Katherine Mazzaferri Interview 10

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Oral History of Katherine Mazzaferri
This interview is being conducted on behalf of the Oral History Project of The Historical
Society of the District of Columbia Circuit. The interviewer is Annamaria Steward, and the
interviewee is CEO Emeritus of the D.C. Bar Katherine Mazzaferri. The interview took place on
Monday, September 4, 2023. This is the tenth chapter.
MS. STEWARD: Katherine, the D.C. Bar has been active not only with the courts but also
with the voluntary bars. Can you talk about how that relationship began
and developed?
MS. MAZZAFERRI: Yes, Annamaria. In 1984 Marna Tucker was President, and she was the
Bar’s first woman president. She had the idea of establishing a monthly
meeting with the presidents of the voluntary bar associations because she
recognized how important those players were to the D.C. Bar. It became a
wonderful institution.
Each month, the Bar leadership, the President, President-elect, and
I, met with presidents of the voluntary bars. We briefed them about what
was happening with the D.C. Bar. They would tell us what they were
doing, including events for which they needed help from each other or
from the D.C. Bar. For me, it was a great source of recruitment because I
enjoyed watching people and observing how lawyers interacted, how
thoughtful they were, what ideas they had. By participating in those
monthly meetings of the voluntary bar leaders, I added to my list of
potential volunteers for the D.C. Bar. So, I’m grateful to Marna for having
had that idea and implementing it.
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MS. STEWARD: Katherine, let’s talk about the referenda because they really had an impact
on the D.C. Bar. Can you talk about what they were and how they
impacted your ability as a leader?
MS. MAZZAFERRI: There were two member referenda in the 1970s, one in 1976, and one in
1979, that restricted the public statements that could be made in the name
of the Bar. They required that the Bar ask the membership for permission
to make public statements.
The next referendum was in 1980. It restricted the use of Bar dues
to admissions, which the Bar didn’t administer; membership; discipline;
and the Clients’ Security Fund. The Bar sought and received clarification
from the D.C. Court of Appeals confirming that we were permitted to use
dues funds to communicate with members. But the 1980 referendum
results meant that many of the programs that the Bar already had when I
became Executive Director, Pro Bono, CLE, Divisions (later Sections and
then Communities), couldn’t be supported with dues.
In 1988 there was an interest in trying to see whether the members
were open to revisiting the restrictions on dues funding, and the answer
was they were not, so we left it at that.
The reality was that these restrictions were difficult, but because
the D.C. Bar is a mandatory bar, I didn’t think they were unreasonable, and
we made efforts to work within them. I think we were creative and were
able to be productive despite those limitations.
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MS. STEWARD: Actually, based on what happened with the California Bar, they actually
saved the D.C. Bar from some of that litigation.
MS. MAZZAFERRI: That’s right. We always operated within the boundaries set by the
referenda on how we could use our dues money and what statements we
could make on behalf of the Bar. So, I think in some ways, the restrictions
that we lived by protected the organization.
MS. STEWARD: One of the most remarkable aspects of the headquarters buildings has
always been the picture wall of the past presidents. Where did that idea
come from?
MS. MAZZAFERRI:In 1986, Fred Abramson, who then was the Bar’s President, said that
Barrett Prettyman, our very first President, had suggested that pictures be
taken of all the presidents so that they could be remembered, and of course
we did that. We thought it was a wonderful idea, great for Barrett to
propose and for Fred to make it happen.
And then when Chuck Ruff passed away at the end of 2000, the
management team, the staff leaders, got together to talk about how we’d
like to honor our past presidents. We had honored Fred Abramson by
naming the President’s Award after him, but we realized we needed a way
to honor the presidents as a group. In February of 2002 we recommended
to the Board of Governors that one of the rooms in the H Street building
be called the Presidents’ Room and that all of the presidents’ pictures be
displayed in the room. The Board adopted that recommendation, of
course.
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When we moved to K Street, we had a similar Presidents’ Room
with all the pictures arrayed around the room. I loved being in that room
because I could remember many of the presidents. Most of them I knew,
and I could remember Board and committee meetings we had with each of
them. And when we held meetings of the past presidents annually in June,
we had them in that room. It was special being in that room with many of
the past presidents, with their pictures arrayed around us, and with them
being so engaged in debating, listening, and contributing again to the work
of the D.C. Bar.
