Scott M. Curran: There are only two ways to run the world. Guns or lawyers. That's it. It's either the threat of force or the rule of law. Everything we call civil society, from the contracts that govern businesses to rights that protect our privacy and freedom itself, depend on the second path. And lawyers are the custodians of that path, the stewards of the rule of law.

But we too often forget this. We joke about lawyers, we say things like, “Everyone hates a lawyer until they need one.” But the truth is, we love lawyers because 24/7/365, whether we see them or not, they hold the line between order and chaos, between civilization and something far darker. The famous line from Shakespeare that the first thing we do is kill all the lawyers is usually a punchline, but it wasn't actually an insult at all. 

It was an inadvertent compliment spoken by a character who was part of a violent rebellion that wanted to create anarchy. So the first thing they wanted to do was get rid of all the lawyers. Lawyers, protect civil society so that each of us can achieve our version of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

In the law school class I teach, I remind students that inspiring figures like Abraham Lincoln, Mahatma Gandhi, and Nelson Mandela were all lawyers. An inspiring fact. Far too few people know. I ask students to think about the lawyers who inspire them. Today's guest is one who inspires me. 

Welcome to Better Good. The show where you learn how the best in the world do good, and how you can too. I'm your host Scott Curran. For 25 years, I've served as a corporate lawyer and in-house general counsel and an advisor to some of the most extraordinary social impact work spanning the private sector, philanthropy and social enterprises.

On this podcast, I talk to the innovators, reimagining how the world does good, bringing you candid and inspiring conversations and practical advice, guidance, and tools you can use in your life and work. If doing good is something you care about, you're in the right place because the world's biggest problems won't wait, and neither should you.

My guest today is Skye Perryman, the President and CEO of Democracy Forward, one of the most consequential legal organizations of our time. She leads a team of litigators and strategists that is defending fundamental rights, good governance, and the core promise that government should work for all the people it serves.

She's a nationally recognized lawyer and civic leader. She's helped drive major legal wins that protect healthcare, access, defense, civil rights, and hold the government accountable. It's both obvious and an understatement that Skye is extremely busy these days. This episode is for every American who cares about living in a civil society governed fairly by the rule of law.

It's for those who understand that protecting democracy is never partisan, but is in fact a condition precedent to enjoying the freedom of having partisan differences in the first place. This episode is also, especially for every lawyer, every law firm leader, and every law student who has ever wondered whether the work they do matters. 

Spoiler alert: It matters a lot, and now more than ever. This is Better Good. And here is my conversation with Skye Perryman. 

Scott M. Curran: Skye Perryman, thank you for joining me on Better Good. 

Skye Perryman: Thanks for having me. 

Scott M. Curran: I am so grateful to know you and to know of and about your work, and I would actually love it if, amidst everything that we know about you and your work, because I see you on the news all the time and I love it. I see you in, in print, press, and all press. But I haven't heard this part of your story and I wonder if you would share it with us, if you were to think back to the earliest part of your life, where you first realized that doing good was something that people could do and maybe something that you could do, I'm curious to know what that memory was for you.

Skye Perryman: I was really fortunate. I grew up in Texas, uh, with a great family and with grandparents that, um, did not have much, uh, as they were growing up. They were kids of the Great Depression, and as they aged and, uh, you know, worked hard, hey ended up having a little bit more than they needed. My mother's parents lived on a farm in a very small town outside of Houston, Texas with land, and they would always be growing something and giving it to the community. They would always be finding ways that they could use  the land that they had to, to help community events. Or to help people in, in some instances that needed shelter. So I remember those early memories with my grandparents, really seeing how they did good in their small community and how it could make a really big difference.

That was one memory. And then another memory early on is I was born in the early eighties in Texas and that was just, it was just about 20 years after the passage of landmark civil rights legislation. And so these fights in the south and in places like Texas around civil rights and justice, there were still really fresh. 

Fights and I was able and really fortunate to grow up in a community where I got to meet a lot of people who really did the work to help fight in places across the south and in Texas for civil rights. And understanding that they were in many instances, ordinary people, but they did really extraordinary things in dedicating themselves to a cause. And so I think the combination of seeing how my grandparents engaged in a small town on their farm and really understanding how some of the civil rights leaders in Texas and community members really made a difference, I think probably were some of my earliest memories.

