From the President

Aaron t. McCurdy

Season’s Greetings All! As we round the corner into the new year, we have lots of great programming and benefits headed your way and have accomplished much these past few months. One of the things I am most excited about is having the inaugural ESRBA Mentorship Program up and running. This program provides mentees and mentors with stellar opportunities for deeper discussions about the qualities of an excellent lawyer. And as promised in my last note to you all, ESRBA is continuing its dialogue with our members about their various practice areas and how ESRBA can provide even more benefits to them in their daily practice. Be on the lookout for many more great things to come.

As this year comes to a close, I encourage all of us to take an account of the many blessings in our lives. While everyone finds themselves in different stages and places in this life, we can always discover something for which to be thankful. Do you continue to have steady work in the crazy times we find ourselves? Do you have loved ones whose voices you are still able to hear? Or perhaps even in the most trying circumstances, you are a citizen of the greatest country in the world, with more comforts at your fingertips than at any point in human history.

I appreciated a particular blessing in my own life a few months ago when I attended my very first Naturalization Ceremony. I had the unique opportunity to sit in the front of the room, with a fantastic view of the candidates for citizenship. While my grandparents immigrated from Brazil and Portugal, and often tell me how monumental it was to take the Oath of Citizenship, it was another thing experiencing it with my own eyes. And from my vantage point, I was even able to spy several of the older candidates with tears in their eyes as the Judge congratulated them on becoming fellow Americans. The Courtroom that day was filled with a sense of hope. No matter where these now fellow Americans came from, they now have endless possibilities before them. How often I take that for granted.

I am also reminded that we also bring hope to our clients. Hope to fight injustice. Hope for an unjust claim to be dismissed. While sometimes things do not always go our way at the end of the day, and there are imperfections in our legal justice system, it is still the best one in the world. And similarly, even though we all have imperfections in our own lives, there is reason to hope for a better tomorrow.

Let us all hope for a better tomorrow together, remember to treat everyone with respect, and live every day knowing that we have much for which to be thankful. I wish each one of you and your families Happy Holidays, a very Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year.