Brooklyn Programs President Betty Staton honored by New York County Lawyers’ Association

Congratulations to Betty Staton, LSNYC’s President of Brooklyn Programs, who received the New York County Lawyers’ Association Public Service Award on September 25th, 2013. This award is given annually to honor lawyers in the public sector who have distinguished themselves as role models, innovators, and problem solvers of complex legal issues.

(Above: Betty, center, with Catherine A. Christian, former NYCLA President and current Chair of the NYCLA Public Service Awards Committee, and LSNYC Executive Director Raun Rasmussen.)

Betty Staton began her legal career as a staff attorney at Bedford Stuyvesant Community Legal Services (BSCLS). After that, she served as BSCLS’ Deputy Director of Community Outreach and Education. In that capacity, she developed curriculum in various areas of the law and trained non-lawyers to advocate and represent clients at administrative hearings. She also conducted outreach seminars at schools, senior centers, and youth centers. In 1987, she left BSCLS to become a founding partner in the law firm of Boyd Staton & Cave, the first African-American law firm in the State of New York.

In 1991, she was appointed by Mayor David Dinkins to New York State Family Court, Kings County. In 2001, she was reappointed to another ten year term by Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and served until her mandatory retirement. After retiring, she briefly served as Interim Executive Director of BSCLS until a permanent director was hired. In 2006, she returned to the Family Court to serve as a Judicial Hearing Officer. She became Executive Director as BSCLS in June 2011, and was appointed as President of our combined Brooklyn programs in 2012.

About our Brooklyn programs: Since 1967, our programs in Brooklyn—Bedford-Stuyvesant Community Legal Services, Legal Services NYC–Brooklyn Branch, and South Brooklyn Legal Services—have sought equal justice for low-income people in by providing a broad range of legal advocacy and information. In pursuing this goal, our offices work with individual clients and client groups to identify and address their legal needs, to help empower low-income people to identify and defeat the causes and effects of poverty in their communities, to focus on matters that will have the greatest impact for low-income people and to work in partnership with the private bar and with other agencies and organizations serving low-income people.