6 minute read
TRUSTEES MESSAGE
We Are All Practicing Law Down the Rabbit Hole
The COVID-19 pandemic has really changed the practice of law, as perhaps most of us already know. In so many ways we have all tumbled down that Rabbit Hole Alice described in her Adventures in Wonderland.
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We have all been put at risk by the coronavirus that is sweeping our country and, for that matter, the world. The health risks are very real, even as their effect on any one person may be mild or deadly and in any event are unpredictable. While seniors and those with specific health conditions are generally considered most at risk, it has become clear that it is an equal opportunity virus, and no one is immune, at least not until a valid vaccine has been developed.
As we adjust to this new surreal wonderland we realize that we must now practice law in a different way than we did before the coronavirus. With scattered exceptions, our daily routines have been disrupted by the new pandemic rules and guidelines. Our judges have done a great job in adjusting court schedules and procedures to enable our justice system to continue to serve our community. In the general practice, we have adapted our routines, even as our lunch and dinner meetings have evaporated. (I, for one, now typically eat lunch at my desk in the office.)
For the most part our face-to-face meetings have disappeared, replaced by conference calls, and various visual meetings enabled by Zoom, Microsoft Teams, WebEx and other technologies. In our office, we must wear masks at all times except when we are working at our own desks. Clients and visitors are directed to the segregated conference rooms in a separate part of our office where we can engage in a meeting that is marked by masks and social distancing. So
By Merle F. Wilberding Esq. First Vice President
Coolidge Wall Co., LPA
far, this has been working pretty well.
And yet, this brave new world has taken away so much of the social engagement and casual conversations that have always been a part of our lives. As Alice lamented when she went down the Rabbit Hole, “what is the use of a book without pictures or conversation,” just as we ask ourselves “What’s the use of laptops at home if we cannot kibbitz about the Reds around the water cooler?” That’s a challenge we now face. We need to restore that part of our humanity to our lives.
My observations also apply to our Dayton Bar Association. We at the DBA have had to make our own adjustments in order to continue to serve our members. I am sure that those adjustments are felt by everyone as the DBA and its members continue to adjust their lives to Alice’s Wonderland.
At the same time, I am encouraged that out of the darkness of the pandemic has come opportunity. Whether it is for us as individual lawyers or for us as a bar association, the COVID pandemic has given us new opportunities for imagination and innovation. In some ways the restrictions of travel and social distancing have opened the doors for new ways of serving our members. I believe the Dayton Bar Association will be able to make everyone’s membership more interesting, more valuable, and most important, more meaningful.
The restrictions on travel have made it easier to attract great speakers and great visitors, and those things can now be done more conveniently and can be done on a smaller budget. Let me give you a personal example. My son James is an ancient philosophy professor at a large university in Berlin, Germany. He has been instructed to stay home at least through the end of the calendar year, and to conduct his classes online. While having to teach online forced him to change his curriculum and presentation, it did open up new opportunities. As he told me, “Dad, now I can now bring the best and the brightest from around the world into my classroom through the Zoom technology.”
In that same way our bar association will now be able to bring in some of the best and brightest into our programs and CLE sessions, and do it in a way that is convenient to our members and can be within our budget constraints. Our section meetings may be more convenient on the Zoom platform, and that means more people will be able to participate and make their membership more valuable and more meaningful.
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TRUSTEES MESSAGE: We Are All Practicing Law Down the Rabbit Hole continued from page 4
As we all know since the pandemic struck, our bar association has had to reschedule or redesign some of our most important gatherings, events such as our Annual Bar meeting, our Celebration of Life, and our recognition of the DBA’s 50 year members, to name just a few. Thankfully, some of those events have been able to be converted to virtual events, but that, in turn, has raised questions of pricing and sponsorship. Those are important issues that we will need to work out as we go forward.
So far, some lawyers and some firms have recognized the need and opportunity for sponsorships. But we have to be innovative and imaginative. We may decide to follow the lead of Major League Baseball and have out events live-streamed with images of our sponsors (and maybe even our paying participants) shown on cardboard cutouts in the audience. That has worked for MLB and it might work for us.
In the same way the Dayton Art Institute has cleverly put together an “Octoberfest” package so that “attendees” can virtually celebrate the German festival even as they have to provide their own Oompah band and lager. The Dayton Metro Library has also created some summer reading challenges that are being done online. And with the same type of imagination and innovation organizations throughout our community have created new ways to serve their subscribers, and so is the Dayton Bar Association. In late August I (virtually) attended the ABA Bar Executives Conference in Chicago, even taking in a virtual tour of Chicago (I do admit that was not exactly the same as walking and shopping along the Miracle Mile.). The real takeaway from the meeting was to encourage bar associations to be innovative in engaging its members and to use the new technological tools to bring more value and more meaning to its members, and to do so in a socially responsible way. That’s good advice, and we want to follow it.
As Alice said, “It’s no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.” That’s true for all of us and it is true for our bar association. And that is why, now more than ever, it is important for all of us to continue our active participation in the DBA and to remind ourselves that it is truly a collaborative effort. We are better together. We are stronger together. Let’s continue to do it.
DBA Member Benefit:
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Data Analytics: Fastcase and Docket Alarm 10/8 @ 1 PM – 2 PM Introduction to Boolean on Fastcase 10/15 @ 1 PM – 2 PM
