The Houston Bar Association announced Tuesday it is one of three organizations the American Bar Association will honor for its 2013 Law Day activities.
The HBA will join the Connecticut Judicial Branch and the Law Day 2013 Dream Team, a partnership of 12 Georgia organizations, in receiving the Law Day 2013 Outstanding Activity Award, according to the ABA.
The ABA will present the awards Feb. 7 at its 2014 Midyear Meeting in Chicago.
In a news release, the HBA said it impacted more than 53,000 people in the Houston area through its programming on the Law Day theme “Realizing the Dream: Equality for All.”
A new HBA Law Day event was a “Day at the Courthouse,” where 45 special-needs students from middle and high schools saw a re-enactment of the Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, KS case and learned about the importance of the ruling from Texas Supreme Court Justice Eva Guzman.
The students also toured the historic 1910 Courthouse and used gavels, scales of justice, law books, and the courtroom itself to create images for a Law Day photo contest for special-needs students. Fourteenth Court of Appeals Chief Justice Kem Thompson Frost organized the event.
The HBA also conducted its annual Law Day poster, essay, and photography contests open to all Houston-area elementary, middle and high schools; conducted dialogues on freedom between attorney-judge teams and high school seniors; held poster workshops for children in three low-income areas of the city; created Law Day education and legal resource packets for every Harris County district and county court; fielded questions from nearly 300 callers during a Law Day LegalLine program; and scheduled members to read a law-themed book to elementary students in more than 100 schools.
Learn more about Law Day here.