SCOPE program quietly helps young lawyers.

• Author: Harkness, Jr., John F.
• Position: Seek Counsel of Professional Experience - Florida

It is the time of year when our Research and Planning Department is busy preparing the annual survey of the Bar membership that helps guide the Board of Governors in its allocation of resources among programs geared toward helping practitioners in their daily work. When a section or committee or the Supreme Court proposes a program that is new or novel, that program attracts the attention of our newspaper staff, and a reporter follows the story through the board debate and implementation phase of the program, then perhaps gives us a first-year follow-up on how the program seems to be going.

An e-mail message I received the other day made me think about some of the programs our committees, sections, and divisions have had in place for years that we no longer hear much about. When a program is successful--that is, accomplishes its goals and operates within its budget--it may drop off the screen. Several such programs come to mind: Our Ethics Hotline attorneys answer hundreds of queries each year; the Statewide Lawyer Referral Service assists thousands of Floridians in finding lawyers who are prepared to offer the help the callers need; our sections, CLE Committee, and CLE Publications staff work quietly throughout the year to originate and update the practice manuals so many, of our members look to for guidance when confronted by an unfamiliar issue; our Law Office Management Assistance Service staff conducts seminars and takes hundreds of calls each year from lawyers looking for advice about everything from buying computer equipment to hiring a paralegal.

And then there's SCOPE.

SCOPE stands for Seek Counsel Of Professional Experience. For the past 11 years the program--created by, funded by, and operated by the Young Lawyers Division--has aided those new to the profession by pairing them with a more senior attorney in their area who can assist them with a technical question or, in some cases, general advice about the day-to-day practice of law. My e-mail correspondent wrote:

[SCOPE] referred me to Marshall Emas [of Ft. Lauderdale]. I called him, and he did a...