Entries filed under 'Bar Services, Division for'

2013 ABA Bar Leadership Institute: Tweet all about It

April 1, 2013 1:12 PM by Molly Kilmer

Posted 04/01/2013 by Molly Flood

 

There’s been a recurring theme over the past few meeting of bar leaders. Time. Simply put, there’s not enough of it. We’re working more hours, commuting longer distances, but our personal lives are as busy as ever.  Mary Byers has already addressed how the time deficit is impacting professional associations. Peter Bregman’s keynote presentation at the 2013 ABA Bar Leadership Institute expanded on that theme. He showed us how we can better structure our days to accomplish more with our extremely limited time.

 

It’s in the spirit of Bregman’s “18 Minutes” time management approach that I provide this succinct summary of this year’s BLI. Get thee to Twitter. A quick review of posts using the #BLI13 hashtag provides an excellent taste of the conference.  See how participants summarized Verna Myers’s suggestions about inclusive organizations.  Get practical tips on speaking to the media from Bruce Hennes. Learn some sobering facts about the changing legal profession from Deborah Epstein Henry and Marta-Ann Schabel.  Twitter can’t and shouldn’t replace the experience of two days of intense learning and networking, but sometimes life only allows enough time for us to read the sound bites.

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Questions to Make Meaning

January 24, 2013 10:06 AM by Michael Ward

Posted 1/24/2013 by Elizabeth Derrico

 

I looked up and it was the third week in January. How did it happen that we are careening headlong into the NABE-NCBP-NCBF Midyear Meetings with the Bar Leadership Institute following very soon after? No doubt about it, time got away from me as we kicked off 2013. You can see it in the paucity of blog posts and in the receipts to be filed. Time is our one non-renewable resource. Once we’ve spent it idly flipping through the latest celebrity gossip sheet or sitting in a meeting that goes nowhere, we can never get it back. It is true for our organizations as well.

 

Questions of strategy revolve around how we are spending our time. As many of our associations head into budget season, it is a good time to reflect on how we are aligning our mission, vision and values to serve our members and the profession. My colleague Julie Deacon, executive director of the Maine State Bar Association posted a link on her Facebook  page to these questions. They will help shape the next 49 weeks both for ourselves and for our organizations. How will you have a year that matters?

 

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In Defense of the Defenders

January 14, 2013 10:07 AM by Michael Ward

Posted 1/14/2013 by Tori Jo Wible (Guest Blogger)




All lawyer jokes aside, and I’ve heard them all, one of the things that makes me the proudest of our profession is lawyers protecting the rights of the most hated clients.  One of my heroes is John Adams, not just because of his position as a founding father, or because he looks a lot like Paul Giamatti, but because he defended the British soldiers accused in the Boston Massacre; a truly difficult position, even without a 24 hour a day news cycle.

 

In our society, pro bono counsel frequently take on unpopular clients, such as the lawyers representing detainees held in Guantanamo Bay.  However, the modern-day John Adamses are the public defenders.  The indigent criminal defendant is often an unlovable client.  The fundamental role of the defender is to ensure that the client’s rights are protected.  The three parts of the criminal justice system – the judiciary, the prosecution and the defense – must all do their jobs effectively for the system to work.  All too often, public defenders are overwhelmed with impossible caseloads, unmanageable timelines and dwindling budgets. 

 

What does any of this have to do with bar leaders?  Plenty. Bar associations can help courts avoid the breaking point. Find out how at the Indigent Defense Summit at the ABA Midyear in February. Buck Files, President of the State Bar of Texas and a criminal defense attorney, will be one of several high profile speakers discussing what bars can do to solve the crisis.

 

This year is the 50^th Anniversary of the landmark decision in Gideon v. Wainwright. The promise of Gideon remains unfulfilled; come learn what you can do to help. The Summit runs all day Saturday, February 9, but the sessions most relevant to bar leaders are in the afternoon.  ABA President, Laurel Bellows has been invited to discuss how the private bar can help public defenders meet the promise of Gideon.

 

Tori Jo Wible is assistant staff counsel for the ABA's Standing Committee on Legal Aid and Indigent Defendants. Reach her at tori.wible@americanbar.org.

 

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Are You Violet or Are You Martha Levinson?

January 7, 2013 3:04 PM by Jennifer Lewin

Posted 1/7/2013 by Jennifer Lewin

 

I confess to being one of the many who scheduled her evening around Downton Abbey last night. And besides witnessing Mary and Matthew’s wedding (finally) and enjoying a reunion with the ever-quotable Violet, I was struck most by the episode’s pull between tradition and change. Most of us spend a good bit of our work lives negotiating that tension. As I reflect on it, I spend most of mine tracking the innovative, and frankly I tend to give traditions pretty short shrift. Maybe it’s because we have just come through the holidays, but I realize I need to change that.

