PRESIDENT'S REPORT
Members Matter The Association brings lawyers from different backgrounds, different practice areas, and different geographic locations throughout the state together into one voluntary Association supporting the legal profession. Each of you are the face of the Association. We work together to promote the effective and efficient administration of justice. We work together as one profession to accomplish common goals. The leadership and support of our members are invaluable to our profession. We work to create valuable experiences for our member lawyers, so they find value in supporting their Association. Here are just some of those efforts: Part of our membership drive this year was providing six free hours of on-demand CLE. Be sure to take advantage of this perk if you haven’t already. Register here for your free CLE: https://eazyform.app/form/mf47246392. Jason Hendren has led a Membership Task Force this year that has made fantastic outreach efforts to members who had not yet renewed for this bar year. The task force was responsible for recruiting over one-third of our nonrenewals this past quarter. Thank you to the following task force members: Kandice A. Bell, Thomas M. Carpenter, Craig L. Cook, Amy Freedman, Geoff Hamby, Brian C. Hogue, Jamie Huffman Jones, Mary Catherine McNulty, Kristin L. Pawlik, George M. Rozzell, Emily Moss Runyon, Paul D. Waddell, Danyelle J. Walker and William Zac White. Our sections have some great CLE lined up for this Spring, including some longstanding esteemed annual conferences— Natural Resources Institute, Environmental, Debtor-Creditor, Construction and
Bob Estes is the President of the Arkansas Bar Association. He is a solo practitioner in Fayetteville.
Workers’ Compensation. If you are a member of a section you get $25 off your section’s CLE as part of your member benefits this year. We also have a task force on legal research to review benefits valuable to our members. Thank you to the following Trustees for serving on this task force: Kelsey Kaylyn Bardwell, Payton C. Bentley, Leslie Copeland, Glen Hoggard, Jamie Huffman Jones (chair) and Immediate Past President Paul W. Keith. We held our first session of the 2nd Public Service Academy in November and will host the second session this Spring. The first Academy originated with Past President Brian Rosenthal in 2019, and the number of people who have gone on to serve in public service in both the public and private sector is phenomenal. The Association sponsors the Academy along with the University of Arkansas Clinton School of Public Service, in Association with the UA Little Rock Bowen School of Law and the University of Arkansas School of Law. The Academy is for member lawyers and law students who are interested in public service in any capacity. The steering committee is chaired by Michael Goswami and Nate Looney and vice chaired by Skye Martin and Madhav Shroff, both of whom served in the inaugural class. The list of Academy participants can be found on page 19 of this issue. The members of the Young Lawyers Section (YLS) have for many years provided hours of volunteer labor to produce the Guide to Arkansas Statutes of Limitations, one of your free member benefits. The YLS has once again stepped up to the challenge and is now working on the Ninth Edition.
Please consider volunteering your time for this valuable project and respond to Payton Bentley’s call for volunteers on page 9. We are in the process of reviewing all our handbooks to see which ones need to be updated, and our members have been amazing in their responses. We now have multiple new editions in the works: The Arkansas Form Book; Domestic Relations; Handling Appeals in Arkansas; and Debtor Creditor Handbook. Updates to other handbooks are also being discussed. Is there a handbook that you would like to help with? Have an idea for a new handbook? Contact Cathy Underwood at cathy57737@ gmail.com. When you see emails asking for help on these projects, please consider answering the call. I am very excited that our Annual Meeting co-chairs Kristin Pawlik and Patrick Wilson are planning our first inperson annual meeting since June 2019. Kristin unveiled the “Let’s Get Together” theme for the 2022 Annual Meeting at our recent Board of Trustees meeting. “We are ready, let’s get together,” Kristin announced. “We want to get together June 15-17. We are planning a lot of your familiar favorites and adding the ABOTA Masters in Trial Program along with some mini-social networking events throughout the day. That is our goal—to get together again. To see each other’s faces and share the fellowship of practicing law.” Watch for more information on the meeting at www. arkbarcom/annualmeeting. Your Arkansas Bar Association is important. It is it essential. It provides valuable opportunities for you to engage in promoting justice. And it needs you. ■
Vol. 57 No. 1/Winter 2022 The Arkansas Lawyer
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