Scott M. Curran: I love that. Thank you for sharing it. Help me with little time travel here. Tell me about the time between that early memory and that early experience in Texas, and right before you took over at, at the helm of Democracy Forward. Your career without regard to the current work in the current moment is such an important model, for young lawyers, for others who are interested in making a pivot,for those who who go from private practice to something else. And I'd love it if you could share just a little bit about how that path unfolded for you so that others can understand what's actually behind a career that looks like yours today. 

Skye Perryman: Sure. So I arrived, um, at law school really wanting to make a difference. I had had a job in college where I was doing work in public schools in central Texas, and realized about halfway through that work that so many of the opportunities that students like me and others were given was because of court decision and work through the law to make the law more inclusive for people. Whether you're talking about Title IX and the prohibition on sex discrimination, whether you're talking about brown V Board of Education and the integration of schools in the country. And so, I really went to law school because of a love for justice. And when I got there, I also realized that litigation really scratched an itch in me, which was my, I was an old debater and loved debating. And the practice of litigating, I really fell in love with in those early, truly reading the cases in the early law school taking clinics.

And so I ended up, I started my career, um, at Covington and Burling, and then I went to Wilmer Hale. I loved my private practice career. I had a very robust public interest docket, everything from representing people that were detained in Guantanamo Bay without process in the Bush administration to civil rights plaintiffs, to women's healthcare providers.

So got to do a lot of that work and also had big corporate clients that had hard problems they needed to solve. And I loved helping solve those hard problems and litigating those cases. But I came to this work full-time after President Trump was elected in 2016. And then in 2017, in the early months, we started seeing what was shock and awe for the American community and for the court of American conscience at the time.

Things like the Muslim ban, where lawyers in airports were dropping their suitcases and having to render legal assistance as if a doctor does that in a war zone. And lawyers quite literally, were having a moment in that time. And I had just had my son and was really concerned about the world he was gonna grow up in. And a senior lawyer that I admired asked me if I would be willing to be part of a startup legal organization that no one had heard of, that didn't have a website, and it just seemed like the right thing to do. So I litigated some early cases of Democracy Forward before people knew who we were. We won some great early cases on issues of voting rights and got funding for communities, so many things. And then I went to the American College of OB-GYNs, where I served as general counsel, which was really an outgrowth of a lot of the work I'd done with women's health in my private practice. And then after January 6th, uh, I returned to Democracy Forward.This was a time not to pull back on the fight for democracy, but to push forward. And so I came in 2021 to build and scale what was a very promising but small startup organization to the organization that many know today. 

Scott M. Curran: So you were already a founder. For those who don't know this detail, you were already a founder of Democracy Court.

Skye Perryman: I was on the founding litigation team. Yeah. I was not the executive director. I was on the board. But um, I was one of the founding litigators brought some of the early cases. We challenged the Pence voter, Pence Kobach Voter Commission, which was a commission that was collecting personal data on individual voters.

Does that sounda t all interests similar? We just filed another lawsuit on that in this administration, but and brought a range of cases with, with just incredible colleagues and that's been a through line. I've had incredible colleagues everywhere I've worked, but the colleagues at Democracy Forward are just so incredible in many ways.

Scott M. Curran: If you would speak to something that comes up so often, I'm sure it does for you. I think every seasoned lawyer gets some inquiries from either people who are gonna go to law school or law students, or people young in their career. So you are at an in-house, you are at two law firms, and, and I would speak to the training you get of being at a law firm before you go in-house and or create your own thing. That's a nugget that I think is so important for young lawyers to understand. The value of everybody's path is different, and there's no wrong. If you could just speak to the value of what a young lawyer would get, being at a firm.

Skye Perryman: Particularly in litigation, and of course I was at firms and my two firms, Covington and Wilmer, both have been targeted by the, uh, you know, they had both been targeted by the President and neither of them have capitulated. And so I wanna call that out because one of the things that's been special about many firms, and particularly many firms in Washington DC is their commitment—they're a business—but their commitment to the rule of law. And, and I'm really proud of my two alumni firms. But so I was a litigator. And for those that are listening that want to litigate and, and file cases and build cases, I think a law firm can be a great place to go. You work on matters that are really high stakes. At the firms I went to, they were, uh, really your work could create a path for you if, if you were willing to lean in and take on extra work, you could get experiences early on. That's not the case everywhere. So I do tell people to really talk to folks about what the day-to-day experience is, but I was really fortunate that I worked with, for some of the best lawyers in the country.

