If You Can’t Find a Path to Follow, Make It

By Collins Saint and Drew Culler

We met on the first day of orientation in law school at Wake Forest when we were welcomed into Professor Garland’s 1B Legal Analysis, Writing, and Research (LAWR) course with talks of ducks and rabbits and the mysterious duck-rabbit. From there, we quickly became involved in OUTLaw, Wake’s LGBTQ+ law student group. By our 3L year, we were co-presidents and excited to continue working together as practitioners. We researched as best we could LGBTQ+ legal professional organizations and found a whopping zero options for us. That would not do.

For the next several years, we brainstormed with other LGBTQ+ new attorneys about what we could do. We kept hoping something would pop up and we could join in. Eventually, though, we realized that was not happening. So, we formed what we called a “committee without a home.” We developed a prospectus of sorts, laying out our hopes for this non-existent community: we wanted connection, networking, and mentorship of law students and new lawyers. We wanted pro bono opportunities like we had in law school, where we organized name change and gender marker correction clinics. We wanted CLE to help us substantively in legal issues impacting our LGBTQ+ clients, and we wanted opportunities to assist practitioners and judges in advocating and ruling in allyship.

Now what?

We needed to find a place to land. The NCBA was the obvious choice: it serves all lawyers in North Carolina, so no one would be excluded by geographic or practice areas; it had shown an invigorated commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion; and it had the structure already put in place in the Minorities in the Profession and Women in the Profession committees. Let’s do this thing.

First, a meeting with former YLD leaders Rachel Blunk and Cabell Clay, who knew and were respected by everyone, to gain as much advice and institutional knowledge as possible. Next, a connection to Mark Holt, then-President of the NCBA, and a cold call. Several phone calls with Mark later, the two of us were in a Zoom room with Mark, Jon Heyl, Jason Hensley, and other NCBA leaders pitching our idea. We were asked to canvass North Carolina to determine what the interest was for something like this. A few months later, leadership transferred to Jon, and we met again with Jon, Clayton Morgan, and Jason – two four-year-old lawyers and three bar association powerhouses. We explained the need for this community, but this time with numbers in the dozens. By January 2022, Jon was calling Collins to appoint them to lead the newly formed NCBA Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity (“SOGI”) Committee. A few days later Drew was appointed as vice chair to succeed Collins. Within a few weeks, around eighty committee members were appointed, an astonishing and overwhelmingly powerful number of members. You never know how, or even whether, an idea will take off until you get started, but this loud showing proves how needed the SOGI Committee was for LGBTQ+ and allied attorneys.

Since January 2022, the SOGI Committee has:

1. Held three well-attended networking events for LGBTQ+ and allied lawyers and law students;
2. Developed one panel CLE and planned several others;
3. Started working on a statewide name change and gender marker correction clinic with a corresponding CLE to train lawyers;
4. Taken steps to create a micro-granting program for North Carolinians without the $500-$1000 needed to change their name notwithstanding pro bono attorney time;
5. Planned our signature fundraising event, Drag Bingo;
6. Fostered connections with law schools; and
7. Found ways to elevate LGBTQ+ attorneys’ voices in the bar.

Now that’s the community 3L Drew and Collins wanted to graduate into. What an honor it is to lead this community for the next generation of lawyers.

Our profession is growing quickly to be a more diverse profession. It is important that as it does so, the new attorneys are there to make sure it does so in ways that foster intersectional inclusion and equity as well. If you look around and do not see people doing what needs to be done, hold up a mirror and make it happen. When you make the path, others will follow.

Let’s do this thing.

This article is published in collaboration with the NCBA YLD D&I Committee as a part of the YLD’s Diversity Awareness Campaign, which is devoting a platform to highlight diverse attorneys and law students, share personal experiences, foster diverse conversations, and promote diverse backgrounds in the profession. If you’re interested in becoming an author and joining the campaign, please sign-up.