Law Week Colorado featured government and political law attorney Terrance Carroll in an article highlighting his third term as president of the Sam Cary Bar Association, while touching on other aspects of Carroll’s career. In the article, he recounts growing up in Washington D.C., close to the heart of the federal government, his path to a political career, passion for pro bono work, return to private practice, and vision for the Sam Cary Bar Association.

Below are excerpts from the article.

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One case that sticks out to Carroll and reflects his priorities happened early on in his career, when he represented a woman and her family in a wrongful eviction case. It was his first trial, and while he didn’t win, he said their case was so compelling that the landlord backed off and they were able to keep the client in her home.

“Those types of things are very important to me, making sure that folks have the ability to have their grievances redressed in the court of law regardless of their ability to pay,” Carroll said.

More recently, he’s been appointed as pro bono coordinator at Sherman & Howard.

“Pro bono is one of the ways that lawyers ensure, or should be one of the ways that lawyers ensure, that folks with not a whole lot of financial means are still able to access the justice system and get the legal assistance that they need,” Carroll said.

As Carroll returns to the helm of the Sam Cary Bar Association, he told Law Week that right now, less than 1% of lawyers in Colorado identify as African American or Black.

“Clearly there’s an issue that has to be addressed,” Carroll said. “Not saying who’s to blame, not sure that there’s anyone to blame. That’s less than the actual number of Black people who live in Colorado according to the Census, which is somewhere like 6% of the population is Black in Colorado.”

Carroll noted that it’s harder for people to believe they’ll have access to justice if they can’t find a lawyer who looks like them.

“That’s a problem, and one of the ways that we can fix that is making sure that the legal community reflects the larger Colorado community and that’s one of my goals, is to increase the pipeline of Black lawyers and Black legal professionals,” Carroll said.

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Read the full article HERE. (Subscription required.)