GOALS MATTER

Happy New Year to all our women's bar groups! We are so pleased to be starting a new year with you. I am a New Year's resolution fanatic and actually take time throughout the year to "re-engage" with my New Year's resolutions. I start evaluating and setting the new year's goals in December.

I hope that you and your organization will take time to set and evaluate goals in January even if this is not your regular planning period. I find it especially important to have quick statements to help "re-set" me to want to progress again because there are so many daily struggles and major events that knock us or our organizations off track.

Choose a quick pick-me-up sentence, or two or more, depending on the amount of motivation you need to recapture. Below are several of mine and the place/person I  heard the statement from first. They may have been quoting another, but the place/person is equally important to me.

The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing. (Stephen Covey)

Go and do, don't sit and stew. (John Bytheway)

W.I.N - "W"hat's "I"mportant "N"ow. ( Retired Judge Christel Marquardt, Kansas Court of Appeals)

Can't have uphill hopes and downhill habits. (John Maxwell)

Bee above your usual. ( Savannah Bee Company)

Choose a word or a theme for your year and recite it often.

Enjoy 2019 and build on your 2018 momentum.

PROGRAM OFFERING

There is no charge to register for the ABA midyear meeting in Las Vegas, January 23-28. This is a great opportunity for in-person meetings with colleagues from all over the US and beyond. For more information about the meeting, click here. We hope you will join us for a GOOD Guys program on Friday afternoon, January 25 from 2:30 to 4:00 pm at Caesar's Palace. The program is jointly sponsored by the National Conference of Bar Presidents, the ABA Young Lawyers Division and the NCWBA. Click here for more information.

If you missed our November 28th Food from the Bar webinar, check out the PowerPoint link on our Food from the Bar resources page.

TIP FOR YOUR ORGANIZATION

Submit to your membership a one-page document with the main "save the dates" for the entire year. This should include your monthly lunches and your big event items. Even if a date has not been nailed down yet, still let your membership know to be looking for the event in a particular month or even mention, for example, that the yearly spring CLE is yet to be calendared. Your calendar is often the guiding document for your presidency year and can help keep you and your board on track and help membership feel connected and eagerly awaiting the next opportunities to meet and engage. Sending out calendar invites can also be very helpful and appreciated by members.

TIP FOR YOU

Track your goal progression. If you google "trigger journals" or "bullet journals" there are all kinds of pages you can use to track important daily events on your phone or in print. You use trigger or bullet journaling to track the things you want to do daily such as scripture reading, meditation time, individualized time with children, spouse, loved ones, mail posted/phone calls returned, etc. Sometimes the things we wish we would do daily are the things we overlook doing. Over the last several years I have found journaling to be very helpful. I use an Excel spreadsheet for the trigger events I want to track daily. My eldest daughter uses the bullet journaling method - it is a lot pettier than mine.  I also have a daily gratitude journal to write down a couple things I am grateful for in my day. I especially love my "look forward to" journal where I write down a couple things I need to do in my next day. It is amazing the attitude shift that can occur when I write down things I'm not looking forward to but write down that I am, and it is especially rewarding to get those tasks done. I also have a "one sentence" journal that I write down something from one of my children's lives. They are now all adults and I so wish I had had this tip when they were young, but it is fun to see the years as they progress. I am starting year 4 of my 5-year journal. The one I have used comes from, The Happiness Project One-Sentence Journal for Mothers by Gretchen Rubin. (This isn't a plug for this particular journal but I typically like it when someone can give me a concrete example so I can start there for my own search.)   I am a believer in what we watch and track we do. Have fun.

CHALLENGE

Please take the opportunity to submit your 2019 calendar to the NCWBA. Tell us which things you would like for us to help you promote. Also, seeing your events helps us plan and suggest programming that others might enjoy.

Each year, we recognize significant accomplishments of member associations in their work on behalf of the public and their own members. In giving awards to programs which we think are particularly effective and unique, we hope to inspire others to create similar programs, as well as to honor the good work of the volunteers.   Nominations are now being accepted for the 2019 Public Service and Outstanding Member Program Awards, to be presented at the Women's Bar Leadership Summit in San Francisco on Friday, August 9. For more information and a nomination form, click here.     Nominations will be accepted until Friday,  February 8, 2019 at 9:00 pm PST . Questions? Email us .

