Obama Got Start in Civil Rights Practice

[Omaha Steve]

http://apnews.excite.com/article/20070220/D8NDA76G0.html

Obama Got Start in Civil Rights Practice


Feb 20, 2:29 AM (ET)

By MIKE ROBINSON

CHICAGO (AP) - Attorney Judson Miner called Harvard to offer a job to a graduating student named Barack Obama and didn't expect to be showered with gratitude. Still, he wasn't expecting the reception he got.

"You can leave your name and take a number," the woman who answered the phone at the Harvard Law Review said breezily. "You're No. 647."

That was 1991 and even then Obama - the Illinois senator now seeking the Democratic presidential nomination - was a hot commodity.


This photo provided by Harvard University Law School shows Barack Obama as a student at the school in Cambridge, Mass., Feb. 6, 1990. Obama came to Harvard in the fall of 1988 after graduating from Columbia University and spending four years as a community organizer in Chicago. At the end of his first year, Obama was selected to serve on the Law Review as one of 80 "editor"-students; midway through his second year, on Feb. 5, 1990, Obama was elected president, becoming the first black president of the prestigious Harvard Law Review. (AP Photo/Harvard University, Joe Wrinn)

As the first black president of the Harvard Law Review, Obama had his pick of top law firms. He chose Miner's Chicago civil rights firm, where he represented community organizers, discrimination victims and black voters trying to force a redrawing of city ward boundaries.

Like many lawyers, Obama never took part in a trial. He spent most of his nine-year career working as part of a team, drawing up contracts, briefs and other legal papers.

The firm of Miner Barnhill & Galland, many of whose members have Harvard and Yale law degrees, has a reputation that fits nicely into the resume of a future presidential candidate.

"It's a real do-good firm," says Fay Clayton, lead counsel for the National Organization for Women in a landmark lawsuit aimed at stopping abortion clinic violence. "Barack and that firm were a perfect fit. He wasn't going to make as much money there as he would at a LaSalle Street firm or in New York, but money was never Barack's first priority anyway."

The firm offered another advantage to Obama. It was close to the political action.

FULL story at link.