Pro Bono: Motivations, Challenges, and Solutions

Linda began her legal career as a staff attorney on the U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. She then went into private practice at Sidley & Austin, where she had an extensive pro bono practice and served on the firm’s Pro Bono Committee. Deciding to move her career to public interest law, Linda was the first Community Services Director at the Chicago Bar Association and Foundation.

In 2001, she became the founding Director of the American Bar Association Child Custody and Adoption Pro Bono Project. Linda also had a consulting practice focused on children’s legal issues. Linda was the Chair of the CBA Young Lawyers Section and active in many bar association activities. She has been a board member and volunteer at numerous organizations, including the AIDS Legal Council, the Center for Conflict Resolution, Prevent Child Abuse Illinois, Chicago Legal Aid to Incarcerated Mothers, and the Immigrant Child Advocacy Project. She has worked with many court committees and judges to improve services and access to justice. Linda served on the Hinsdale/Clarendon Hills District 181 School Board, including as President, and was a PTO leader at her children’s pre, elementary and middle schools. She is a lay worship leader and coordinator at the Unitarian Church of Hinsdale.

Linda has a BA in American Studies from Northwestern University and a JD from UCLA.

Latonia Haney Keith currently serves as Concordia University School of Law’s Associate Dean of Academics. Dean Haney Keith originally joined the faculty of Concordia Law as the Director of Clinical Education in 2015. In this role, she directs Concordia Law’s clinical education program, teaching law students the practice of law through the representation of the disadvantaged and underserved and specifically supervising law students handling housing, criminal, and immigration matters. Dean Haney Keith also regularly conducts trainings for lawyers and law students on recognizing one’s own implicit biases and employing strategies to de-bias and has published scholarship on the topic of bias, discrimination and harassment in the legal profession.

Prior to joining Concordia Law, Dean Haney Keith spent nearly seven years as Firm-Wide Pro Bono Counsel in the law firm of McDermott Will & Emery LLP, based in the firm’s Chicago office. In her role, Dean Haney Keith led and ran a world-wide pro bono practice, managing all aspects of the firm’s pro bono, community service and charitable giving initiatives, both in the United States and abroad. She focused on developing new pro bono initiatives, encouraging pro bono participation across the firm, fostering deeper relationships with pro bono referral agencies, and establishing pro bono and community service partnerships with firm clients. Dean Haney Keith also supervised and provided legal services directly to individuals and charitable organizations concerning a diverse range of legal issues.

Dean Haney Keith is a member of the American Bar Association’s Standing Committee on Pro Bono and Public Service and the Executive Committee of the American Bar Association Section of Business Law's Committee on Pro Bono. She is also the former president of the board of the Association of Pro Bono Counsel (APBCo), a membership organization of over 155 attorneys and practice group managers from 95 of the largest private law firms, who manage some of the most successful law firm pro bono practices. Dean Haney Keith currently serves on the Legal Advisory Council for the Fair Punishment Project and on the Local Rules Committee of the U.S. Courts of the District of Idaho. She has served on the board of the National Immigrant Justice Center, Chicago Volunteer Legal Services and the Chicago Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, Inc., is a former president of the board of the Harvard Law Society of Illinois, and until recently, served as a columnist for the Chicago Lawyer writing on cutting edge issues in the pro bono, community service, charitable giving and diversity arenas.

Dean Haney Keith graduated cum laude from Harvard Law School, where she was a research assistant to Professor Laurence H. Tribe and Professor Charles Ogletree. She was also an editor of and symposium co-chair for the Harvard Law Review. After graduation, Dean Haney Keith clerked for the Honorable Judith Ann Wilson Rogers on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.