Over the last three decades, the New York State Bar Association has had few occasions to be led by someone who came directly from a low-income legal services organization into the presidency of the influential, 146-year-old organization.

On June 1, Sherry Levin Wallach, a deputy executive director for The Legal Aid Society of Westchester County, officially became the third such person to fit that description.

Prior to her inauguration, Wallach told the Law Journal that she would focus the organization's energies on coming up with new ideas for modernizing the state's criminal justice system, securing equal rights for immigrants and understanding the relationship between mental health and the justice system.