Columbus Bar Association President’s Report | August

Join Robert D. Erney, president of The Columbus Bar Association for his August president’s report.

Hi everyone, and thank you for joining me for our August podcast. Well, it’s the middle of August 2020, a time when most of us would normally be taking vacation time, but this year is different because of the coronavirus.

One of the big challenges the virus has created is for lawyers who have school-age children who are being compelled to learn remotely. That puts the lawyer-parent in a very difficult position, trying to work and at the same time, making sure that their children are properly learning at home online. Well, we have a new program that we launched this month, and it’s called “Lawyers as Teachers”.

And it’s designed to be sort of a support group, but also to provide ideas, suggestions, and best practices for balancing this very difficult situation that so many of our members are facing. Our community conversations are continuing. Our August community conversation is on jury selection, sentencing, and specialty dockets. Our September 2020 community conversation is on parole, probation, and becoming productive. We hope you’ll join us by Zoom.

Our CLE program is continuing very well online, and we’re actually having a really great number of lawyers who are obtaining their CLE online this summer. We had our committee chair orientation also this summer to help our committees be ready to go in September. I did want to announce that we have a new committee called the Negligence Law Committee that will be launching this year.

I urge all of you to join the committee and to get involved with committee work. It is the heartbeat of the Bar Association. We have finished our judicial screening process and those results will be available and will be published soon. I also am very happy to announce our 50-year honorees. This year, we have 27 of them. We’re planning and hoping to have a luncheon for them at some point this fall.

All 50-year honorees are given a free membership to the CBA. This is an extraordinary accomplishment and is a testimony to the toughness and tenacity of these lawyers who had practiced law for 50 years.

Finally, thank you for renewing your membership in the Columbus Bar Association, or if you’re a new member, thank you for joining the Columbus Bar Association. We don’t think you will ever regret your decision. For me, membership in the Columbus Bar Association creates a feeling of togetherness as well as a feeling of belonging to something so much bigger than myself. Together, we can accomplish anything we put our minds to. Togetherness creates power. Togetherness creates the ability to change.

Thank you for listening today. God bless all of you. I’m Rob Erney, number 130. Have a good day.

Consider watching the video podcast for this President’s Report on The Columbus Bar Associations Website.