Pandemic brings positive shifts
Danielle Boveland only has to look as far as the Louisiana State Bar Association Board of Governors to gauge the success of Leadership LSBA Class: Eight class graduates sit on the current board. “Our immediate past president was a Leadership Class member,” says Boveland, the bar’s liaison to the class as well as its communication coordinator for online media. “[Members] see the value. You can’t deny that kind of success.”
The 10-month program has remained a consistent and valuable source of future bar leaders, both in the LSBA Young Lawyers Division and in the bar as a whole, Boveland says. The program is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year with a class of 15 that is the most geographically diverse in its history: For the first time, more than half of the class hails from outside New Orleans and its suburbs.
The shift reflects, in part, how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected bar leadership programs. While the pandemic cut short the 2019-2020 class, it prompted most of the 2020-21 programming to go virtual—thus making it easier for attendees throughout the state to become involved.
Like the LSBA class, the Missouri Bar Leadership Academy—launched in 2000—had a truncated 2019-2020 class and 2020-21 session that was mostly virtual for its dozen members. But those virtual sessions, particularly once they could be complemented with in-person sessions and events, served to make the overall experience stronger, according to Tony Simones, the bar’s director of citizenship education and adviser for the academy.
“Before [the pandemic], we lost momentum in between events,” he says. “[Zoom meetings] were a great supplement that allowed us to have consistent communication without driving across the state each month.”
In Washington state, the Washington Leadership Institute has been helping develop newer lawyers from traditionally underrepresented groups since 2004, when it was created by the Washington State Bar Association Board of Governors at the behest of then-President Ronald R. Ward. For the WLI, which is a joint program between the WSBA and the University of Washington School of Law, the pandemic opened the doors to a wider range of high-caliber speakers.
“We’ve kept the hybrid functionality,” says WLI board member Zabrina Jenkins, who notes that the speakers interacted with 2020-21 class members in ways that improved their experience.
While the pandemic short-circuited many bar leadership activities, it also provided opportunities for some bars to reevaluate and refresh some aspects of their programs. Group public service projects are centerpieces of many leadership programs, and some saw changes as programs adjusted to in-person/virtual hybrid realities.
The LSBA, says Boveland, has helped recent and current class members adjust by slightly scaling back on some of the ambitious service projects, as members continue to develop new work and home routines.
“Pandemic fatigue is still real,” she explains. “We still don’t want to put too much on their plates. This is supposed to help them put their foot into the bar association, not throw them into the deep end.”
The Idaho Academy of Leadership for Lawyers at the Idaho State Bar is now emphasizing more group efforts in what is known as the academy’s Legacy Project, says Teresa Baker, the bar’s program and legal education director, and liaison to the academy. Previous projects were more individual-oriented—a time-consuming process, Baker notes.