The International Society of Barristers Foundation, in common with the Barristers Society, seeks to preserve the adversary system, to retain trial by jury in litigated matters, to help young lawyers improve their advocacy skills, and to improve the justice system and its components. Created in 2002 as a 501(c)(3) charitable corporation, the Foundation receives tax-deductible contributions, often in honor or in memory of named individuals, and makes grants in support of the Foundation's purposes. Because the Barristers Society pays the administrative costs of the Foundation, all gifts, undiminished, are distributed in the form of grants. Recent grantees have included:

• The Innocence Project. Based at Cardozo Law School but now lodged also in several other schools, the Project seeks, often through DNA and other forensic evidence, to free those wrongfully convicted.
• Equal Justice Initiative of Alabama. EJI is concerned primarily with issues of innocence and fairness in death sentence cases across the nation. It has overturned dozens of death sentences in which indigent people have been unconstitutionally convicted or sentenced.
• The National Institute for Trial Advocacy. Through its Spangenberg Scholarships (named after the Barristers Society's first president, Craig Spangenberg), the Foundation makes it possible for public interest lawyers and sole practitioners to benefit from educational offerings by NITA, the nation's premier hands-on advocacy training program.
• Court Appointed Special Advocates for Children. CASA recruits and trains some 70,000 volunteers to serve as advocates for abused and neglected children within the child welfare system.
• New Orleans Pro Bono Project.  The Project provides free civil legal services to the indigent in post-Katrina New Orleans.
  

Contributions may be sent to:

International Society of Barristers Foundation
802 Legal Research Building
625 S. State St.
Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1215
Phone (734) 763-0165
Fax (734) 764-8309
E-mail reedj@umich.edu

All gifts will be acknowledged, and, in the case of memorial or honoring gifts, the Foundation will notify the individuals or families involved.

The Foundation's 2008-09 officers and directors: