DIVERSITY MATTERS

I am especially grateful for all the events I have been invited to during Black History Month, and I love gearing up for International Women's Day (March 8) and Women's History Month. I was invited this month to attend a diversity summit for my city at our local library and am excited to get to participate in the follow-up community training for both non-profit boards and civic boards. I hope our women's bar associations in the United States and Canada are helping to take the lead on this valuable training. When women are asked, women serve. Please take the opportunity to seek out others to serve. Your ask as an attorney holds more encouragement than you may ever realize.   May we not only train but also track our progress in this game-changing event for our communities as our boards and commissions increasingly represent our communities' diversity.  

PROGRAM OFFERING

Thank you to all who submitted nominations for our 2019 Outstanding Member Program Award. The awards will be presented at a luncheon on August 9 in San Francisco as part of our annual Women's Bar Leadership Summit--Accelerating a "Change" Reaction. 

TIP FOR YOUR ORGANIZATION

Is there a checklist for your board members of the priorities of your organization? Among other things, a good checklist for programs, nominating committees and membership is a reminder to check diversity.

TIP FOR YOU

I highly recommend the book The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande. Lawyers should live by checklists. Checklists help us to keep the easy things easy, they help us make sure we don't miss a detail and give us additional time to keep the bigger picture in focus. Often The Checklist Manifesto is seen as being geared toward the medical field; however, the introduction calls lawyers to admit there is a problem. "You see it in the 36% increase between 2004 and 2007 in lawsuits against attorneys for legal mistakes - the most common being simple administrative errors, like missed calendar dates and clerical screw-ups, as well as errors in applying the law." Gawande then later advises, "Substantial parts of what ... lawyers, ... do are now too complex for them to carry out reliably from memory alone. ... But we believe our jobs are too complicated to reduce to a checklist." He reminds us that checklists "... not only offer the possibility of verification but also instill a kind of discipline of higher performance."

 

CHALLENGE

Take the opportunity to share with the NCWBA a checklist that you have from your organization that could be shared with others.

How long has it been since your women lawyers' group has taken time together for a weekend retreat? It can be a great way to become recharged and renewed while deepening relationships and getting a better understanding of the common issues which we face. Want to get inspired? Read this account of the  Canadian Bar Association-Northern Territories Inaugural Women Lawyers Forum Retreat! The retreat required a flight on a bush plane from Yellowknife to the beautiful Blatchford Lake Lodge.

After two decades, it is now time to leave Yahoo Groups. All current listserve members have been transitioned to our new group, WomenBarLeaders@ncwba.org. We'll keep the Yahoo Group email active through March, but we'll start using the new list. If you have questions, concerns, want to be added to the group, taken off the listserve or want to subscribe using a different email address, please contact us.

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 of April 8, 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.

Please share this survey with your members and other colleagues in the legal profession (including law students) The survey seeks to gather the experiences of women and men throughout the legal profession regarding sexual misconduct. The survey is conducted by Women Lawyers on Guard Inc., a nonprofit network advocating for women and women lawyers, and Nextions, a research and consulting firm that specializes in leadership and inclusion in workplaces. The validity of the survey depends on maximum participation. If you have questions, please consult the Nextions research team.

Every member organization of the National Conference of Women's Bar Associations is invited to submit a nomination for someone representing their organization to join the NCWBA board for a two-year term beginning in August 2019. A nominating committee extends invitations for a slate to be voted on at the annual meeting in August. Nominees should be passionate about the value of women's bar associations, sections and interest groups and want to work collaboratively to strengthen them. Board members are expected to attend three in-person meetings each year. Two are held in conjunction with the ABA midyear and annual meetings. One is a fall board retreat. In addition, board members participate in two committees, which typically meet by phone. For more information about board service,  click here , or  contact us . Nominations should be submitted by Wednesday, May 1.