Openly gay attorney Dan Clifford recently finished up his yearlong term as chair of the Family Law Section of the Pennsylvania Bar Association, highlighted by numerous contributions to family-court reform and the LGBT community.
Clifford began his career as a lawyer in York. When he first started practicing, he realized that very few attorneys wanted to do family law because of the intensity involved
“You tend to develop very strong client relationships in family law,” Clifford said. “You sort of become an extended family member; it’s such a close and intense relationship. The people you’re dealing with are going through some of the most personal struggles of their lives.”
Clifford now has more than 25 years of family-law experience and is a partner at Weber Gallagher.
The PBA is comprised of 26,000 lawyers throughout the state, and every county has an individual bar as well. The Family Law Section of the PBA is a deliberative council that consists of 1,400 members statewide, and they consider providing input on proposed legislation.
As chair of the Family Law Section, Clifford presided over the preparation and execution of two major statewide conferences dealing with various initiatives to improve the family court system in Pennsylvania. One initiative involved creating a video demonstrating how to interview children during custody proceedings. Clifford said this was an extremely important effort because interviewing children in court cases is a very intense, emotional process that needs to be improved and discussed more.
Clifford said it has been a phenomenal year for the LGBT community, and that he was honored to have represented the community to the PBA.
“I thought it was a wonderful platform to provide improvements to the family court system and to pursue them in a leadership position,” Clifford said. “As the first openly gay chair of the Family Law Section, it gave me an opportunity to be a visible leader and get more support for marriage equality
One of the major initiatives Clifford spent time working toward as chair was to formally resolve the PBA’s stance on marriage equality. Clifford said the organization had been working toward approving marriage equality for about a year, and they eventually took a formal stance in favor shortly before marriage equality was approved in Pennsylvania.
“It’s not easy to get things through the system because of all the different levels of government,” Clifford said. “We weren’t really thinking the marriage-equality case would turn out so quickly, but it was important for us to take a specific position on that.”
As Clifford looks toward the future, he plans to run for an open judicial position in Montgomery County in 2015. He ran for the position once before, and he said that it was an excellent opportunity for him to discuss family-court reform.
“No openly gay person has won outside of Philadelphia in a county race,” Clifford said. “It’s a completely different political landscape. It would be great to break that firewall and actually win a countywide race.”