September 2, 2020

Doris Henderson Causey Receives the Clarence M. Dunnaville Jr. Award

Doris Henderson Causey, managing attorney of the Richmond office of the Central Virginia Legal Aid Society, has been awarded the Clarence M. Dunnaville Jr. Achievement Award, sponsored by the Diversity Conference of the Virginia State Bar. The award honors a lawyer who exemplifies “…the conference’s goal of fostering, encouraging, and facilitating diversity and inclusion in the bar, the judiciary, and the legal profession.”

In 2017, Causey made legal history in the Commonwealth when she was inducted as the Virginia State Bar’s first African American president, and first president from the legal aid community.

Throughout her legal career, Causey has made service a priority, both in her profession and for the legal community. Causey has provided many years of service on the VSB’s Executive Committee and Bar Council, as well as on the Old Dominion Bar Association’s Executive Committee, and as secretary of both the Old Dominion Bar and of the Hill Tucker Bar, Richmond Chapter.

At the Central Virginia Legal Aid Society, Causey works to meet the needs of the underserved, delivering quality legal services to low income individuals and communities, while advocating for the protection of civil and human rights in the Commonwealth.

In her nomination letter, Carole H. Capsalis of Caulkins & Bruce, PC in Arlington noted, “In her year of service as the 80th president of the Virginia State Bar, Doris worked tirelessly to promote the needs of the legal aid community, promoted diversity and inclusion in the legal profession and in the selection of Virginia attorneys to serve on Bar council, committees and local bar. She helped raise awareness of the access to justice gap, and promoted availability of legal services to all, and especially those whose incomes fall below the poverty line.”

The award, named after Clarence Dunnaville, the noted Virginia attorney, civil rights pioneer, legal reformer, author, and justice activist, will be presented by the Diversity Conference at the Annual Forum on Diversity, currently scheduled for the fall of 2020.