Forging the Future: How Bar Leadership Academies Are Shaping the Next Generation of Legal Leaders

When attorneys gather at Colorado Bar Association (CBA) events and introduce themselves, graduates of the bar’s leadership program often include what year they graduated and may add a phrase like “Best class ever!” Which class is best has become a bit of a competition between participants of the program, Colorado Bar Association Leadership Training, called COBALT for short, says CBA Sections and Committees Director Amy Sreenen. Many classmates stay in touch after graduation, reaching out to each other for advice, collaboration, or to refer each other to clients and colleagues. Some classes have reunions. 

A Return on Leadership Investment

Founded in 2007, the program has become an important source of talent for bar leadership positions, she says. Tally up the leadership posts and you’ll find that with about 330 graduates, six have served as president of the CBA, 41 as president of their local bar associations, 27 as president of specialty or affinity bars, and more than 100 have served on the CBA board of governors.

Demographic trends in the profession show that continuing to promote leadership will be important for the future. According to the ABA Profile of the Legal Profession 2024, Roughly one in eight working lawyers is 65 or older, and the average age of lawyers has increased from 39 to 46 since 1985, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Those who run programs say even as a great number of lawyers are retiring, their states have a diverse network of leadership graduates to fill bar positions and service roles in their communities because of the continued success of these programs.

Like Colorado, other state bar organizations have found a similar positive return on investment with their leadership programs. For instance, Nebraska State Bar Association Leadership Academy graduates regularly serve in leadership positions with the state bar, some even as president. The program has been around for more than two decades and takes about 25 attorneys in each class. “It’s been a wonderful pipeline,” says Sam Clinch, associate executive director of the NSBA. “Whenever we have openings for committee leadership or other areas, the first place we look is our past leadership academy graduates.

Applicant experience criteria differs among state programs with Missouri recruiting lawyers with ten years or less experience, while Nebraska takes applicants in their second to twelfth year, and Colorado has no restrictions on years of experience. But all three programs seek applicants that represent different practice specialties, geographic areas, and other areas of distinction. Leaders have found that participants like getting to know lawyers who practice in different parts of their states and in different areas of law.

Founded in 2000, The Missouri Bar’s Leadership Academy recruits and targets young lawyers or those recently admitted to the bar (not greater than 40 years old or fewer than 10 years of practice) who have already shown leadership qualities within their communities. Last year, a dozen participants were picked from a pool of about 100 applicants.

Tony Simones, Citizenship Education Director for The Missouri Bar, says recruiting a broad range of participants demonstrates that “there is no one-size-fits-all when it comes to leadership.” It also positions future leaders for success, “When they do become leaders of the bar, they are going to be able to represent the entirety of the bar.” 

Leadership Academy Programming

All three programs start with in-person retreats that allow participants to get to know each other and then flow into monthly or bimonthly workshops on different topics. Classes also work together on a community service project that allows them to put their leadership skills to use.

COBALT begins with a leadership/personality profile evaluation to teach participants about their personal styles and skills like how they approach problem solving. As people share their commonalities and differences, they open up and bond. Those bonds grow in “whisper sessions” held at the end of every session where participants debrief and share issues they are facing. Sreenen says those are invaluable because participants get outside of thinking about trials and contracts. They open up and share. Sometimes, it gets emotional. “It makes them feel uncomfortable and then they become vulnerable and then it gets them where they need to be,” she says. “It’s pretty cool.”

Missouri has some nontraditional workshops including speakers who talk about topics like how you don’t have to be a jerk to succeed at law or have a certain pedigree to become a leader. A former Missouri Bar president also comes in to talk about his personal experience with alcohol addiction and mental health, and how he made those topics a focus of his term.  “A lot of the things we learn from our mistakes are things that make us better leaders,” Simones says.

All of the programs have workshops with lawyers who have become government leaders, judges, and nonprofit chairs. Some also include workshops on things like time management, how to talk to the media, building a brand, business development, the ethics of social media use, and benefits and services offered by the bar.

Community service projects have also become integral parts of leadership academies. Members decide what to take on and run the project themselves. Groups have raised money for causes like buying school supplies for needy students, worked with Habitat for Humanity, and created panels of attorneys to speak to high school students about careers in law.

The projects not only allow participants to flex their leadership skills but also to cement bonds. “It really brings them together and breaks down walls,” Simones says. In Colorado, Sreenen has seen members bring up their leadership styles as they talk about how to work together to tackle the project. They can play to their own strengths and use what they’ve learned about leadership approaches and styles to work with others who are different.

The project also puts classes in the mindset of volunteering and giving back. In Missouri, the hope is that by showing lawyers how to be leaders early in their careers, they will carry forward the desire to be involved in the bar and in their communities, Simones says. “We want to put them to work on a project that is going to acclimate them to this idea of working for the greater good, working for more than just a promotion, more than just obtaining that corner office, and setting up this expectation of service in the Leadership Academy that hopefully will last for as long as they are alive,” says Simones. 

Beyond the Bar

In her fifth year as an attorney practicing in Omaha, Joy Kathurima is already serving in leadership positions within her state bar as co-chair of the Diversity Section and as an executive committee member of the Women and the Law Section. She also can picture herself going for a judgeship in the future.

She credits the NSBA Leadership Academy (class of 2023-24) with helping her see herself in those roles. From what she learned in college, Kathurima had assumed that judges were more bookish and into the academic side of law than she was. She changed her view after hearing from judges who shared how their career paths and personal experiences shaped their judgeships. “It was really cool to see folks who had been practitioners in a variety of areas, who really love the law, and then seeing how they transitioned into a judicial role,” says Kathurima, who started in family law and now works for the ACLU of Nebraska.

The relationships she developed within her class were her most valuable take away, Kathurima says. She learned how women managed motherhood and their careers, how some became entrepreneurs, and how others overcame barriers and problems. “I would absolutely recommend it to anybody whose state offers it,” she says. “It’s something that can help expose you to different things outside your immediate community and your practice area where maybe you will find intersections of ways that you can support each other in the work you do or find some friendships with folks you might not have ever crossed paths with outside of a space like this.

What Kathurima got out of the academy is exactly the experience that the NSBA strives for, says Liz Neeley, the bar’s executive director. “We’re not just talking about leadership skills for the bar association,” she says. “I love the opportunity to explain the leadership tracks and election processes so that this group feels invested in future bar leadership opportunities, but the program is also about how to develop unique leadership skills to use in their careers and in their communities,” Neeley says.

In Missouri, Simones says he sees program alumni from different years make connections and work together in leadership roles. “It’s just this constant cycle of reinforcement and building upon success that is exciting to see,” he says. “The idea of great attorneys and judges retiring could represent something scary for the legal profession, but I have seen the future, and the future is full of people who care, who want to work to achieve solutions, and want to work together to achieve great things.”

Kristy P. Kennedy is a Chicago-based freelance writer.