Reflections on the recent year and plans for the future.

• Author: Parker, Bruce R.
• Position: President's page

As I think about the year just completed under Greg Lederer's leadership, it occurs to me that two events best characterize the IADC: the Annual Meeting and the Trial Academy. By a coincidence of timing, both occur within one month of each other. The Annual Meeting represents an opportunity for members to obtain excellent legal education, experience professional development, and strengthen business and professional relationships in an atmosphere that our families can enjoy with us. The Trial Academy best exemplifies the IADC's core strength of members with outstanding trial skills who are passionate about their commitment to further develop their craft and share it with young lawyers.

If the Annual Meeting and the Trial Academy best characterize the IADC, then we had a very successful year under Greg's leadership. The Annual Meeting in Rome succeeded in delivering high quality legal programming that was well attended by the membership. Both organizationally and individually, we were enriched by Rome's history and its opportunities.

The 2006 Trial Academy, under the direction of Joe Ryan, was another success. I had the privilege of attending the "graduation ceremony" for the Trial Academy. During the ceremony, more than one hundred young attorneys stood and gave Joe and his faculty an emotional and heartfelt ovation to express their appreciation for what they had experienced. This was a powerful statement about the quality of the program that Joe and his faculty conducted. As I listened to the accolades that the young attorneys offered to each of their faculty members, I couldn't help but feel proud to be a member of an association that within one month had successfully completed both the Annual Meeting and Trial Academy with such high levels of excellence.

Looking Ahead

Last month in the IADC Docket, I wrote about innovation and a passion for excellence. The relevance of those concepts for the IADC is best understood in the context of discussing the goals that the leadership is driven to achieve. There is a correlation between the probability of an association achieving its goals with how well the leaders of the association explain those goals to the membership. Consequently, the balance of this message and my next one will discuss our strategic goals and how the programming that we offer throughout the year seeks to pull us closer to achieving our goals.

The IADC's ultimate goal is to be widely recognized as a preeminent organization of...