This Is What We Owe to Each Other
| Publication year | 2023 |
| Pages | 04 |
PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE
As my term as CBA president comes to an end, I want to reflect on the question I posed to our community at the start of my term: What do we owe to each other? Over the course of the past year, I've explored this question through conversations on leadership, relationship building, and authenticity in the legal profession. We also asked this question during the CBA's strategic planning process, where we generated a new collective "how" for the CBA in areas of building community through belonging, cultivating profession-wide relevance and reach, and generating sustainability. To create this how, we came together as a community and considered three underlying questions: What matters to us? What do we value? What do we owe to our community? The answers to these questions can be found in the CBA's new strategic plan, which I encourage you to review, understand, and engage with over the coming years.
In my last message to you, I want to share what I've learned over the last year about what we owe to each other and my hope for the CBA as I pass the gavel to our next president. This has been a challenging and transformative year for the CBA. While there is much to look forward to in the future of our bar association, this past year has reminded me of the fragility of the values and the community we hold dear. We are the keepers of this community. Its successes and its challenges are directly influenced by our ability to collaborate with each other and serve as a collective voice of our profession. As a result, one of the first things we owe to each other is accountability. We are each accountable to one another as colleagues, as members of this community, and as human beings. We must set an example for each other and hold ourselves responsible for creating a professional community that reflects our collective purpose.
Creating a Culture of Collective Leadership
Our profession tends to divide people into heroes and villains. The litigiousness oflawyering inherently requires that there is always the proverbial "good guy" and "bad guy" in every matter. Of course, we instinctively see ourselves on the side of good in all matters. Despite the virtue with which we may see the causes we undertake, our role as the hero is simply relative, as there will always be someone who sees us as the villain.
In addition to the fundamental...
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