President's Message

 

Greetings to all of my brothers and sisters in the Delaware State Bar Association. Let me take a moment of your time to say a few words about Matt Greenberg’s impressive term as DSBA President and about my hopes for the DSBA over the next twelve months.

I am honored and privileged, and a bit intimidated, to succeed Matt Greenberg as the President of DSBA. Matt has been an amazing leader of the Bar Association for many years, and his term as president was one of great progress for our association.

Involved with DSBA for more than a decade, Matt is known for his intimate understanding of all of the workings of DSBA. He is the expert on the history and application of our by-laws. He is also completely conversant with the finances of DSBA. His thorough understanding of this organization has helped him tackle substantive issues with authority and creativity. I do not know that anyone knows the details like Matt knows the details.

Impressively, Matt is much more than a master of minutia. He embraced as his own the challenge of increasing legal resources to help the neediest of our neighbors. His devotion to pro bono service resulted in adding DSBA staff resources in the person of Susan Simmons, our Pro Bono Coordinator, to the team. He challenged every section of the Bar Association to develop or collaborate with another on a pro bono project. Matt also made it a priority to reach out to military veterans and he organized a committee to address their issues.

Matt most dramatically demonstrated his leadership ability as he inspired the Access to Justice Committee, bringing together lawyers from private practice and state government with the agencies and resources devoted to addressing the civil legal needs of Delaware’s people of low income to improve the delivery of those services. He persistently and effectively advocated for an increase in state funding for civil legal services and, in the end, with our colleague State Representative Melanie George and with Dover-based State Senator Brian Bushweller, persuaded the General Assembly to significantly increase resources devoted to this important need.

In addition to these many accomplishments, Matt worked his day job as a highly respected lawyer, continued as a devoted family man (with a beautiful family), and remained a marvelous athlete (he has been known to run 100 mile ultra-marathons). And, to my eyes, he looks about half his actual age. Matt is a tough act to follow.

I am so pleased with Matt’s agenda that I intend to make much of it my own. I will devote a good deal of my time and energy to continuing the development of the Access to Justice Committee and to another project of Matt’s, the examination of the possible re-location of the Bar Center. We have been in our current home for 11 years. During that time, much has changed in Wilmington and in the legal community, though our neighborhood has not changed in the ways we had hoped. I will encourage the Executive Committee to continue to explore options to serve our membership and support our staff through our choices about the location of our office operation.

During the next year, I hope to encourage thought, conversation, and action on issues of diversity in general, and about diversity with respect to disability in particular. Medical, technological, and attitudinal advances in society in recent years have made work in the legal profession possible for folks to whom this avenue was previously closed. Still, it is clear to me that we have more ground to cover. In recent conversations with folks about the accessible design of the new Kent County Courthouse, I have heard remarks that indicate confusion about the need to make our facilities, and perhaps by implication our processes, as accessible as possible. I believe DSBA should lead the way in welcoming and including people with disabilities into our community of lawyers. Every person with the talent and inclination to enter our profession should get a chance to try and to succeed. As we so often ask of our members, what can DSBA do to help?

Another of the themes I hope to sound throughout this year is that we as lawyers must take care of ourselves if we hope to take care of our clients and other professional responsibilities. Taking care of oneself is a complicated obligation. Our physical health, our mental health, and our emotional health all require time and attention, as does the health of our important personal relationships. Do we effectively deal with the stress ever-present in our jobs? Are we maintaining balance in our lives?

When I use the phrase “take care of ourselves,” I not only mean to refer to an individual lawyer taking care of his or her person, but also I mean to refer to lawyers as a community taking care of our colleagues who need our help. Whether it is mentoring lawyers who are new to the profession or new to a particular line of work, or providing peer counseling and support to an overburdened practitioner, or working through the SOLACE program to help a colleague through a challenging event, Delaware lawyers have ample opportunity to take care of ourselves. I want to see that every lawyer who needs help and every lawyer who can help is aware of these opportunities.

On the question of balance, let me observe that a splendid example of lawyers who have attained a healthy level of balance is The Learned Hands. If you did not attend the Bench and Bar Conference on June 8, 2011, you missed a chance to witness a fine group of musicians playing rock 'n' roll, country and blues music. The remarkable characteristic of this band, The Learned Hands, is that each musician is also a successful lawyer and a member of the Delaware Bar. The band was anchored by drummer Brad Goewert (Marshall Dennehy Warner Coleman & Goggin) and bass player Steve Wood (Delaware Department of Justice). The guitar slingers are the amazing Walsh brothers, Kevin (President of Plus5 Records and General Counsel of The Ohana Companies) and Tom (in house at PEPCO Holdings). The band was fronted by singers Jenness Parker (Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom LLP) and Greg Johnson (a solo criminal law practitioner). The band, itself, we created for the conference, but each of the members of the band has an active and rewarding music life. In this case, balance created harmony. It is a beautiful thing.