MS. STEWARD: One of the national crises that hit this country was 9/11. Can you talk
about how you as a leader handled that with the D.C. Bar staff?
MS. MAZZAFERRI: John Payton was President. It was a Tuesday, and we had a Board meeting
scheduled for that afternoon. When the World Trade towers were hit, John
called me, and he asked me what I wanted to do. But then when the
Pentagon was hit, I called John and I said we needed to cancel the Board
meeting. I needed to get the staff home, and he agreed. We had watched
the towers go down while we were in the conference room on the sixth
floor of the H Street building.
I put out the word that we were closing the office, but not
everybody was listening to voicemail or checking email, so I walked
around to the entire staff to make sure everybody knew that we were
closing right away, and that people needed to go home. Some staff weren’t
sure how they would get home, and I told them to come with me. We
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walked over to Connecticut Avenue, walked to Woodley Park, and from
there took the Metro. I was comfortable enough with walking that distance
to get on to the Metro.
The next day John Payton called me and asked me what I was
planning to do. September 12th was an odd day to come back into the
District, not knowing what could happen. I told John I had invited the
staff, whoever was there, to the Board room, and we were going to have
pizza for lunch. John said he’d be there, and he was.
We had a gathering that reminded me of my old Quaker Meeting
days. We just sat around the Board room table and staff members who
were moved to speak about how they felt, did so. People spoke about what
they had experienced on the 11th and their fears about the future. We just
talked. It was kind of like being in a family at that moment, and I was very
touched that John chose to be with us on September 12, 2001.
MS. STEWARD: Throughout your leadership of the D.C. Bar, you have been focused on
recognizing leaders throughout the profession. Can you talk about the
awards that were created?
MS. MAZZAFERRI: I mentioned earlier the Beatrice Rosenberg Award that Chuck Ruff and I
came up with because we each at different times had worked with Bea. So
that award was established in 1990, and the first awardee was William
Bryson.
Shortly afterward, the Brennan and Marshall awards were created.
It was actually past-president Dan Rezneck who proposed the Brennan
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Award, and Cynthia Hill suggested to me that we have a partner award for
Justice Marshall. The first awards were presented to Justice Brennan and
to the late-Justice Marshall’s family at the Bar’s winter convention in
1993. As it turns out, although he was not in good health, Justice Brennan
attended. The Bar had been told that he wouldn’t be speaking, but he
surprised all of us with a very moving speech. He remembered other lions
of the judiciary, including the late Judge David Bazelon, who had been
chief judge of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.
After the initial presentations to the justices, the first recipients at
the Bar’s June 1993 annual meeting were William Taylor for the Marshall
Award and Elaine Jones for the Brennan Award. In subsequent years, we
convened meetings of past Brennan and Marshall Award recipients to
recommend candidates for future selection.
As I mentioned earlier, the Fred Abramson Award had been the
President’s Award, but we named it after Fred after his passing in June of
1991.
MS. STEWARD: Diversity in the legal profession has always been very important to you,
and this award pairing of Justices Brennan and Marshall illustrates that.
Can you talk about other initiatives that you’ve been focused on
throughout your tenure?
MS. MAZZAFERRI: There was a Minorities in the Legal Profession Conference. It was
established in 1992 by James Robertson, who was Bar president in 1991-
1992. It was a joint effort of the D.C. Bar, APABA, Gay Law, GWAC, the
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Hispanic Bar Association, the Washington Bar Association, and the
Women’s Bar of D.C. Many of the area law schools, and some law firms
and in-house corporate counsel offices also participated. Vernon Jordan
chaired that conference. George Jones, who later became one of our Bar
presidents, was the secretary, and Cynthia Hill and her staff assistant, Julie
Norbury, worked very closely with George in staffing the conference.
Minorities Conference initiatives included a benchmark survey of
law firms’ recruitment and hiring practices; a review of in-house corporate
counsel positions; and a model statement on firms’ commitments to
improve their recruitment and hiring efforts.
Also, in 1997 the Bar hosted a day-long Summit on Women in the
Legal Profession.
Another important committee, the Sexual Orientation Committee,
was appointed by Bar President Rob Weiner. This committee was cochaired by past president David Isbell and Martha McQuade, a past
president of the Women’s Bar. The committee issued its report and
recommendations in March of 1999.
