Remarks of Forest N. Myers. 119 th President. Pennsylvania Bar Association. PBA House of Delegates. Wyndham Grand Pittsburgh Downtown.

Transcription

1 Remarks of Forest N. Myers 119 th President Pennsylvania Bar Association PBA House of Delegates Wyndham Grand Pittsburgh Downtown May 10, 2013

2 Good morning, PBA! How is everybody doing this morning? I m Forest Myers, a sole practitioner from Shippensburg. First, many thanks to my friends in Zone Three for your enjoyable escort to the podium today. Since I am only the second lawyer from Franklin County to serve as PBA president, the first being Edmund Wingerd in 1946, I am honored that you have given me this opportunity to serve you and the Pennsylvania Bar Association. At the beginning of each NASCAR and IndyCar race someone, usually a celebrity, intones, Gentleman, start your engines, or, depending on the field, Lady/Ladies and gentlemen, start your engines. Contrast this with Formula One racing, which begins from a standing stop when the commentator says something like, Turn up your sound and get ready for the sound. Now you may wonder what these have to do with my year as PBA president? Contrast the start of the two kinds of racing. NASCAR and IndyCar use rolling starts. Formula One starts from a dead stop. Now, think about a volunteer president of an organization such as the PBA. Do we want to have a rolling start that is disciplined and organized? Or do we want a standing start that, as anyone who watches Formula One racing knows, results in chaos and generally involves a car or two crashing in the first corner? I think we can all agree that a rolling start is the preferred method. So, I stand before you today to begin my rolling start. Since I became vice president two years ago, many have asked, What is your agenda for your presidential year? What do you want to accomplish? My message is simple. My primary objective in my year as your president will be to increase our membership numbers in order to strengthen our organization; to preserve and enhance the many valuable programs already in place; and to work with staff, my fellow officers and you to improve member benefits.

3 From the InCite free legal research program through LexisNexis to our professional liability insurance program administered by USI Affinity to the opportunities to purchase office supplies and equipment through our other Preferred Partners, the PBA helps lawyers save money. When this happens, we are better able to serve our clients needs without always having to focus on the bottom line. Through our affiliate, the Pennsylvania Bar Institute, lawyers can obtain required CLE credits in almost every county of Pennsylvania, saving time and money by not having to drive to locations inconvenient to their offices. Our statewide networking capabilities through our committees, sections and task forces are beyond compare. Our publications are national award-winners. Our conferences and meetings feature some of the top scholars and legal leaders in the state and nation. Our legislative program scores significant victories for lawyers and their clients, including our recent success with Title 15, which made Pennsylvania a more attractive state in which to do business. Indeed, PBA membership has much to offer. In the past year, thanks to an outstanding outreach effort by the PBA Young Lawyers Division and staff, we have more than doubled our number of law-school student members in the PBA. This bodes well for our future, but only if we can retain these law student members as full, active members after they have received their first-year free PBA membership. Recently, I reread Malcolm Gladwell s The Tipping Point, a book that presents a new way of understanding why change so often happens as quickly and as unexpectedly as it does. Gladwell believes that Ideas and behavior and messages and products sometimes behave just like outbreaks of infectious disease. They are social epidemics. While this may seems like a strange analogy in reference to the PBA, the virtue of an epidemic is that just a little input is enough to get it started, and it can spread very, very quickly. Which is why this year we are going to start an epidemic in membership to move our membership numbers forward.

