal organizations (PILOs), PILO boards of directors, and pro bono partners and counsel who lead the public interest sector. Second, although there may be other reasons, I highlight five possible explanations for the problem. Third, I suggest potential policy responses for each of the identified theories. I also advance reasons why racial diversity in public interest law is important and highlight areas for further research on diversity in the sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This Article addresses a critical gap in the literature and current debates about the composition of nonprofit boards. The law of fiduciary duties and nonprofit governance best practices do not provide sufficient guidance on how to compose boards to empower the communities they serve. And even as the corporate sector is seizing on current important moments to debate the inclusion of employees and racial and ethnic minorities on corporate boards, nonprofit boards are largely left out of these debates. The Article introduces the concept Of board capital, which originated from the for-profit management literature, but has gained a stronghold in the nonprofit boards' literature, to provide guidance on how to compose boards of nonprofit organizations that serve vulnerable, often minority communities. Board capital comprises financial, social, and human capital and highlights the importance of having board directors who as a group, possess the skills, knowledge, and professional and personal experiences to not only provide legal and finance expertise, and funding, but also provide strategic advice informed by knowledge of the client population. The Article supports its normative assertions with the empirical example of the 9000+ boards of directors of public interest legal organizations (PILOs). Empirical findings show that boards in these legal nonprofit organizations are largely assembled to focus on legal expertise and fundraising at the expense of social capital affinity with communities served, and human capital skills and characteristics to understand the needs of the client population and be racially and ethnically diverse, A majority of the boards comprise law firm and corporate lawyers who can be far removed from the legal and social issues the organizations represent. For other nonprofit organizations, many board members come from the business sector. This misplaced emphasis may be undercutting nonprofits' abilities to serve their stated mission effectively. Board members are more likely to hew to their own expertise and abilities to raise financial capital Boards of directors also tend to replicate themselves, which undermines human capital knowledge of the client population and racial and ethnic diversity. The Article makes suggestions for increasing human capital, particularly expertise on the client population and racial diversity on nonprofit boards. It also addresses board capital implications for for-projit boards. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The pro bono interests of law firm lawyers tend to differ from the actual legal needs of the poor. This difference results in the mismatch problem or the incongruence between the interests of firm lawyers and the needs of the poor. Today, the mismatch problem has resulted in law firm lawyers' increased demand of immigration matters while legal needs are greatest in housing and family law. This leaves nonprofit legal services organizations scrambling to find pro bono representation for poor clients or otherwise relying on very limited resources to represent poor clients. The literature on the mismatch problem is lacking in important ways. First, there is a lack of understanding about how the interests of individual lawyers factor into the selection of pro bono matters. Second, there is no understanding about how law firm culture impacts the choice of pro bono work for firms and individual lawyers. Third, the literature does not include how the political climate impacts the choice of pro bono work within firms. Finally, the literature is devoid of normative suggestions to remedy the problem. Through an interview-based empirical exploration, this research explains how individual lawyers impact the choice of pro bono work, how law firm culture impacts pro bono choices, and how the political climate directly shapes what lawyers choose to do for pro bono legal representation. To solve the pro bono mismatch, I make three proposals: (1) modification of the language of the American Bar Association's Model Rule of Professional Conduct 6.1, which provides that lawyers have a professional responsibility to provide pro bono legal services; (2) creation and implementation of macro-level "pay for preference;" and (3) creation and implementation of micro-level "pay for preference" regimes in law firms to nudge lawyers to consider the greatest legal needs in their choices of pro bono legal representation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines that the federal government invested a significant amount of money in civil legal aid. Topics include reports that Congress passed the Legal Services Corporation Act of 1974, which established the Legal Services Corporation (LSC); and examines that major accomplishment of the LSC was the expansion of federal legal services from a predominantly urban program to one providing legal assistance in virtually every county in the United States.