MS. STEWARD: In addition to diversity, civility in the legal profession and recognition of
various communities have always been very important to you. Can you
talk about the civility community and then the civility committee and
other committees that were created in furtherance of the D.C. Bar?
MS. MAZZAFERRI: The Civility Committee was established in November of 1993, and it
concluded in 1996. Past President Andrew Marks, who was a big
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proponent of civility, and Joanne Doddy Fort were the co-chairs. The
committee itself included Bar members and members of the judiciary. We
developed a brochure that we distributed among Bar members and to the
bench It was an effort that I was very proud of because I thought it was
important for lawyers to practice civility in the work that we did.
We also had a number of strategic planning committees. The first
committee was chaired by Amy Bess and Jim Jones. Based on the
committee’s recommendations, the Board of Governors adopted a
strategic plan in 2009. It really set the Bar on a path for a strategy. The
second strategic planning committee, chaired by one of our past
presidents, Kim Keenan, was convened in 2014. Its recommended plan
was approved by the Board in 2015, and it was a foundation for the Bar
until 2020.
There were many other important studies and committees led by
leaders of the Bar who devoted many, many hours in furtherance of
activities of the D.C. Bar.
MS. STEWARD: You worked very hard to make sure that past presidents remained
involved with the D.C. Bar, and leaders of the voluntary bar associations
also were actively involved. The strategic planning committee is just
another illustration of your forward-looking, your focus on planning for a
future of the D.C. Bar because in addition to the building fund that you
created, you also set up the strategic plans so the Bar could be prepared in
five to ten years for where it was going. Along with that, during your
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tenure the sections were re-envisioned. Can you talk about that
experience?
MS. MAZZAFERRI: The recommendations to create a committee to look at the sections began
in March of 2017. There had been a ten-year decline in Sections
membership, and President Tim Webster charged the Leadership
Development Committee to study the governance structure of our
Sections. He also charged the Sections Council to conduct a survey of
Sections members’ needs and interests.
Past President Brigid Benitez had succeeded Philip Lacovara as
chair of the Leadership Development Committee. The Leadership
Development Committee formed an ad hoc committee on sections
governance, chaired by Laura Possessky, a past Sections Council chair.
Among the members of the ad hoc committee were past presidents
Kim Keenan and Darrell Mottley, who also were former Sections Council
chairs. The ad hoc committee conducted exhaustive research and
interviewed members and leaders in the Sections to develop
recommendations.
The Leadership Development Committee ultimately recommended
re-envisioning and rebranding the Sections as D.C. Bar Communities, with
a stronger value package for members, a simplified governance model and
greater administrative efficiency. I think it was a successful effort to
reinvigorate Sections into Communities because they are a very important
part of the D.C. Bar.
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MS. STEWARD: The role of volunteers throughout your leadership tenure was so
important, and people really took that responsibility very seriously. One of
these roles was as general counsel of the D.C. Bar. Can you talk about
how you were able to get actively practicing attorneys to volunteer to
serve as general counsel of the D.C. Bar?
MS. MAZZAFERRI: You’re right. I was so honored to have individuals willing to perform that
service, which was so important for the Board. When I came to the Bar,
there was a volunteer general counsel, Charles Cutler, so I had that model
to start off my career there. I later recruited fourteen additional individuals
to be general counsel. Most of them served for two years, although Tim
Webster served for six years. Five of the general counsels went on to
become Bar presidents. They got to know the Bar and decided to lead the
Bar.
It wasn’t just that the general counsels themselves volunteered.
They also volunteered their firms. The general counsels would recruit
individuals from their law firms if they needed particular issues studied
and researched, and their firms gave very generously of their time to
support these individuals’ service as general counsels. I was very grateful
to each of them for their many, many hours spent assisting the D.C. Bar.
MS. STEWARD: After 35 years, you decided to retire as CEO of the D.C. Bar. Why?
MS. MAZZAFERRI: I had done much of what I wanted to do, and I thought I would leave the
rest for others to take on.
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I’d like to note that we had many non-lawyer professionals with
valuable expertise, both on the Board and on certain committees. I must
say that I was impressed with how the volunteers, both lawyers and nonlawyers, devoted countless hours to addressing policy issues for the Bar.
They made an incredible commitment of time and energy to the
organization. The Bar staff members were equally dedicated. They were
creative and thoughtful, and they cared about the institution. And we were
lucky to have members of the D.C. and federal judiciary who were
partners with the Bar in various projects. We were really fortunate.