 

There are so many traditions our bars carry out that members continue to value. I think about the bar memorial services that honor attorneys who have passed. These are events local bars have held for decades, and they consistently rank at the top in member surveys. Or it’s the sometimes raucous bench-bar gatherings or the annual crawfish boils where lawyers and judges socialize and interact on equal footing. But what do we do when attendance starts to dwindle or members start to complain about the “old way” that an event is handled? How do we respond? Are we the intractable Violet? Do we want to burn it all down like Martha Levinson? Or are we taking the time to identify what’s valuable in our traditions and occasionally reinterpret them to make them more meaningful to ourselves, our members and our communities? My personal resolution for 2013 is to find a bit more of that middle ground.  

 

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Food from Thoughtfulness from the Bar

December 20, 2012 3:45 PM by Elizabeth Derrico

Posted 12/20/2012 by Elizabeth Derrico

 

My sister and I are texting back and forth about whether Christmas dinner should be beef tenderloin, duck or goose. For me the holidays are all about food. And that means numerous trips to the market for the forgotten olives that go into chicken stew for DBS holiday potluck or the cookie recipe requiring three teaspoons of cream of tartar when I only have two. However, the abundance and ease of running into Jewel or Kroger for that needed ingredient is not universal. An estimated 16 million kids are hungry along with 9 million seniors. During this season of giving, bar associations throughout the country are working to eradicate hunger in their communities.

 

For the Ohio State Bar Association board members and staff delivering food baskets through Neighbor to Neighbor Ministries was a way of honoring retiring executive director Denny Ramey in his hometown. Up in New Hampshire, the Women’s Bar Association put together baskets of holiday cheer with a local food pantry.

 

At the Boone County Bar Association (MO) and other bar associations, the price of admission to the holiday party is the donation of a non-perishable food item. The Iowa State Bar Association is serving as a drop-off location for the Iowa Food Bank and the VA Central Iowa Health Care System. The Genesee County Bar Association and Foundation host a community dinner complete with Santa and all the trimmings. Meanwhile, the Toledo Bar Association raised more than $11,000 with its annual food basket appeal. Not to leave out our furry friends who provide companionship and care, the Austin Bar’s Animal Welfare Committee is collecting pet supplies and pet food.

 

I know that over the next week or so there will be many more waits in the self-service checkout line because the list is never quite accurate and minds change at the last minute about the menu. During these stops I will join my bar colleagues and pick up a few extra items—particularly protein like peanut butter and tuna—to help feed the hungry in my community.

 

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Oh, and Don't Forget to Vote

November 30, 2012 2:14 PM by Jeffrey Jenkins

Posted: 11/05/2012 by Kira Baltutis

 

To put it politely, my mother’s side of the family has a variety of political and religious views.  From far left-leaning organic farmers in Northern Wisconsin, to conservative Catholic lawyers in Corpus Christi, TX, we are all somehow related. Our family reunion activities range from friendly games of badminton or a day out on the Jet skis, to my uncles arguing late into the night around a dining room table, armed with a whiskey on the rocks and the debate stamina of Strom Thurmond.

Last week one of my aunts, a woman with an unwavering and deep-rooted loyalty to her faith, forwarded an email from Catholicvote.org to our family listserve. The message protested President Obama’s decision to enforce provisions of the new health care law and encouraged readers to support Mitt Romney. The more liberal recipients responded with a wave of fury, quickly followed by fuming replies from the conservative voters.  At one point, the back and forth became so heated that the wild accusations which flew between our email servers would have put Nancy Grace to shame. Rest assured, the argument was finally resolved but not before I had convinced myself that our entire extended family had each been individually adopted.

We are fortunate that we live in a nation where free speech is guaranteed. While the rest of the adult world will be exercising our right to vote today, a younger generation will also be polled. The Indiana State Bar sponsors the Indiana Kids Election (IKE), which provides children with a voting experience through a mock-election. Indiana attorneys are given the opportunity to participate in the program through educational presentations on our leaders, so that the children can learn to make informed decisions.

Although each of us has followed our own unique path that lead us to our current political views, I think we can all agree that the best path is an educated one. If our youngest generation can learn as early as the age of 5 (yes, even 5-year-olds can exercise the right to vote in IKE) to be an informed citizen when choosing the next leader, then we have been successful. Let the focus of this election not be right vs. wrong, but rather a lesson that knowledge is the tool which will truly help this country thrive.

 

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Our Best Selves

November 30, 2012 2:13 PM by Jeffrey Jenkins

Posted 11/2/12 by Jennifer K Lewin



We bid Molly good luck this week as she heads out to have those beautiful babies, and here I am, having volunteered to blog in her stead. Under normal circumstances it would be hard to live up to her pithy and often hilarious posts, but this week has left me pretty overwhelmed and frankly at a bit of a loss.