Some of those lawyers are now at Democracy Forward doing work here that mentored me, that taught me. And, , you learn a lot, uh, in those, in those other, their heavy workflow, uh, heavy workload days. I did not go in-house. For the reasons many people went in-house. I'm a litigator's litigator, but women's health and, um, reproductive health and the work that OBGYNs do for both women and for people that require O-B-G-Y-N care, such as trans individuals and communities across the country, was really a tip of the spear continues to be just a tip of the spear issue that encompasses so many things. You know, science, evidence, medicine, equity, justice. All of those things really intersect. And so, you know, being able to serve OBGYNs as one of my clients has been really a highlight of my career and that's what led me to acog.And then of course, uh, I'm back at a full litigating organization now 'cause I can't shake it. 

Scott M. Curran: Just quick note, as the son of an OBGYN I totally understand, um, the importance of that and as somebody who also tracked his career from private practice to, uh, being in house. I, I, it's such a valuable training and obviously for litigation for so many reasons.

Alright, let's jump into the work of Democracy Forward and something that, you know, as I've gotten to know you and Democracy Forward over the, the past couple years. For in, in, in many ways why the work of Democracy Forward always matters, not just now, especially now, but always matters. So, so many people assume that the gears of democracy, civil society, and government are always going to work without fail, like a hard drive under a computer. But once it starts making noise or the fans start spinning hotter, we realize we're having some problems. Things come into a clearer view, but help people understand why it always matters and why it really matters right now, and what people may or may not be seeing, and how to connect the dots about what they should be worried or concerned about, and why this matters in this moment.

Skye Perryman: Yeah. So at Democracy Forward, we have the honor and the privilege of representing people and communities across this country in lawsuits where they are suing in many instances to defend their rights, and to defend the rightst hat all people in this country are granted. Rights are only as good as your ability to exercise them.

And so this work always matters. And before this administration where we are seeing really unprecedented and accelerating autocratic threats, and we'll talk about that, but Democracy Forward, we were in places and continue to be in places like Arkansas, where the governor signed a law that would've criminalized librarians for mis-shelving books, putting librarians under criminal penalty. We are in communities across the country where there are very extreme interests that are trying to wheel and deal in misinformation, trying to convince people that they don't have a voice or that they shouldn't vote or that they can't vote.

So that work, that exercising that muscle every day to say, these aren't just my academic rights that somebody wrote down on a document. These are real live things that I get for being in this country, and we're going to exercise them and use them. It is really, really important in this moment. So that's a lot of the work we do.

And of course, that work is having a bit of a, you know, there's a bit of a high demand right now for that work, given the challenges that we're seeing with the way the president has chosen to govern. But the work of democracy, the work of using the law, having a point of view that the government does need to serve people, that the law is here to serve people, the Supreme Court should be protecting our rights, not reversing our rights.

All of those things are ongoing issues that if we ignore or if we sort of convince ourselves it's not gonna impact us, we end up in situations like where we are now. 

Scott M. Curran: And so this work is nonpartisan because it's truly about the fundamental core of what protects civil society, democracy, rule of law, access to justice. I'd love to get in a couple details, but I think it's so important for people who may not be as familiar or in, in the day-to-day or lawyers and understand this. This is fundamental to everybody's rights 24/7/365. It's not about one party or another, or one present or another. It's about responding appropriately to the actions to preserve the core of what makes this society work. Is that right? 

Skye Perryman: That is a hundred percent right. We welcome anybody that wants to be part of, um, a tomorrow that is better than today, that wants to be part of this generational work to build a democracy that has never truly existed in this country, a democracy that holds everyone and that, uh, provides equal dignity and the ability for all people to thrive, as well as now a lot of defensive work to hold on to the hard-earned gains that we've gotten through this March for Justice.

So we welcome everybody into our work we are representing right now—just to give you a flavor of it in court—we're representing houses of worship that are very diverse in the religions and denominations they represent, including, by the way, we're representing a bunch of white evangelical churches and Baptist churches.I mean, I grew up Baptist, but, um, you can imagine that not everybody in that coalition is gonna necessarily agree with the most progressive vision of, of the world, but yet they are going to court right now to protect the ability of people to engage in communal worship without having immigration raids happening in churches.

And we're doing that with the Sikh Temple of San Francisco and a, a range of religious institutions. We've represented civil servants, uh, who have worked for, you know, both Republican and Democratic administrations, whose service is fundamentally nonpartisan in lawsuits. So we do a lot of work,that I think a lot of the work in and people and communities, we have the honor of working on behalf of really shows that we welcome everybody in into this work. 

