HISTORY MATTERS

I hope you and your organizations had a fantastic Women's History Month. We get a rare opportunity to celebrate our various organizations' history in a glossy magazine this year. Please take the opportunity to meet our April 8th deadline. (See below). I also hope that your organizations are beginning the planning for 2020 celebrations for the 19th amendment. As you gather your history do not forget to document the present. This truly is the greatest gift you can give to the future. We long to know more, and much of the past is not documented. We can stop that trend now. You matter and your stories and events can provide a wealth of strength that will be needed. I am fond of saying, "All I want to do is hand someone something I have learned and let them have it 20 years before I found it." Go do the same!  

PROGRAM OFFERING

You and your members are invited to a free half-hour teleconference with Kimberly Rice, President and Chief Strategist of KLA Marketing Associates, on May 22 entitled Rainmaking While Female.  (See more details below.)

TIP FOR YOUR ORGANIZATION

Get your organization's history on your website so we can all benefit and be strengthened by your stories.

TIPS FOR YOU

Consider a "recap" journal to leave to your posterity and for your own review. I am now on my sixth year of doing this, and while I don't often go back through daily journals, it is nice to take a 10-minute look at a quick recap of the past. I am grateful for this present and idea from my husband on my 43rd birthday. This helps me regain gratitude and gather energy to continue to try new things and help others. I require myself to write a list of events and accomplishments for the number of years I am old. Have fun.

CHALLENGE

Send us your website link to your organization's history. See the links we already have by clicking here.

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.  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.

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.

Our interactive listserve for those active in women's bar groups is  WomenBarLeaders@ncwba.org. This is a "low-traffic" list where you can ask for lawyer referrals, publicize information of national interest to women lawyers or learn about job postings. 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 .

Click here to download the 2019 Law Day Planning Guide from the ABA Division for Public Education.

Those who attended our 2018 Women's Bar Leadership Summit heard about women's roundtable discussions organized by the Law Society of England and Wales.Now the results are in from over 225 roundtable discussions. To download the full report, click here.

Plan now to attend the 2019 Women's Bar Leadership Summit: Accelerating the "Change" Reaction. Share ideas with other leaders of women's bar associations, hear about issues of greatest concern to women in the legal profession, all while enjoying plenty of opportunities for networking with old and new friends in the City by the Bay. Click here for more information. The registration fee will once again be $250 thanks to our generous sponsors. For sponsorship opportunities, which includes registration  click here for more information. We'll have more program details and registration links soon!