Chances are that many of your members are vowing to be healthier in 2019. Women's bar associations can and should support these resolutions. A landmark study of lawyers published in 2016 revealed that 28 percent of employed lawyers suffer from depression, 19 percent have anxiety disorders, and 21 percent are classified as problem drinkers--a much higher percentage than in the population at large. What's more, these issues are particularly prevalent among lawyers in their first 10 years of practice--a demographic which is often a focus of women's bar groups. For more resources resulting from the study, click here. Additional resources are available through the National Task Force on Lawyer Well-Being. 

As you plan programs for 2019, think about how to enhance health by partnering with and highlighting existing programs or by creating services of your own. Reach out to the lawyer assistance program in your state or province to determine how you can partner with them. Click here for a list of lawyer assistance programs.  Women Lawyers of Utah publicizes weekly free yoga for lawyers. For a decade, Oregon Women Lawyers has joined with the Oregon Attorney Assistance Program in a weekend coastal women's wellness retreat. The Lawyers' Association for Women - Marion Griffin Chapter has a Health & Wellness Book Club.

Take a look at your networking events. How many of them feature alcohol in a significant way? Click here for Let's Lose the Booze: Rethinking Networking Events. 

Don't have time to plan one more service or event? An easy way to offer wellness services to your members is to join the Mindfulness in Law Society Become an affiliate, start a chapter, or partner in a program. Click here for more information.

In 1869, Arabella Babb Mansfield was admitted to the Iowa Bar after passing the bar exam with high marks and successfully challenging Iowa's restriction that only males over the age of 21 were eligible for bar admission, making her the first woman to be admitted to a state bar. This means that in 2019, we will celebrate 150 years of women lawyers in the United States! To commemorate this landmark, the NCWBA is joining with Faircount Media Group to create a publication that our member organizations will be able to share with their own membership in hard copy or by electronic link. If you would like information about placing an advertisement in the publication, please contact Robin Jobson.

We hope to have articles recounting the history and significant milestones of your women's bar group, information about important women lawyer "firsts" from your region, and other articles which capture and preserve the significant history of women lawyers in the United States and Canada. The publication will be introduced at our 2019 Women's Bar Leadership Summit in San Francisco, with a submission deadline in Spring 2019. Articles may be up to a maximum of about 3000 words in length. High-quality photos are also welcome. Submissions are subject to editing and space limitations. Many groups have history committees or have already written their histories, so they have a good starting point for creating articles that explain their histories to a national audience. If you don't already have these resources, now would be a great time to start gathering materials! Let us know what questions you have. We look forward to learning more about the history of women lawyers, both individually and collectively. For research materials, see our history pages.

Join the ABA Standing Committee on Bar Activities and Services and the Division for Bar Services on March 13-15, 2019 at the Chicago Marriott Downtown for the 2019 ABA Bar Leadership Institute. This conference prepares presidents-elect and other officers on the presidential track to lead their bar associations in service to members, the legal profession and the public. Five scholarships are offered. The application deadline is January 8. Click here for more information on how to apply.

Did you know ABA Publishing offers a Books for Bars Program to help state, local and specialty bars generate non-dues revenue and provide a valuable benefit to their members? Books for Bars gives you an opportunity to offer hundreds of ABA books to your members at a 15% discount at americanbar.org/products. And your bar earns a 15% royalty on every one of those sales. The program is easy to join and easy to use.

 

If you're already a Books for Bars participant, your members need to hear about this advantage. More shopping through your bar will mean more contributions for you and more savings for your lawyers. Reach out to discover new ways to engage your members and promote your program. Contact Ashley Alfirevic to make the most of your Books for Bars discount code.

Long-time executive director Diane Rynerson will be retiring in 2019, which means we are now searching for the right person who will bring us energy, dedication and passion for the success of women's bar associations in the years to come. Please think about who might be a good fit for this position which has flexible, part-time hours, and let them know about the opening. Anyone reading this newsletter is likely to know a possible candidate!  Click here for detailed information about the position and the application requirements. Early applications are encouraged, but applications will be accepted until Thursday, January 31 at 11:59 pm PST.

Remember to check  Women Lawyers News   for articles and unique tools to make practicing law just that much easier.