Scott M. Curran: So let's get tactical about a couple of things that people may have heard about a little bit in the news or they may see but, but have passed over, help people understand exactly what's happening and why it's problematic. Here I'm, I'm just outside of Chicago and we have very, very famously had ICE on the streets of Chicago. I know you've been very attentive to that, as well as their presence in other parts around the country. But there's a startling statistic that I think 85% or more of the people that were arrested or or taken into custody by ICE were found to have no criminal record, had done no wrongdoing, et cetera, and that people need to understand this isn't what sometimes they hear that we're getting the worst of the worst, or those who are criminals and need to be detained or reviewed or deported. But these are actual innocent people. And I wonder if you would speak to something that only I've ever heard you do as well as you do it, which is. Normalizing the abnormal and the unprecedented in this, and what the long game might be on that, and why people who may not be familiar with these issues or the law behind it should be paying attention to what's happening in those news stories.

Skye Perryman: Yeah, I mean, what is happening right now and what is happening specifically with respect to immigrant communities, black and brown communities, um, ICE's operations, what is happening right now is a threat to every single American, and I'll make it really plain. I mean, what ICE is doing right now is in many instances, they are detaining people without proper process. We've already had litigation filed because of removing people from the country without process, which, which by the way, nine justices of the Supreme Court agree you, you, everybody in this country get some type of due process. And so, these are really the types of tactics that we can't just get tired. This is gonna be a long, you know, we were like. Whatever, three point, 3.1 years to go in this administration. But we can't just get tired and say, well, you know, that was sort of old news last month. This is not normal. There are lawyers that are fighting every single day in Chicago. The raid of the apartment building, and then the way in which the Department of Justice put up a video and on and, and tried to do a PR stunt over just cruelty. We're in court right now to get that video and to see the raw footage and to obtain the raw footage. In Chicago, you've had the National Guard and the courts have said that that National Guard can't be there.

We've also had to sue in Memphis to keep the National Guard outta Memphis, but it is not normal. I live in Washington, DC, send my kidt o school here. Federal judge just ruled that the National Guard should not be in Washington, DC either. But until that works its way through the courts, we're going to work watching National Guard on our city, on our civilian city streets.

And so that is, it is not normal. And what it is, is it is part of a vastly accelerating autocratic playbook. And part of these tactics are about people feeling so overwhelmed, that they don't feel like there's anything they can do, and so you give up. You sort of retreat in, um, sometimes for your own survival, sometimes out of fear, sometimes out of exhaustion.

And that is actually the number-one tool that autocratic actors use and have, is trying to convince people that they don't have power. And so one of the things we have to do in this moment, we certainly shouldn't normalize this, but we also have to be real attuned to having conversations like this to our community, spending some time together. You and I have been at a few things that we've set up just to sort of spend some time together, make sure that you're, um, you know, touching base with your neighbors, building some community, uh, because we don't want people to feel isolated and alone even in this very scary time because that will create, uh, further conditions for further acceleration of this autocratic threat and community that creates courage and that's creates something that we can push through together. 

Scott M. Curran: And, and that line that never gets old and shouldn't get old and can be seen every day, which is that courage is contagious, is a real thing. It's not just a slogan. It's that that, that we can link arms and, and that you, you've actually said something which is really great, which this administration has a difficult time. Processing or dealing with a courageous foe. And could you speak about that a little bit more? 

Skye Perryman: Yeah, I mean, this is what we've seen in our work. You know, in the first early days of the administration, there were not very many lawyers that were willing to go to court, not just against the President, but also in against Elon Musk. I mean, remember that Elon Musk and the president were tweeting. They were gonna take Washington and take the United States by, you know, firestorm. And there were very few lawyers that were willing to go in because they thought that the costs were so high. People are getting it now. And that's really exciting because people are finding when we act together, we can.

