Voice of Experience: Fall 2013

Leadership Development

A Call to Action—and to Come to Wyoming

It is a privilege to be asked to assume leadership of this Division and its distinguished members, many of whom I have worked with for so many years. One cannot do so without a keen awareness of the responsibility that one shares with fellow officers and Council and committee members. This is especially true when one has chaired another section or division, as I have, because that experience brings an awareness of the qualities of a thriving organization.

Solo Practice

A Word to the Wise: What to Expect When You’re Not Expecting to Close a Solo Practice

Robert L. Ostertag

What follows is the story of one solo practitioner, my friend Josh, whose workload and dedication to his clients were leading factors in the occurrence of the sudden stroke that left him unable to live meaningfully, and of his clients, who suffered his loss more than they would have had he merely prepared for his sudden and probably inevitable departure from the scene. Let me provide some background.

Elder

Confessions of a Travel Addict

Thomas C. Warren

I can’t tell you how many people on a daily basis ask either Mary Ann or me, “Have you been on any good trips lately?” Surprisingly, we really don’t spend a lot of the year traveling. We just seem to go often. We have never been travelers who take off in the winter for four or five months to Arizona; never had a desire to own a second home in Palm Springs; never (God forbid!) had any desire to own and drive a humongous 40-foot, quarter-million-dollar motorhome—you know, the ones that sit for 335 days a year in your driveway and should require a special license for old geezers with poor reaction time and require more strenuous testing than a commercial driver’s license!

Federal Government

Elected Officials: Up to the Task?

Warren Belmar

The Labor Day holiday has just passed, Congress has returned from its August recess, and the executive and legislative branches are confronted with a host of foreign and domestic crises requiring immediate attention. While this has become the norm in Washington, this year the list of crises has gotten longer and the time frame for action has gotten shorter.

Elder

In Memoriam: Joseph A. Woods Jr., 1925–2013

VOE readers may know Joseph A. Woods Jr. as an inveterate writer of travel columns. For many years, his VOE columns reflected a love of learning about other countries, careful historical research, wry and gentle humor, and literary sensibility. He was known to the ABA staff for his kindness and respectful manner. We are sorry to report that Mr. Woods passed away on July 15. A native of Decatur, Alabama, Mr. Woods served as a naval officer in the Pacific during World War II. He began practicing law in 1949 and, in the early 1990s, he retired as a partner of Donahue Gallagher Woods, where he remained of counsel.

Women in the Law

Rebels at the Bar: The Fascinating, Forgotten Stories of America’s First Women Lawyers, by Jill Norgren NYU Press, April 15, 2013

Marjorie G. Jones

The title of Jill Norgren’s Rebels at the Bar: The Fascinating, Forgotten Stories of America’s First Women Lawyers is somewhat misleading because really her book is about so much more. Rather than a mere compilation of biographies of several exceptional women, what Norgren has constructed instead is a complex contextual panorama, stretching from coast to coast, of post–Civil War America.

Elder

Rwanda: Trekking Gorillas Through the Mist

Kenneth A. Latimer

“You’re going where?” our friends inquired. “Why would you want to go to Rwanda?” The answer, I replied, was that ever since I had seen the film Gorillas in the Mist, I had the desire to trek mountain gorillas. My wife, Carole, and I have done some rather exotic travels, including hiking the Inca trail to Machu Picchu. We have also done a number of safaris in Africa, but it did not seem there could be any other wildlife encounter that could match trekking mountain gorillas through Rwanda’s Virungas Mountains.

Practice Marketing

The Five Pillars of Extraordinarily Successful Marketing Pillar I: Positioning

Sherman Titens

Positioning is the first of the five pillars of extraordinarily successful law firm marketing, followed by branding, strategy, differentiation, and communications.

Military & Veterans

VA, ABA, and Legal Services Partner to Help Veterans with Disability Claims

John Hardin “Jack” Young

Representing veterans pro bono in the disability claims process is one of the highest callings a senior lawyer can undertake, and there is now a new way of answering this call. The Senior Lawyers Division will soon be announcing how senior lawyers can become involved and trained to serve our veterans in the claims process through the Veterans Claims Assistance Network (VCAN), a pilot program arising out of a new partnership between the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), ABA, and Legal Services Corporation.