From the President

• Citation: Vol. 30 No. 1 Pg. 0006
• Publication year: 2024
• Pages: 0006

From the President Vol. 30 No. 1 Pg. 6 Georgia Bar Journal August 2024

A Year of Personal Connection

IVY N. CADLE

President

State Bar of Georgia president@gabar.org

Upon taking office as president of the State Bar of Georgia during the Annual Meeting in June, I had the pleasure of announcing that, for the first time in four years, we would fully return to in-person meetings of our Board of Governors during the 2024-25 Bar year.

While the virtual meeting option was vital to the continuation of Bar business in the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, I have truly missed seeing everyone at our four board meetings each year and the personal connection associated with doing so. Not only that, I sincerely believe that gathering in person is a more effective way of governing, and the benefits of doing so far outweigh those of virtual participation.

That is why, going forward, members of the Board of Governors will be required to participate in person in order to be able to vote and be counted present.

Looking back, we all remember the tumultuous global outbreak of the coronavirus, when the State Bar leadership made the difficult but absolutely necessary decision to cancel the Bar's 2020 Annual Meeting. Instead, we used online communication technology to conduct the business of the Board of Governors during a single Saturday morning session.

As the COVID-19 pandemic raged on in the following months, it became obvious that virtual attendance and participation would continue to be the "new normal" for all Bar meetings large and small for an indefinite period. This was no different from the rest of society, including the cancellation of practically all public events and a till-further-notice shutdown of countless businesses and offices—in both the private and governmental sectors. Most important to our profession, this included our court system.

If an attorney needed to do business during that period, he or she likely had to learn how to utilize Zoom or one of the other online teleconference platforms, which actually became a lifesaver in the legal community. Lawyers, judges and their staffs became comfortable with and proficient in using the technology. We discovered some benefits of virtual meetings, notably including the convenience of participating from home and reductions in travel time and expense.

Forthcoming breakthroughs in COVID-19 prevention and treatment, however, loosened the pandemic's hold on society, and the 2021 State Bar Annual Meeting went on as scheduled, albeit in a hybrid format in which in-person attendance was limited, social distancing was observed and masks adorned with the State Bar logo were distributed to everyone present. Members of the Board of Governors had the option of participat-ing—and voting on Bar business—virtu-ally. We've kept that option in place over the past three years, although other restrictions have gone away, and...