But what we learned early on is that this administration knows what to do with weakness. They do. They can feel it when you're afraid. They can feel it if you're gonna capitulate, but we haven't seen that they know what to do with strength. And our work has shown that day after day, in many instances, we are in court on behalf of people in communities that are not the most powerful institutions in the country, but yet they are holding the line and creating and preserving rights for all of us, and we're seeing that play out every day. So people say courage is contagious. We have a bracelet here at Democracy Forward. We're about to give our whole staff, uh, for the holidays that that says courage is contagious. But I've been saying courage is the new currency. Courage is the way, it is the thing that we are going to have to have to take us from this moment to the next moment. There is no way of getting out of this moment without a bit of courage. And what does that mean? It means something different to different people. There are folks for whom it is not safe for themselves or for their families to show up in certain spaces fiven the militarization of our cities, given ICE on the streets, targeting black and brown people. And those are gonna be, that's gonna be a completely different type of calculus about how you show up with courage. For many people right now, existing, existing in a state of joy, in a state of community, that is the most courageous thing that can be done. And then there are others and institutions and organizations and folks that have some leverage in this moment that need to be using that and building courage and leveraging that.

And so we are really open to all the different manifestations of courage here, but it is going to be that courage that has to take us out of this moment. There's no way, there's not gonna be any way to get out of this time by keeping our heads down or by just hoping that this blows over because we're in a really big crisis moment.

Scott M. Curran: Hope is important, but hope is not a strategy. I love a positive message, and I, we'll, we'll finish on that, but I want to go back to, to something else that you said, which about this flooding the zone. The confusion and the overwhelm are a strategy. They are a tactic. They're part of what—and this is, this has transcended two, two versions of this, this administration's tenure in DD—which is flooding the zone is actually a strategy and a tactic of that team and the people behind it. They talk about it all the time, creating chaos and overwhelm so that people are retreating and afraid and just trying to focus on it. You and I, you mentioned a place you and I spent some time with some people and, um, I think number one, it's important for people to understand that the chaos and overwhelm is, is, is intentional. It's meant to put us back on our heels. And so to me. One of the tactics that, that we can take to counter that is to simply take that deep breath. Chin up, shoulders back, understand this is a strategy and not being willing to feed it any more than is necessary. We have to deal with the reality of it, but it's better to pull back.

How would you inform the average person? You and I sat with someone at a round table who said, most people are still just driving their kids to practice. They're going to the grocery store, they're dealing with prices, they're trying to get through their day. They don't see democracy fraying. They don't see rights being ignored altogether. They don't feel it until it comes for them, but it's important those people understand what is happening and that this is not garden variety politics. There is a perception that this is normalizing the abnormal and the unprecedented in service of a law strategy so that we're used to seeing, whether or not it's Customs and Border patrol or ICE, just seeing armed troops on our street so that it is perhaps less objectionable or something. Maybe we're more used to this time next year. Could you speak to what people, two or three things people should keep their eyes and ears open for to know that this is actually happening now and that they should be worried because it will have a further downstream effect. 

Skye Perryman: Well, it's really important not to be desensitized. So if, if someone is, um, right now in a situation where they're not in a community that is being touched by the unlawful nature of this administration, and by the way, I don't think there's a community that's not being touched. At Democracy Forward we have had to go to court to stop the President from cutting off all federal funding across the country, which would do everything from cutoff Meals on Wheels to small business programs to safety programs. So sometimes that message doesn't get through because of a fractured media environment, but this harm is affecting people across the country, and we're hearing it and we're seeing it every day. But it's important not to get desensitized.

And what that means is we can't be overwhelmed with all of the state of the world every day because that makes you just wanna retreat and become desensitized. But it also means that if we're in a community that right now isn't facing ICE banging on the doors, ICE kicking in a door, National Guard on the street as I am taking my son to school, that is what is happening inommunities across the country, we need to be paying attention to the stories of the people. And they not, I'm not talking about celebrities or like whatever, just stories of people. They're telling their stories, they're talking about what's happening. They're seeing it with their own eyes, they're feeling it. And that's a big piece of this. So I would say for, for folks is to not be desensitized. Make a plan about how you're gonna obtain your information. You don't have to listen to 15 hours of cable television or TikTok videos or whatever, but make a plan about the information you wanna obtain. Set a time to do it. And then make sure that we're listening to the real stories of people, the things behind the headlines, and there's a lot of ways to do that. So that's one thing. 

I think the other thing is that we should be highly suspicious of any administration that gloats. About harm that is happening to the American people. That is not normal. We have not seen that in a Republican or democratic administrations like we are seeing now with a president who's job is to serve the people gloating about harm to people. This president went to the United States Supreme Court to try to keep food out of the hands of 42 million Americans.

