Meeting with WSBA about Demographic Form

On August 27, 2009, MELAW President Aneelah Afzali met with Gail Stone, Director of Justice and Diversity Initiative at the Washington State Bar Association (“WSBA”). The purpose of the meeting was to discuss MELAW’s efforts to modify the demographic form used by the WSBA to collect statistical data on lawyers in Washington State. Currently, the form does not include an option for Middle Easterners. Gail Stone agreed to discuss the issue with the WSBA and work on editing the forms. Another topic of discussion was the language options available on the Lawyer Directory used by the WSBA. That directory identifies “Farsi/Persian” separate from “Persian” as a language option. Aneelah discussed the potential confusion in having these two separate categories, both of which refer to the same language. The WSBA will correct the confusion by having one category entitled “Persian” (along with categories for other languages such as Arabic).

MELAW thanks Gail Stone and the WSBA for their time and responsiveness to MELAW’s concerns.