Opening Address For The Seventh Annual Stein Center Symposium on Contemporary Urban Challenges

This article is a published version of the opening address of Peter Edelman at the Seventh Annual Stein Center Symposium on Contemporary Urban Challenges, which identifies the challenges in lawyering to the poor and proposes approaches for lawyers to reduce poverty. Peter Edelman's speech challenges the private Bar to take on greater responsibility in helping to formulate policy that will work to eradicate the plight of the poor, calls for greater lawyer involvement in policy adaptation and implementation, identifies new roles that lawyers can and should play in helping to build and strengthen community institutions, and maintains that community building needs to become a major focus of lawyering for the poor.