President's Page by Carrie Frank

“Here comes the sun, Here comes the sun, … It’s been a long, cold, lonely winter … It feels like years since it’s been here…Here comes the sun, Here comes the sun, and I say, It’s alright." - The Beatles, Here Comes the Sun, 1969, Abbey Road album

Spring is just weeks away. Even though spring in Boulder often still has snow, the sun is out, the crocus are sprouting and longer days are on the horizon. Spring is always a time for growth, rebirth, and excitement. And that is true too at the Boulder County Bar Association.

April 1 is the JUSTICE FOR ALL BALL. That’s no April Fool’s joke! By way of background, a couple of years ago, the Board of the BCBA “merged” with the Board of the Boulder County Bar Foundation to allow for more efficient management of the Foundation. The JUSTICE FOR ALL BALL is the annual fundraising event to benefit the Boulder County Legal Services. The Legal Aid Foundation explains that disparity between the need for civil legal services and the availability of those services is widening. It is estimated that eighty percent of low income people have trouble securing representation in court for matters ranging from property/home foreclosures to family law to wage disputes to public benefits. The annual JUSTICE FOR ALL BALL donates all proceeds to Boulder County Legal Services to assist with their representation of families and individuals who otherwise couldnot afford an attorney. This year, the JUSTICE FOR ALL BALL will be held at The Boulder JCC on Saturday, April 1. If you would like to sponsor this event or if you have an item to donate for the silent auction, please contact Laura. For JFAB tickets ($75 each during Early Bird Pricing, which ends March 24), please click here to purchase.

On Thursday March 9 at 4:00pm, the BCBA will be hosting a Side Bar on “Reproductive Healthcare Post-Dobbs.” The U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization impacts everybody and is having long reaching effects into Colorado, even if the right to make abortion and healthcare decisions has remained stable in our home state.This informative program will educate attorneys in many different practice areas about the state of reproductive health care in Boulder and Colorado after the Dobbs decision and will look at what the future holds. The presenters will be Professor Jennifer Hendricks (find her CU faculty page here) and Jack Teter, Policy Director of Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains. Please join us for this informative program and stay for a networking Happy Hour.

You may not know this, but the BCBA Board and officers work on a July to July calendar rather than the traditional annual calendar. I cannot believe that my tenure as President is more than halfway through! But that also means that we are in full swing to identify individuals who are interested in joining the Board and helping to move the BCBA forward into the future. Are you one of those people? Are you interested in a Board position? Having an impact in the activities and operations of the BCBA? Would you like to run for a position but have questions? Feel free to reach out to me to discuss the board member role. The BCBA will be collecting applications for new board members during March and April so let us know if you’d like to be in the running. The new board members will begin at the annual meeting to be held on June 8, 2023 at The Studio Boulder.

I must also, regretfully, share news of the passing of Judge Kristy Martinez on February 21, 2023. Judge Martinez was appointed to the Boulder bench in 2018 by then-Governor Hickenlooper. She was retained during the recent general election to continue on the bench but unfortunately, was unable to fulfill that role. Judge Martinez began her legal career as a deputy district attorney in Adams County and was also a law professor at CU teaching Post-Conviction Criminal Procedure and Wrongful Conviction. She was the director of the law school’s Korey Wise Innocence Project. I did not have the pleasure of ever being before Judge Martinez in her courtroom, but the outpouring of comments about her speaks volumes about who she was as a person and as a judge. Reading the words written about Judge Martinez, people described her as a “mentor,” a “fighter for justice” with a strong “moral compass,” and that this “world is a sadder place without her.” All of us at the BCBA share our deepest condolences to her family, friends and all who knew Judge Martinez.