Gail Kinney served as the Executive Director of the New Hampshire Bar Association during the 1980s, and then as the Director of the New England Bar Foundation. At the ABA Mid-Winter Meeting in Baltimore in February 1986, Kinney, as well as Michael Greco, president of the Massachusetts Bar, Jonathan Ross, president of the New Hampshire Bar, and Bill Whitehurst, president-elect of the Texas Bar, founded the ad hoc group Bar Leaders for the Preservation of Legal Services for the Poor. The grassroots group was ultimately successful in mobilizing and uniting all other state bar associations and many city bar associations in a coalition that was determined to save legal services from the board that was hostile to the mission of the LSC. Kinney, who volunteered to staff the Bar Leaders for the Preservation of Legal Services for the Poor, compiled these files and research materials documenting the collective effort to preserve legal services for the poor during the 1980s. A finding aid for the Gail Kinney Collection (NEJL 066) is available on Digital Georgetown.

The collection includes Gary Bellow’s inspiring reflections: “Comments on Our Situation,” prepared for the Conference on Legal Services, March 6, 1982. The NEJL has made a digitized copy of Bellow’s reflections available on Digital Georgetown: https://repository.library.georgetown.edu/handle/10822/1042743