While my team and our co-counsel were fighting day and night to make sure that people could access basic nutrition. It is not normal, regardless of your policy view, for a president to be cheering and wanting to deprive people of basic necessities that they need. To be cheering as planes are leaving the country with people that have been removed without due process, that is not a normal way of operating.

And I think that that's one thing we want people to understand. And to really be, government has let people down vefore in the past, but we need to have high expectations of our government, that this is a basic expectation that your president is not rooting against the very people that he or she is elected to serve.

And that's what we're seeing now. So I think those are some things I would say, um, in, in this moment. And, um, we really are in a new paradigm. Things have not been perfect for a long time, and they've never been, they've never been fully inclusive. We've never been that true democracy that we're all trying to achieve, but we've been on a path forward. And now we're in a place where we are amidst a rapidly accelerating backslide of our democracy. And there is a way to turn it around, but it is going to take people. And that is why this president is weaponizing the government against the people. And we all need to be on guard for that. 

Scott M. Curran: I've said for years long before this, this administration. Now is one of the greatest times in the history of the world to be a lawyer because nothing happens without lawyers. The rule of law and civil society that lets everybody achieve whatever version of, of their pursuit of life, liberty, and the persuit of happiness. It's, it's not just a colloquial saying. It is also a reality that that only becomes more precious when we start to lose it, which we're seeing now. If you could rally other lawyers and law firms and leaders of law firms and law students, whose voices all matter. We have seen this, from the early capitulation of some law firms, and we've seen it through the very attack by this administration against law firms in the first place. Some of their capitulation and some of them actually leaning forward and resisting it. What is your rallying cry to leaders of law firms today and what they can and should be doing, and where can they see examples of that success, where courage can be contagious for them? What should they be looking at and doing next to be part of the solution on the right side of history and preserving democracy?

Skye Perryman: You know, this is a do or die moment for the legal profession. And we see that every single day. And it is lawyers, uh, that are right now leveraging the voices of people in order to preserve and to protect rights that every single person is entitled to. But what I would say, I think the American Bar Association has done a tremendous job in explaining to all lawyers, reminding us whether we're in law school or whether we're retired or whether we're actively practicing what our obligations are when we became lawyers and, um, our obligation to the Constitution, our obligation to the rule of law. And so I would really encourage, I think that is the place to start, is get that ethics book back out, get that Constitution back out. You swore an oath to it. You don't get to have privileged and confidential conversations and all these special rules in your profession that we have if we don't have some obligations that we owe back to society. And we are really encouraged by the courage that we are seeing in lawyers. We have folks that, you know, have been in federal government that have had to say, “I cannot do this because I will not violate my ethical duty,” when the, when the president and the administration has tried to get people to lie to court. We've seen law firms sue the president, and of course, lawyers like the team at Democracy Forward and at so many organizations, the ACLU, public citizen civil rights organizations, they're on the front lines every day doing this work.

That's protecting all of us. So you don't have to do that. That doesn't have to be your profession as a lawyer. But we all need to rally around this community and rally around our professional ethics and our constitution and remember that we too took an oath and we don't get to be members of a profession and then just decide that the Constitution's inconvenient for four years. You know, we've got to do our, we have to play our role in upholding the Constitution in the ways we can. And I think you see a lot of lawyers doing that. And the ones that haven't and the institutions that haven't, you know, history is gonna, history's eyes is on them. You know, history's gonna judge that very harshly.

Scott M. Curran: You recently commented that nobody's gonna get through this time successfully by keeping their heads down. What is something that a lawyer at a firm, let's, let's put the firm aside that the firm may or may not take a position externally or internally, may or may not be in it to win it in one way or another, but there's so many lawyers. I'm married to one, I am one relatively plugged into this, but who struggled to know what they can do. And one little thing I did, and I smiled earlier when you mentioned, the Bar Association and people showing up in the first, uh, term of this administration. For the first time in my entire career in 24 years, I carry my Bar card in my wallet. It has always gathered dust in a cabinet right over my shoulder here because I never felt any need or practical application for it. And now I'm scared enough and I'm a white male over 40 in the world who walks through with that level of privilege. But I keep that Bar card in my wallet now because I don't know what I'm gonna encounter on the streets around my community or out in the world. What can in individual lawyers do to be part of the solution right now? 

