The Leadership Forum Continues to Prepare Lawyers to Change the Future Today, 0717 ALBJ, 78 The Alabama Lawyer 292 (2017)
| Position | Vol. 78 4 Pg. 292 |
Edward M. Patterson.
The Leadership Forum recently completed its 13th year. On May 11, at the Capital City Club in downtown Montgomery, ASB President J. Cole Portis, assisted by President-elect Augusta Dowd, presented certificates and gifts to the 29 graduates of Class 13. More than 80 guests mingled during the cocktail reception preceding dinner hosted by Bradley Arant Boult & Cummings LLP. The LF Alumni Section honored this year's graduates with a party in The Cellar at the Capital City Club prior to the evening events.
Class 13 was selected from 62 applicants. The graduation guest speaker was J. Douglas McElvy, recently-appointed state bar acting general counsel. John W. Clark, chair of the LF Alumni Section, presented Edward A. "Ted" Hosp with the 2017 Edward M. Patterson Servant Leadership Award. Previous honorees include Angela Slate Rawls, Richard J.R. Raleigh, Jr., Rebecca G. DePalma and Othni J. Lathram. The award is presented annually to an outstanding alumnus of the Leadership Forum.
The average age of Class 13 is 38 years, and eight years practicing law. For the first time, the number of women exceeded men in the class with 62 percent female and 38 percent male. A total of 83 percent were caucasian, but this year the minority percentage increased to 17 percent. Class 13 represents eight Alabama cities, with 52 percent being from Birmingham. Practice diversity continues to be balanced among plaintiff and defense practices with a lesser, but solid representation of corporate/transactional in-house counsel and government/public service/legal education attorneys. Total makeup of the forum always equals or exceeds the diversity statistics of the bar as a whole. In 13 years, the forum has received 862 applications and accepted 387 attorneys. Forty-five percent of those who apply have been chosen. A total of 377 men and women have graduated since the Leadership Forum’s inception.
In awarding the Leadership Forum the 2013 E. Smythe Gambrell Professionalism Award, the nation’s highest award for professionalism programs, the American Bar Association commended the forum for its innovative, thoughtful and exceptional content, for its powerful and positive impact on emerging leaders and for the extraordinary example it has established that others might emulate.
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