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Seymour Mansfield Honored at 2009 Law Day Dinner

Mansfield Tanick & Cohen has a long and enduring history of “giving back” to the community. This ethos and example were set long ago by our three founding partners and have been passed down to our younger partners and associates—many of whom follow in their footsteps volunteering as workers and leaders for charitable and community organizations and providing pro bono representation to poor clients.

We were thus made doubly proud to see our own co-founder Seymour Mansfield selected as the 2009 Honoree of The Fund for the Legal Aid Society (the “Fund”) at its recent Law Day Testimonial Dinner. Seymour was recognized for his life time achievements in supporting legal services and the pursuit of social and economic justice for the disadvantaged.

Indeed, the Fund was Seymour’s brain child in 1980 when legal services for the poor experienced a massive cut back of funding from the federal Legal Services Corporation (“LSC”), and restrictions on the legal advocacy LSC-funded lawyers could undertake. Since 1981, the Fund has raised money primarily from lawyers and law firms to support the vital work of the Legal Aid Society of Minneapolis (“Legal Aid”) in delivering free civil legal services to poor and disadvantaged persons. The Fund has become an enormous success, to date raising over $14 Million for Legal Aid. The Dinner is one of the Fund's three primary fund raising vehicles, and in attendance and money raised is the biggest and most prominent annual legal event in Minnesota.

Given the poor economic environment, there was great apprehension that the Twenty Eighth Annual Dinner would fall short of previous Dinners. To its staff’s and leaderships’ amazement, the 2009 Dinner set the one of the highest records in 1028 tickets sold, perhaps the highest in actual attendance (750 estimated), and the second highest gross (over $300,000) and net amount raised ($250,000).

Legal advocacy for the poor and disadvantaged has been a deep and abiding commitment throughout Seymour’s adult life and remains just as strong today. That commitment led him to his first VISTA and Legal Aid jobs in Chicago, right out of law school in 1969 through 1978, to serve as the head of Minnesota’s largest legal services program, to co-found The Fund for The Legal Aid Society and serve as its first temporary director while he launched his private law practice in Minneapolis in 1982.  For the next 27 years, he found many ways to continue to contribute to Legal Aid, from leading class litigation where Legal Aid has benefited from fee awards or as the recipient of large class Cy Pres donations, to the sustaining of Mansfield Foundation Fellowship programs providing over 200 summer law student fellows to legal aid offices in Illinois and Minnesota since the mid-1980’s, to being a spokesperson for civil legal services within the local and national Bar associations. As a volunteer Fund director, he devoted untold hours to raising money for The Fund from the Bar and private businesses.

In being honored by The Fund, Seymour joined past honorees, such as Douglas Amdahl, Bernie Becker, Bruce Blackburn, Laurie Davison, Hyman Edelman, Jim Hale, Doug Hall, Sandy Keith, Walter Mondale, Jerry Rotman, Alan Saeks, Clint Schroeder, Roger Stageberg, and Rosalie Wahl, among others honored, since Seymour helped establish the Fund in 1981. Those honorees set the bar very high--all were extraordinary citizen lawyers who have truly made a difference and have been role models for all lawyers.

As the standing ovations at the Dinner testify, Seymour’s contributions qualified him for membership in this esteemed club. 

Jerry Lane, the Executive Director of Mid-Minnesota Legal Assistance who introduced Seymour as one of Legal Aid’s “superheroes,” described for the audience Seymour’s integral role in the Fund and his contributions to the legal aid in Minnesota:

Seymour’s service was at the tail end of the geographic expansion of federal legal services funding.  He oversaw the opening of offices in Willmar, Marshall and Cambridge as part of Central Minnesota Legal Services.  Seymour worked with the other Legal Aid program directors to form the Minnesota Legal Services Coalition, a consortium which has been extremely successful in building federal, state, local and private support for Legal Aid in Minnesota, as well as providing an infrastructure for training and collaboration among the programs.  Seymour worked with the other directors and the MSBA to create the MSBA Legal Assistance to the Disadvantaged Committee. Seymour worked with the MSBA leadership, including such luminaries as Clint Schroeder, Allen Saeks and Jerry Magnuson, to create one of the first IOLTA programs in the country. He was part of the first effort to seek legislative funding for Legal Aid in Minnesota.  That effort has grown into what is ultimately the most successful state funding structure for Legal Aid in the country.  Recognizing that Legal Aid needed to build its private support capacity, Seymour worked with the Legal Aid Board to create the Fund.  He was its first Executive Director….

In his remarks to the audience, Seymour thanked all for this honor. Continuing his speech, he made a passionate call for the revitalization of the values of public service which had once been a more integral part of the profession but have undermined in recent decades by law being viewed as merely a business:

My favorite [call to justice] is that of Amos in the Hebrew Bible:  “Let Justice Roll Down like the waters, and righteousness well up like a mighty stream.” It calls forth the vision of the world as it should be….

It is now 40 years that I have been a lawyer, and I have been  intensely passionate and deeply enmeshed in this calling, this profession, for nearly all those 14080 days…. I will be here for a long, long time to continue my service, support and giving, and to exhort you to do the same. So now I challenge each of you, start to give, to serve, to volunteer, and if you do already, do a little more. Together we are a powerful force for good! … Together, we can bring closer the day when

Justice Rolls Down Like the Waters, and
Righteousness wells up like a might stream.

Congratulations, Seymour!