From the President, 0817 WYBJ, Vol. 40 No. 4. 10
| Author | John A. Masterson Welborn Sullivan Meck & Tooley P.C. Casper, Wyoming |
The Bar Member Survey: Lessons for Lawyers
John A. Masterson Welborn Sullivan Meck & Tooley P.C. Casper, Wyoming
When we reach the end of a project or some notable stage of our lives, it’s natural to take the time to reflect on how things went (and didn’t), wonder how to improve ourselves and maybe pass along some final observations. I’m now the soon to be “Past President” of the Wyoming State Bar and this will be my last column, so I’ll wrap up with a few thoughts before our incoming President, Mr. Rob Jarosh, pushes me out of the way.
The results of the 2017 Bar Member Survey are in and they’re a good framework for these comments. You can find the results at https://www.wyomingbar.org/wp-content/uploads/2017-Bar-Member-Survey-Results.pdf. Good news? We have a lot more participation and more constructive commentary than most such surveys. Disappointing news? How many of our members are either unaware of Bar programs or aware of them but don’t use them?
More than anything, our Bar exists to help lawyers be better at what we do. Lately we’ve added support for quality of life issues. The nonawareness and nonuse tells me that our Bar needs to do more to increase awareness of what we officer. But we as lawyers need to change our view of the Bar—it’s no longer all about licensing and discipline. We need to see our Bar as a resource and a place to go for assistance of many different kinds. And there’s a lot our Bar offers. For example, when you have a question about the practice of law, there’s our Ethics Hotline; a question about operating your office may be answered by using CosmoLex; or as important as simply someone to talk with about the issues we all face—stress, addiction, burn-out, there’s the Lawyer Assistance Program. Our Bar has real, tangible help to offer—help that begs to be used and is here exclusively for you. If I had a magic wand, over the last year I would have done more to make our Bar aware of these services and encourage their use.
A second disappointment from the survey is the continued concern about civility in our profession. It’s not as if anyone expected us to all start singing campfire songs together over the course of the last couple of years, but we have to turn this around and only we can do it. The nature of what we do certainly stems from conflict. We all deal with angry...
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