Lonnie Powers

Lonnie served as Executive Director of the Massachusetts Legal Assistance Corporation (MLAC) from its founding in 1983 through August 2018. He has more than 49 years of policy, legal, and organizational development experience at the state and national levels, having devoted the majority of his career to establishing, building, sustaining, and revitalizing legal aid organizations. As Executive Director of MLAC, Lonnie’s primary responsibilities include increasing funding for civil legal aid; expanding public understanding of the legal needs of low income people, and the value to society of providing legal assistance; enhancing partnerships with the bar, the legislature, the judiciary, and the public; and strengthening legal aid programs across the Commonwealth.

Before joining MLAC, Lonnie served for four years in the Office of Arkansas Attorney General Jim Guy Tucker, was a Teaching Fellow at the George Washington University Law School (1977-1978), was the founding Executive Director of Legal Services of Arkansas (1979-1983) and of the Legal Services Corporation Regional Training Center serving the LSC funded legal aid organizations in the ten Southeastern states (1982-1983). He has served as a consultant to the Legal Services Corporation, the American Bar Association and the Texas Access to Justice Foundation.

Among other professional services, Lonnie has served as the President of the National Legal Aid and Defender Association, on the Supreme Judicial Court Standing Committee on Pro Bono, the American Bar Association Commission on IOLTA, the Boston Bar Association Statewide Task Force to Expand Civil Legal Aid in Massachusetts and as Chair of the Massachusetts Bar Association Delivery of Legal Services Section Council.

Partnering with his fellow Commission on the Future of the Courts veteran, Steve Johnson, as an Access to Justice Fellow, Lonnie seeks to (1) help civil legal aid organizations more effectively access social capital in support of their critically important work, and (2) help foundations and other social investors better understand and integrate civil legal aid in seeking to achieve their important program goals. They will be working with the Management Information Exchange, a Boston-based national nonprofit that seeks to promote best practices and innovation in leadership, management, and fundraising in the civil legal aid community, in order to ensure high quality advocacy on behalf of low-income people.