Valerie Shea, a partner in the firm’s Miami office and leader of the Global Insurance Services team in Florida, engaged in an initiative that promotes voter turnout during American elections.
On Election Day, Valerie and a colleague operated Election Protection’s call center, received all calls to its voter hotline — 866-OUR-VOTE — that originated in Florida.
Election Protection is a national, non-partisan coalition that works to ensure that all eligible voters have the opportunity to vote and have their votes count. Valerie has been involved in the coalition since 2004, through which she devotes substantial effort to recruiting and training volunteer lawyers, connecting with elections supervisors and grassroots organizations, engaging with the media, and overseeing the high volume of calls that come in on Election Days.
“Helping even one person vote, who might otherwise not have been able to, is immensely rewarding, and is the reason I come back to this project every cycle,” Valerie said. “Legal volunteers are always welcomed!”
Election Protection is just one of the many strategies produced by the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, an organization whose principal mission is to secure equal justice for all through the rule of law, targeting in particular the inequities confronting African Americans and other racial and ethnic minorities. The Lawyers’ Committee is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization, formed in 1963 at the request of President John F. Kennedy to enlist the private bar’s leadership and resources in combating racial discrimination and the resulting inequality of opportunity. Valerie currently serves on the committee’s Board of Directors as the Southeastern Regional Vice Chair.