When Pat Kaplan began her career at New Haven Legal Assistance Association in 1978, legal aid lawyers weren’t considered equals by their brethren in private law firms. Just over a decade earlier, the group’s first executive director, Fred Danforth, had actually been barred from bar association meetings. “He was not a real lawyer,” Kaplan said, voicing the conventional wisdom of the time.
When Kaplan later became head of the NHLAA, she made a point of becoming active in local and state bar associations.
