The December 10 Annual Meeting also included honoring Citizens Bank Achievement Award recipient Joseph Tate and Justice Sonia Sotomayor Award recipient Renee Garcia
The Philadelphia Bar Association’s 98th Chancellor, Katayun Jaffari, discussed the organization’s agenda for 2025 Tuesday, including furthering its mission to defend the rule of law; enhancing member services in the areas of innovation in law and career development; and choosing its next executive director.
In her speech, Jaffari, chair of Corporate Governance, Capital Markets & Securities and ESG at Cozen O'Connor, described how her parents, immigrants to the U.S. from Iran, encouraged she and her sister to engage in respectful debate and to fulfill their main calling in life, which is to give back to society and to help others.
“I stand here today accepting the role of Chancellor in their honor and memory, with the hopes that they can look down at me, at my family, at all of you knowing that we will all strive to protect the rights of all people because that’s what we do – that’s what we can do as lawyers,” Jaffari said. “We are the voices, the advocates, the champions of those who need us, whether they are businesses striving to keep this great capitalist experiment alive or they are individuals struggling and suffering the injustices of the world, those who need us the most for access to justice.”
The 2024 Annual Meeting held at the Crystal Tea Room also included a discussion of the Association’s accomplishments during the past year. Those include expanding the Association’s institutional partner program to include public interest agencies and the introduction of a new annual partner program, offering a number of discounts to members on legal and professional services. The Association also held well-attended events focused on diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging and the current historic slate of women leadership in the Pennsylvania courts and in other top positions serving the state. Finally, the Association is in the midst of an effort to streamline and modernize its bylaws and those of the Commission on Judicial Selection and Retention to more efficiently and nimbly serve its membership.
Jaffari noted that one of the Association’s most important roles is that of convener, bringing together stakeholders from government, the judiciary, law firms, legal services agencies, and elsewhere, to create programs and initiatives that foster understanding of, involvement in, and equal access to, the justice system.
“We are always prepared to provide information and education about our judicial and legal system,” Jaffari said. “One great example is that 2025 is another important election year when Philadelphians will be electing judges. We are very proud of the continued work of our Judicial Commission and Campaign for Qualified Judges in making sure that voters go to the polls informed about the candidates’’ qualifications.”
Jaffari said the Association will also continue to build its member services in a way that is consistent with the goals in its strategic plan.
“We want to help all of our members succeed in a changing world where the ways that legal services can be delivered is constantly evolving,” Jaffari said. She said the Association has plans to create a Center for Innovation in the Practice of Law to focus on building resources and offering education in areas such as artificial intelligence and new approaches to the practice of law. There are also plans to revamp the Association’s mentoring program and to launch new committees including a paralegal committee and a relaunch of the military affairs committee.
Another top priority will be the search for the Association’s next executive director. Current executive director Harvey Hurdle recently announced his plans to retire on June 30, 2025. To identify Hurdle’s successor, the Association has created a Search Committee, which will be chaired by Ballard Spahr Philadelphia Managing Partner Marcel S. Pratt. The Committee will retain a search firm, which will assist in conducting a national search.
“We are so proud of all that Harvey has done over the last six years in creating an incredible foundation for us to continue to build on for our members,” Jaffari said.
The Annual Meeting also honored the winners of the 2024 Citizens Bank Achievement Award, the 2024 Justice Sonia Sotomayor Award and the 2024 Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg “Pursuit of Justice” Writing Competition.
Joseph Tate, senior counsel, Dechert LLP, will receive the Citizens Bank Achievement Award, which recognizes significant accomplishments in improving the administration of justice in Philadelphia. In addition to maintaining a prominent practice in antitrust and general commercial litigation at Dechert, Tate is a longtime board member and fundraiser at Community Legal Services. Tate also supports Villanova law school’s Walter A. Lucas ’88 Public Interest Fellowship Program, which provides financial support to law students doing summer work in the public interest sector. Tate and wife Detta have also donated to support a Loan Repayment Assistance Program that helps recent graduates working in public interest law. The program was renamed in their honor in 2019. Tate is also a fellow at the American College of Trial Lawyers and was recently a faculty member at the Bar Association’s Trial Advocacy Program.
“In my early years of private practice, I would ask myself what really is a Philadelphia lawyer. A Philadelphia lawyer is someone who is knowledgeable and intelligent and who could write a great brief. But the Philadelphia lawyer is also someone who took on unpopular cases, who took care of the forgotten people,” Tate said. “We should all aspire to be that Philadelphia lawyer.”
City Solicitor Renee Garcia was the recipient of the 2024 Justice Sonia Sotomayor Award, which is given annually to an individual who has made substantial and lasting contributions to the Association's goal of promoting full and equal participation and inclusion by all attorneys in Philadelphia's legal community. Prior to becoming City Solicitor this year, Garcia had served as chair of the City Law Department’s Litigation Group since 2021. In that role, she oversaw initiatives to address some of the City’s most complex legal challenges, including litigation to hold gun manufacturers and distributors accountable for reckless business practices contributing to gun violence in Philadelphia. She also played a central role in the investigation of the MOVE bombing victim remains and the collection of more than $200 million from litigation by the City against opioid manufacturers and distributors. She is a current board member at Planned Parenthood of Southeast Pennsylvania, the Hispanic Bar Association and arts nonprofit Intercultural Journeys.
“Diversity is just a number; it’s in the equity, and you’ve heard it several times tonight, that is where the magic is and that is where we must strive toward,” Garcia said. “I’m so privileged to do the work in the Law Department every day, in every case we think about equity…. We are the department of ‘yes, that is legal,’ but also of how that is going to effect the people that we serve.”
The winner of the Ginsburg competition was Zoe Bertrand, a third-year law student at Temple University’s James E. Beasley School of Law, for her submission, “A Constitutional Argument for D.C. Statehood.”
