Meeting the challenges; the bar looks at the future.

• Author: Smith, III, D. Culver
• Position: Florida

We live in times of unprecedented change. Change that once was simple and gradual now is complex and compound. It is unprecedented in its sweep and in its impact. And change that once required two generations now requires two years.

The Florida Bar has arrived at a crisis. At a time of unprecedented change, it faces widespread and unrelenting criticism both from without and from within. To many, it seems unwilling or unable to respond to its members' needs and to the public's concerns. It suffers from a crisis of identity: is it a professional association or a regulatory agency? It is handicapped by a propensity for the issue of today over the opportunity of tomorrow.

Crisis offers opportunity. The Florida Bar can get much better or can get much worse. It will do one or the other. In times of unprecedented change, no other alternative exists.(1)

Upon assuming the presidency of The Florida Bar in June 1993, Patricia Seitz charged the Long Range Planning Committee with the task of producing a strategic plan for the Bar to follow in the coming years. The last such plan had been produced in 1984. Anyone who since that time had been a member of the Bar and a resident of Planet Earth knew all too well that enormous forces of change had been at work and that the legal profession was undergoing a substantial metamorphosis.

The Long Range Planning Committee identified several trends affecting the practice of law in Florida. Many of them had received considerable treatment in various media. Others were identified through an extensive membership survey, through interviews of Bar members and Bar staff, and through a strategic planning workshop attended by representative Bar members. Consensus expressed at the 1994 All Bar Conference and at the 1994, Solo and Small Firm Practitioners Conference confirmed several of the trends. Others simply were self-evident.

Among the more significant were the following:

* External Trends

1) The public had become increasingly dissatisfied with the cost and responsiveness of the services that the legal profession offered.

2) The unlicensed practice of law was increasing.

3) Society was shifting from dependence on institutions to self-reliance and individual responsibility.

4) The economy was becoming more global, with economic markets increasingly linked across state and national boundaries.

5) Technology was permeating and facilitating information systems, communication, and management practices.

6) Arrangements and cooperation between individual lawyers and between lawyers and nonlawyers in the delivery of legal services were expanding.

7) The number of court cases involving pro...