 

This has been a devastating week for many of our communities. We are heartbroken for Larry Vogelman, president of the New Hampshire Bar, and his family. We are thankful for the rest of you who are safe, though sodden, a little battered and without power. We trust you know we’re here to help when the time comes.  

 

As I reflect on the week, I’m once again moved by the tremendous spirit of service within our community. From the Brooklyn Bar that invited its members to come to the bar center to take advantage of its space and power to the large-scale pro bono efforts being organized through the NYSBA, we’re reaching out to members and the community in ways large and small. And they all matter. 

 

Here are a few highlights:

 

Connecticut Bar Association via Facebook: Atty. Michael McCormack, Chair of CBA's Insurance Law Section will be on NBC Connecticut this morning talking about CBA's free emergency insurance hotline service.

 

 

Asian American Bar Association of NY via Facebook: Please lend a hand if you can. http://www.ourchinatown.org/2012/11/01/volunteer-chinatown-seeks-volunteers-where-to-go/

 

And our partners, too:

Fastcase via Facebook: We're helping firms affected by Hurricane #Sandy to get remote access to Fastcase. If you need temporary law library access, contact us at 1-866-77-FASTCASE or support@fastcase.com.

 

And last but not least:   

Bar Groups Mobilize to Offer Pro Bono to Storm Victims

http://www.newyorklawjournal.com/PubArticleNY.jsp?id=1202577016615&slreturn=20121002111230

 

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Follow Friday: #NABECOMM

November 30, 2012 2:11 PM by Jeffrey Jenkins

Posted: 10/12/2012 by Molly Kilmer Flood

 

It’s a brisk Friday in Chicago, but my heart is in Denver. Today is the last day of the 2012 National Association of Bar Executives Communication Section Workshop. I have had the pleasure of attending this conference in the past, and it always lives up to my very high expectations. Thankfully, the #nabecomm hashtag has been a flurry of activity since Wednesday. Follow along with me and pick up some useful writing, marketing and social media tips that you can immediately implement. We might not be breathing the mile high air or taking advantage of the local brews, but we can still soak in the snippets for a few more hours.

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Get on the Bus, Gus: Hitting the Road to Make a Difference

November 30, 2012 2:09 PM by Jeffrey Jenkins

Posted: 10/10/2012 by Elizabeth Derrico

 

Throughout the last century whistle stop tours were a regular feature of the presidential campaign landscape. Traveling by rail from depot to depot, Teddy Roosevelt or Franklin Roosevelt would give their pitch to voters. Candidates Clinton and Gore famously hit the road for a bus stop tour to launch the 1992 general election season making such outings a ubiquitous part of the modern day troll for votes.

 

Both the Alabama State Bar and the Iowa State Bar Association are following suit hitting the highways this election season for different reasons. Celebrating Pro Bono Week the wheels on the ASB JUSTICE  Bus  go “‘round and ‘round,” to deliver pro bono legal services to the disadvantaged and poor in four communities.



In Iowa the “Yes Iowa Judges” Tour  is part of an ongoing educational effort to ensure the support of voters in upcoming retention elections.  Making stops throughout the state the tour received significant media coverage and put the bar association squarely in the driver’s seat in the fight to preserve the integrity of the state’s judicial system.

 

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Slow it Down

November 30, 2012 2:07 PM by Jeffrey Jenkins

Posted: 10/5/2012 by Molly Flood

 

In the two and half years of this blog’s existence, the bar association community has taken to social media. Many bar associations now have a presence on at least one social media site, and bar association staffers are doing their best to deliver effective messages to their members and beyond. Social media has become ingrained in many of our work days, and we’ve learned to seamlessly send out tweets and posts and monitor the traffic flow while balancing the other many tasks on our to-do list. Some may applaud this as effective multitasking, but it is not without risk. Distracted social media postings can lead to trouble, as we learned this week.

Wednesday’s Presidential debate was the most tweeted political event in history. Over 10 million tweets were sent out during the 90 minute debate. Among the barrage of traffic, a tweet critical of President Obama with a reference to his deceased grandmother was sent from KitchenAid’s official Twitter feed. It turns out that a KitchenAid staffer accidentally tweeted from his or her work account instead of a personal account. KitchenAid responded quickly and effectively to this error, and the anonymous staffer will no longer be tweeting for the brand. Third party applications make it very easy to post on the fly, but they also enable snafus like this to happen all too often.  If the backbone of any effective social media policy is don’t be stupid, it’s also just as important to take the time to proof before you post. Let’s make sure that all of the good relationships we’re building on social media aren’t lost due to a careless mistake.

 

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