New ABA leaders outline priorities as outgoing president passes gavel

Mary Smith passed the gavel to William R. Bay, who became president of the American Bar Association on Aug. 6 at the end of the ABA Annual Meeting in Chicago.

In his remarks, Bay asked the House of Delegates to “choose change.”

The partner at the St. Louis office of national law firm Thompson Coburn LLP is a longtime leader in the ABA. Bay co-chaired the Practice Forward initiative, which addressed member concerns regarding the COVID-19 pandemic and the future of the profession, served as chair of the House of Delegates from 2018-20 and chaired the Litigation Section from 2012-13. Bay chaired the ABA Day Planning Committee in 2021 and 2022. A Fellow in the American Bar Foundation, he served on the ABA Board of Governors and chaired its Finance Committee from 2015-16 and has been a member of the ABA House of Delegates for more than 20 years.

“Today, we are called to renew our journey with a goal of being the home of the profession,” he told the House. “We must engage a new generation of attorneys who don’t see the association and profession as we do.”

Bay called for “a different approach” and to “move past the ways we have always done things. Instead, we need to focus on who we need to be to remain faithful to our mission,” he said.

“The data and facts are very clear,” he said. “The rest of the world is changing. If our association is to endure and thrive, then we must change.”

Being “the home for the profession” requires doing “home improvement projects,” he said, and “now is the time to renovate our ABA house to strive to meet lawyers where they are.”

Bay called member engagement and member experience the keys and said the goal “is to provide multiple opportunities for every member of our profession to experience the great value and opportunity we offer.”

He wants to simplify the process by which members can be engaged. “Sometimes it feels like you need a decoder ring to understand our organization — we can do better,” Bay said.

In addition to simplifying the dues structure, he wants to “provide access to what members want in the way they want it.”

Bay urged House members to break away from “what you typically do in the ABA and check out another part of the association” and said in doing so he discovered “other parts of the ABA which are making real impact.” For instance, the ABA’s $2.65 million investment in public interest work yields “upwards of $40 million in grants,” he said.

“We change lives. We help people,” Bay said. “It is eye opening. I encourage you to volunteer.”

A poster in the office of an ABA staffer in Washington, D.C., caught his eye. It said: “We make justice real.” 

“What a succinct statement of our mission and what we do,” Bay said.

Outgoing president reflects on challenges to the country and ABA

On Aug. 5, outgoing President Mary Smith reviewed her year at the helm of the association.

Reflecting “on where we’ve been but also where we are headed,” she referred to the theme of her presidency, “Lifting Our Voices, Charting the Future.” Smith said, “We all have done just that.”

She said that the ABA had met its challenges and set a foundation for the association going forward.

The ABA has “had to continually evolve to meet the needs of an ever-changing society” and to right historical wrongs over “who was admitted to the issues we champion to even what the president of the ABA can look like.”

To help reach new audiences, Smith recorded TikTok videos and helped the ABA gain more than 50,000 followers in the last year.

Smith’s ABA Presidential Speaker Series also yielded positive results. The discussions with such luminaries as Delores Huerta, Mazie Hirono and Martin Scorsese were watched by more than 2 million people. “How’s that for making the ABA visible?” she asked.

Calling recent challenges to DEI initiatives “deeply troubling,” Smith established a working group that produced a toolkit for lawyers and bar associations.

“The American Bar Association stands firm — our dedication to diversity, equity and inclusion is unyielding,” she said, with the aim “to lead by example.”

Smith reported on the work of two task forces she established, one of which is the Task Force on Law and Artificial Intelligence, which is “taking a comprehensive look at AI from legal education to evidence and access to justice.”

The other, the Task Force for American Democracy, co-chaired by former federal Judge J. Michael Luttig and former Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson, worked to mobilize the nation’s 1.3 million lawyers and the public to help ensure an enduring democracy, Smith said. Listening tours were held in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Georgia and Michigan, and 17 working papers were published discussing the issues. The group also helped arrange more than 120 law school deans to sign a letter to support the training necessary for the next generation of lawyers to sustain our constitutional democracy and the rule of law. The ABA is also partnering with the Knight Foundation to host education sessions on election law for journalists.

“There is no more important issue in our country right now,” Smith said.

Recalling that last year she asked the House to “run toward the storm,” Smith said that now, “we are in the storm” and that “there is a fierce urgency of now.”

“This is our defining moment” she said, and urged the association to use it to vote, to stand up for the judiciary, for free and fair elections and for freedom of the press.

President-elect urges association to be forward-thinking

ABA President-elect Michelle Behnke reached back to Shakespeare’s famous line about “let’s kill all the lawyers” in her speech to the House of Delegates.

“This story line actually speaks to our pivotal role in upholding the rule of law and the threat that lawyers pose to tyranny and injustice,” she said. “It’s a recognition of the power of the legal profession to defend the rights of people and safeguard justice.

“A strong, vibrant, American Bar Association strengthens lawyers, which helps us to do all those things that lawyers do to support, protect and advance the rule of law, just as Shakespeare knew,” Behnke said. “A strong ABA gives lawyers tools and pathways to serve their communities and their clients and keeps our system of justice operating as intended.”

Behnke said she will work on implementing the strategic plan. 

“We must adopt a forward-thinking process so we’re prepared to lead on the challenges of the future,” she said. “We must put in place structures to address questions that we can’t even think of today, like ‘What comes next with AI? Or ‘What comes after AI?’”

Behnke said the plan will help address a long-standing issue: “Lawyers won’t join the ABA if they don’t know who we are and how we can help them.”

Noting that July 2026 marks the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, Behnke said, “We as lawyers are often at our best when we teach, and this anniversary will give us plenty of opportunities to teach about our democracy and what the rule of law really means.”

The Madison, Wisconsin, principal of Michelle Behnke & Associates will become the association’s president in August 2025.