And as I mentioned, individual presidents began initiatives that
were creative and furthered the work of the Bar. It was my honor really to
carry on those initiatives.
MS. STEWARD: In recognition of your service and your ability to grow the D.C. Bar
tenfold throughout your 35 years, the Bar created a fund in your name.
Can you talk a little about that?
MS. MAZZAFERRI: Well pro bono was near and dear to my heart and in January of 2017, the
Board of Directors of the D.C. Bar Pro Bono Center, which had the same
membership as the Board of Governors of the D.C. Bar, approved the
establishment of the Katherine Mazzaferri Emerging Legal Needs Fund. It
is a restricted fund to be used for the purposes of furthering new initiatives
in pro bono.
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I was so touched. I didn’t know anything about this beforehand.
Tim Webster called me over to a meeting in his office one evening, and I
had no idea what was going to happen.
The purpose of the fund was to enable the Pro Bono Center to meet
new or expanding needs for legal services. When it was announced, the
fund already had accumulated $100,000. I was very moved by that effort
and excited about the possibilities that the Pro Bono Center would have
funds available to initiate new programs.
MS. STEWARD: In addition to this wonderful fund that was created in your name, the
Katherine Mazzaferri Emerging Legal Needs Fund, you were also honored
by being named CEO emeritus of the D.C. Bar. Can you talk about that?
MS. MAZZAFERRI: At the Board meeting in June 2017, the Board adopted a Resolution,
which touched me deeply, to create a position called CEO Emeritus in my
name. It was in recognition of the work that I had done with the Bar for
many years and in pro bono, lawyer assistance, attorney-client relations,
legal ethics, CLE, and other programs and initiatives, in addition to
helping the Bar move to its permanent headquarters. I was very moved to
have been given that title and it’s an honor to hold it today.
MS. STEWARD: When you look back on your 35 years as CEO of the D.C. Bar, what are
your greatest takeaways?
MS. MAZZAFERRI: My greatest takeaway is really the sense of community among the Bar
leaders and the judiciary. I can remember my first meeting, my interview
really, with Jake Stein and Stephen Pollak, for the position of then
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Executive Director of the D.C. Bar. I remember how they outlined the
difficulties the Bar had been through, and that they wanted to be sure I
knew what I would be getting into and whether I was up for the task. I told
them that I was.
But over time, it was a collaboration with all the presidents and the
chief judges of the appellate and trial courts. I worked especially closely
with Chief Judge Annice Wagner and later Chief Judge Eric Washington
of the D.C. Court of Appeals. I was really honored to be part of the story.
The story really is about service to the public, to the members, to the
judiciary, to figure out ways to accomplish what needed to be done in a
manner that was cost effective but productive for the organization. It was a
privilege really to have worked with so many volunteers and such a
dedicated staff, and I was honored to have played that role for 35 years.
MS. STEWARD: When you look over your career in the law, what do you want people to
remember about you?
MS. MAZZAFERRI: I always cared about the rights of individuals and diversity, and I was
proud that we had a diverse leadership in the Bar, both Board and staff,
and, of course, committees. Some of that really stemmed from my early
training in a Quaker school and some of the lessons learned from my
family who exposed me to civil rights issues. My early time at EEOC
taught me a lot about discrimination, what it looked like and how to avoid
it. So, I think my interest in diversity in leadership for the Bar and my
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excitement about establishing the Leadership Development Committee
really stemmed from my early experiences and my early training.
And on a substantive level, the work of creating the Programs
Division with the fee arbitration program, the legal ethics program, the
rules of professional conduct program, the lawyer assistance program, the
practice management service, CLE and re-envisioning of the sections all
were outgrowths of conversations and creative ideas from volunteers and
the staff. It was exciting to be able to make them real.
And, of course, the Pro Bono Center was always a work in
progress from the start of that committee that Sally Determan appointed,
chaired by Stephen Pollak. It really set a standard for me about how to go
about studying tough issues and putting everything on the table and then
figuring out the best plan forward.
MS. STEWARD: Katherine, we thank you for sharing your oral history with us. This
concludes the oral history of Katherine Mazzaferri, known as the CEO
Emeritus of the D.C. Bar.
MS. MAZZAFERRI: Thank you, Annamaria.