4 In fact, I am challenging each of you to do something small to get this epidemic started. When you attend court hearings, local bar association social functions, CLE courses or other events with your fellow lawyers, ask them if they are members of the PBA. If the answer is no, ask them to join. It is as simple as having them visit the PBA website and signing up. And my hope would be that for every new member who joins, the experience will be so worthwhile that he or she, in turn, will spread the positive news about the PBA to other non-members. The epidemic will have started. This year, prior to the start of PBI CLE courses, we will be showing a short video commercial to participants in the hope that non-pba members in these courses will join our ranks. I d like to share one of the commercials with you now. Many thanks to the staffs at PBA and PBI for their assistance with this video. (Commercial runs on screen) Again, please join with me this year in starting our membership epidemic. Of course, this year will be about more than what the PBA does for its members. I would be surprised if any member of the association is unaware of our political action committee, the PABAR-PAC. Past PBA President and PABAR-PAC Co-chair Bill Carlucci and Lisa Benzie, PABAR-PAC co-chair and new chair of the PBA House of Delegates, have been tirelessly evangelizing on behalf of the PAC. Unfortunately, too many members have ignored their pleas. It is embarrassing to look at a list of PACs in Pennsylvania and sees the carpenters, electricians and many others with PACs much larger than ours. Legislative activities are not only about stopping ill-advised efforts to cap tort awards or changing how legal advertising is done or preventing the taxation of legal services. Although these represent signal successes for our PBA Legislative Department, legislative activities are really about our being best at representing the legal interests of Pennsylvania citizens as the recognized voice of the legal profession. But in order to use that voice, we must have a robust PAC. We have taken steps to reach out to the Legislature and to make the resources of our committees

5 and sections available to committees of the state House and Senate when legislation is being fashioned. The PAC makes it easier to have our voice heard in the Capitol. Whether you approve of this or not, legislators are more likely to listen to our arguments when they know that we support our friends on the Hill. I challenge each of you either to make a contribution or to increase your contribution to the PAC. Another area I hope to enhance is our relationship with affinity bars, which are distinct, smaller bar associations for lawyers with a common ethnic background or an interest in a specific area of practice. There are literally thousands of lawyers in Pennsylvania who belong to affinity bars who are not PBA members. We must reach out to these specialty bar associations and provide them with benefits otherwise not available to them. I believe this will not only provide valuable services to them but will also enrich the PBA. My background in the PBA is in committees and sections, specifically the Unauthorized Practice of Law Committee. My service on that committee showed me the value of PBA membership and how it works to make the practice of law better for all lawyers licensed to practice in Pennsylvania. Over the years I have seen the committee take an active role in protecting consumers. For example, the UPL has led the charge to make sure that notario publicos cannot represent persons in immigration matters. The UPL Committee also pushed against the appearance of nonlawyers before boards of assessment or zoning hearing boards representing unsuspecting members of the public. It also worked to ensure that other professions are not permitted to form corporations, settle decedents estates or practice in many other areas traditionally the domain of lawyers. This committee is but one example of the important work done by volunteer members of the Pennsylvania Bar Association. As your president, I hope to build upon the successes of our committees, sections and task forces. The strength and lifeblood of the PBA is in these groups, from the Military and Veterans Affairs Committee to the Solo & Small Firm Practice Section, from the Commission on Women in the Profession Committee to the Real Property, Probate and Trust Law Section, and more.

6 But in circling back to my main message, we cannot have strong committees and sections without a strong membership. If there is a single point that I hope you will take away today, it is that I would like each of you to bring a new member into the PBA fold. When our numbers increase, we can do so much more for our legal profession and for the clients we serve. Indeed, we want to start an epidemic in PBA membership, a positive epidemic that will give our 118-year-old association a solid foundation for the future. In closing, I have been extremely fortunate to have served as PBA vice president and presidentelect, respectively, with Matt Creme and Tom Wilkinson as president. I want to thank these two gentlemen for their help as I prepared for leadership and for the great efforts they have made on our behalf. They have given me the rolling start I needed to begin my year. Please let me know how I am doing throughout the year by ing or, if you are really in a hurry, calling me. I may not answer instantly, because I am a sole practitioner, but I promise that I will get back to you or will have someone who has the answer reach out to you. Thanks again for the confidence you have shown in me by allowing me to be your president. NOW LET S START THE EPIDEMIC!