Skye Perryman: Yeah, so first of all, I think like, you know, dust off your Bar card, right? So make sure that you are actively participating in your local Bar association. That's gonna be, it's gonna be critical, um, on rule of law issues, attorney discipline issues. The ABA has great resources, but lawyers have a responsibility. It's in our ethical code to promote access to justice. That doesn't mean you have to go argue A case at the Supreme Court, doesn't even mean that you have to sue the President. But there are a, there are, um, ways in everybody's community that legal services are needed, whether that is helping people fill out a tax form, whether it is helping people access social security, if you're a transactional lawyer, whether it is going and doing some landlord-tenant, there are direct services that need to be provided in our communities and a lot of lawyers that typically provide those services are not able to do it right now because there are these other democracy-level fights that we're fighting.

And so one is if, if you're not sort of up for volunteering to bring a big constitutional law case, let's make sure our local communities are getting what they need in terms of access to justice. And there are so many ways to do that, um, in our local communities. And then more broadly, for anybody that's listening that wants to get involved, um, Democracy Forward has a program called Democracy 2025. It was our response to Project 2025. There are more than 650 organizations involved with it and a lot of individual lawyers. So you can go to Democracy 2025.org. You can sign up or write and say, “Hey, I'm a lawyer. I really wanna figure out how I can help.” And we've been able to help put some volunteer lawyers to work doing that. So you can definitely do that. 

But I would just say that in our local communities there are people that need access to justice and there's all kinds of ways to plug in. And taking it back to the first question you asked me, we know that these seemingly small things, these seemingly small ways of doing good can truly have big implications. And we need to really know that now, 'cause that's all it's gonna be is a bunch of people, ordinary people living in an extraordinary time doing what they can. With, with the power they have. 

Scott M. Curran: The little things are the big things. Last question on this, this specific topic is law schools, law school clinics, law students and their voices and law school deans of of course, but they matter now too, right?

Skye Perryman: Tremendous. We're working with law clinics. Um, it's, that is tremendous. And of course law clinics do a lot of the work to provide direct services, but law students, I get so, if law students were listening, we get so inspired. Our team at Democracy Foward gets so inspired every day by seeing that, um, there are people that still want to go into this profession, even as the President is targeting it. People want to be lawyers. They want to be part of the generational work. To hold this country together, to push us forward. And so I think that there, there's so many things that matter and really, um, just, just becoming familiar with the law, with what it means to be a lawyer and then doing that work through legal clinics or through other types of experiences early on can just be really valuable.

Scott M. Curran: Looking ahead, what does success look like if we make it through this time period and all of its diversity, and how can we strengthen democracy and the rule of law so that we are stronger in the broken or sprained or strained places that the current moment has revealed? What does that look like in a forward looking, positive vision?

Skye Perryman: Look, I mean, success is very simple, but very hard to achieve. We want every single person in this country to be able to thrive. To be able to pursue happiness, to be able to live the life that they want and can live, and we wanna be able to do it together with some semblance of a national community. That's not a conformed community, that's not a community without dissent. We want all of that dissent, debate, hard policy fights, all of those things. But we want every single person in this country to truly get to live in a country where the institutions are serving them. Where the institutions are made to hold them.

And if there is one thing that is going to happen in this crisis, we and our colleagues at Democracy Foward, as well as so many others, are committed to making sure that this crisis is a catalyst for generational change and a catalyst for building and re-imagining a democracy that has never fully been achieved in this country, a democracy that can truly hold all of us, and one that will not falter.

In the future because of the failure of government and politicians to deliver for people that has breeded cynicism, that has, that has placed us where we are now. So that's the end game and our team at Democracy Foward, and I think you and so many other folks, we're not gonna stop until we reach that end game.

Scott M. Curran: Mandela, Gandhi, Lincoln, Perryman. Lawyers have always been the architects and the custodians of civil society, and it is times like this where the oath is so much more than performative professional practice. It's a call to action. You and your colleagues have reminded us that rule of law is not self-sustaining, but is kept alive by the people who believe it, who practice it and protect it every day. 

Every lawyer listening, chin up, shoulders back. We are proud. Part of this proud tradition, our work in courtrooms, classrooms, boardrooms and beyond is what keeps our democracy standing. Skye Perryman, I am so deeply grateful to be in a world where you are doing what you do, where you are who you are, and you are how you are, which is nothing short of inspirational and consequential.

Thank you for everything you and your team do every day, to protect and preserve this democracy. And I'm so grateful for your time here on Better Good. 

Skye Perryman: Thank you so much. 

Scott M. Curran: Thank you for tuning into Better. Good. If you enjoyed the show, remember to rate, review, share, and subscribe.