By Tom Kirvan
Legal News
A mid-winter staple, the Annual Fellows Reception for the Oakland County Bar Foundation will take place on Monday, Jan. 26 at the Townsend Hotel in downtown Birmingham. The event will run from 5:30-7:30 p.m.
Last year, 42 inductees were sworn in as Fellows of the OCBF, which supports legal aid and legal education programs in Oakland County. A Fellow is designated by a pledge of $1,000 to support the charitable works of the OCBF, while a Charter Fellow has committed to a pledge of $5,000, according to Eric Pelton, president of the OCBF Board of Trustees. There are nearly 270 Charter Fellows in the program, while some 340 members of the local legal community are designated as Fellows, OCBF officials indicated.
“There is only one legal aid attorney for every 13,222 Michigan residents living in poverty,” said Pelton. “And only 27 percent of high school seniors in the U.S. are receiving adequate civics education. The Oakland County Bar Foundation is striving to improve these statistics by providing financial support to programs like Legal Aid Mini Clinics, which have served 489 Oakland County residents in need since 2008, and the Mock Trial for Elementary School, which has educated nearly 1,000 local students on our legal system and government since it was launched in 2010.”
In 2014, the OCBF provided funding support for a number of “worthy organizations,” according to Pelton, including the Center for Civic Education Through Law, the Family Law Assistance Project, The RESTORE Foundation, the William Beaumont Hospital Legal Aid for Children, the Youth Law Conference, and the Constitution Day Program.
The Family Law Assistance Project, or FLAP for short, is an effort by Lakeshore Legal Aid and WMU Cooley Law School “to provide legal aid services related to family law issues,” Pelton indicated. The RESTORE Foundation, in turn, is an “Oakland County nonprofit dedicated to privately funding the Oakland County Family-focused Juvenile and Adult Treatment Courts,” Pelton said.
“Since 2002, the OCBF, with support of our generous sponsors, has contributed more than $1.7 million to fund important legal aid and legal education programs right here in Oakland County,” Pelton said.
The primary fund-raising vehicle for the OCBF is its annual Signature Event, which will be held this year on Friday, May 1 at Oakland Hills Country Club. The 16th annual event, which will run from 7-10 p.m. and features a strolling supper, has been in a record-setting mode of late, according to organizers. Last year, upward of $265,000 was raised through sponsorships and ticket sales, helping the Bar Foundation respond to the inevitable increase in grant requests.
“In previous years, requests for OCBF funding outpaced our fund-raising total, and our goal this year is to raise enough to fulfill every qualifying request we receive this year,” Pelton said.
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