Arnie Macdonald

Arnie Macdonald is an of counsel attorney at Bernstein Shur in Portland. He has been active for years on the pro bono panel at the Immigrant Legal Advocacy Project (ILAP). His love for languages, history and politics, and befriending people from different cultures gave him an affinity for asylum work. He found in this work the ability to change people’s lives dramatically.

Ready for a “second act” at the end of his career, Arnie withdrew as a partner of Bernstein Shur and made an of counsel arrangement with the firm that would let him devote most of his time to pro bono work, with all the firm’s resources behind him.

Arnie has helped to win asylum for more than 40 clients and worked with people from Angola, Somalia, Burundi, Rwanda, Democratic Republic of Congo, Afghanistan, Russia, Burkina Faso, and Haiti. He has been named ILAP’s Pro Bono lawyer of the year twice and its volunteer of the year, and also serves on ILAP’s board and as chair of its development committee. The asylum work and friendships Arnie has made through it also led Arnie and his wife Liza Moore to mentor young refugees with no other families, some of whom have become like family to them, and to help other refugees housed in Freeport.

For the bulk of his career at Bernstein Shur, Arnie advised small and mid-sized companies in business matters, specializing in construction and all forms of financing.  Always interested in justice, Arnie’s engagement took off when Bernstein Shur Managing Partner and Muskie honoree Charlie Miller asked him to represent the firm on the Maine Justice Foundation board (the charitable affiliate of the Maine Bar Association). Among other responsibilities, the Justice Foundation collects the interest on lawyers’ trust accounts (IOLTA), which must be used to support legal services, and distributes it through grants to legal service providers. Arnie became an unplanned president of the Foundation when the two people in line to become president left to pursue other opportunities.

The financial crisis of 2007-8 struck at the start of Arnie’s term as President, and the Justice Foundation’s revenues (and ability to make grants to Maine’s legal service providers) collapsed.  For better or worse, the crisis also eroded Arnie’s legal practice in commercial finance, allowing him to work on strategies to maximize IOLTA revenues and other funding streams for legal service providers. In the process he got to know all the Muskie Fund beneficiaries and developed a passion and admiration for their work. His advocacy for IOLTA and access to justice led him to be appointed to the American Bar Association Commission on IOLTA (one of only two Maine lawyers ever), where he worked on IOLTA policy on a national level and on educating lawyers about IOLTA and legal services.

Arnie’s passion for access to justice, and understanding of funding for legal services, led to his appointment to chair the Campaign for Justice, Maine’s “United Way for Legal Services.” In 2014 he helped the Campaign raise what was then a record amount for one year. He received the Howard Dana Award for his work with the Justice Foundation and on the Campaign for Justice.

In addition to his many years with the Justice Foundation, including as President and development committee chair, Arnie chaired the Volunteer Lawyers’ Project Advisory Panel and has served as a director at Maine Equal Justice. He has also worked on voter protection as a poll watcher in Maine and as a “captain” on the Georgia voter protection hotline in three election cycles, and to helped preserve voter stories in Georgia and from formerly incarcerated people in Louisiana.

Bernstein Shur appointed Arnie its first pro bono coordinator and he led the drafting and implementation of a pro bono policy giving lawyers credit for pro bono work under the firm’s compensation system and the establishment of awards for pro bono and community services, and supported Bernstein lawyers and paralegals donating thousands of hours of pro bono services.

Arnie loves art and music and was a founding director of the Maine Academy of Modern Music and serves on the Board of the Maine Jazz Camp. When Bowdoin College condemned his (and last year’s honoree Mark Swann’s) old (coed) fraternity, Arnie led a negotiation to transfer the house property to the College in exchange for establishment of a fund that gives scholarships to two art students per year and another fund that pays for student arts activities including several internships and an annual independent juried student art competition. Arnie organized and was a founding director of the Maine Homeless Veterans Alliance and organized the Volunteer Lawyers’ Project when it separated from Pine Tree and the Justice Foundation. He helped establish and fund the LGBTQ fund at the Justice Foundation and an endowed legal services internship at Maine Law School in memory of his stepson’s late father.

Arnie is a former chair of the Maine State Bar Association’s Business Law Section and was a working group chair drafting the Maine Business Corporation Act. He has served in many volunteer capacities including as President of the Freeport Conservation Trust where he was involved in conserving several important properties and of the South Freeport Church where he helped run its biggest capital campaign.

Arnie is a beginning bass guitar and piano player, and an amateur photographer. He enjoys just about anything outdoors, and especially loves spending time with his wife, children, and extended “family."