Everything is Possible in San Francisco

The Bar Association of San Francisco in 2007
by Nanci Clarence, 2007 BASF President

I decided to invite an all-female Chinese New Year Dragon to my induction as the Bar Association of San Francisco’s (BASF) president in 2007. After all, the dragon represents power, strength, good luck and blessings for the community. My plans quickly hit a bump when I learned that there was no such thing as an all-female dragon—perhaps because the dragon is also culturally associated with maleness.

But, as BASF presidents have learned over the past 150 years, everything is possible in San Francisco. No sooner did I complain about the apparent lack of diversity in the dragon community when my colleague, Abbie Chin, informed me that she was forming an all-female dragon and her dragon ladies would be delighted to roar into the Grand Ballroom of the St. Francis Hotel to usher in my year as president. They were magnificent! As the fierce She-Dragon snaked through the luncheon roaring with the banging drums, and eventually taking her boisterous leave, I caught the gaze of incoming President-Elect, Jim Donato, to whom I would hand the gavel the following year. Jim—now, Judge Donato—rolled his eyes, strode up to the podium and whispered, “thanks a lot, pal. What am I supposed to do at my induction next year—whistle and play the spoons?”

While the soon-to-be Judge Donato’s wisecrack captured the exquisite camaraderie BASF officers enjoy, my year as president was also filled with projects reflecting the democratic values that BASF upholds. Recognizing the important work our lawyers do as they represent San Francisco’s most vulnerable clients—our youth—in Delinquency and Dependency Courts, we created a college of trial advocacy for juvenile defenders. Concerned that our judges were being bashed in the press for making the tough decisions that protect our democracy, I asked then-City Attorney Dennis Herrera to lead a team of legal ‘first responders’ to vigorously defend the independence of the judiciary. Building on BASF’s ground-breaking advocacy for LGBTQ rights, we deployed BASF’s prodigious influence to ensure that all attorneys were given fair access to legal jobs and opportunities. We brought the same focus to BASF’s first conference on hiring and retaining lawyers with disabilities.

The hallmark of the thirty-plus years I have spent at BASF is our work on criminal justice reform which has now culminated in the Criminal Justice Task Force, a working group of stakeholders from throughout the San Francisco criminal justice community that comes together every month to advocate for a more fair, just and inclusive criminal justice system. I don’t know of another city where state and federal prosecutors and law enforcement officials, judges, public defenders, private defense lawyers, probation and pretrial officers, sheriff’s department officials, police civilian review agencies and reformers of all stripes get together monthly to solve problems—sometimes over a glass of wine.

Everything is indeed possible in San Francisco—and being a part of BASF means being part of the work to create a more perfect union.