President’s Message

TO UNDERSTATE THE OBVIOUS, the COVID pandemic disrupted every aspect of our society over the last 16 months. Not surprisingly, our judicial system felt the strains as well. The pandemic significantly disrupted the judicial process, leading to a series of emergency orders as the judiciary attempted to balance the essential need to process cases and minimize delay with the need to protect the public.

The Virginia State Bar was not spared. Health considerations became a prominent factor in whether VSB business meetings would be in-person or virtual, or even held at all. We cancelled our June 2020 Annual Meeting for just the first time since World War II. We cancelled the June 2020 Bar Council meeting. The VSB offices were closed to the public. Many of the VSB staff worked remotely. Access to the VSB floors has been restricted, effectively closing the VSB offices.

Yet after incurring the initial blow, we adapted, as individuals and as a society. With greater experience and knowledge, techniques for coping with the pandemic evolved. Businesses adapted. Supply chains recovered. Shopping patterns altered. Interactions with loved ones, friends, and co-workers changed. Most of us became adept (or at least moderately passable) with virtual communication.

And how we practiced law changed. Many of our courts conducted hearings on WebEx. Appearances in court were reduced. Courtrooms were re-configured to permit essential in-person proceedings to be held. As practitioners, we learned to conduct virtual hearings, mediations and collaborative law conferences, arbitration hearings, and depositions. In many jurisdictions, we learned to accomplish electronic court filings.

At the Virginia State Bar, we too adapted, under the leadership of Executive Director Karen Gould, President Brian Buniva, and our excellent staff. To ensure the continuity of the VSB’s business, we learned to conduct virtual Executive Committee and Bar Council meetings, VSB committee meetings, and to blend some staff working from home while others worked in the office. Bar Counsel continued to process bar disciplinary matters effectively and efficiently. Bar staff, even when working remotely, succeeded in being responsive to inquiries and concerns from our members. Bar conferences and committees conducted highly successful virtual programs, such as the Diversity Conference’s “Tough Talks on Race and the Law in Virginia” Town Halls. The VSB Techshow conference organizers provided the first virtual version of the annual event. This year, the Better Annual Meeting Committee lived up to its name, providing an affordable virtual CLE program, with alternative on-demand program options to permit participating members to view recordings of sessions they were unable to see “live”.

Our greatest challenge for the year to come will be to review what worked, what did not, and how to incorporate the beneficial changes as we move forward into the “new normal.”

As we conduct this review, it is essential that we remain faithful to our mission:

The mission of the VSB, as an administrative agency of the Supreme Court of Virginia, is (1) to protect the public, (2) to regulate the legal profession of Virginia, (3) to advance access to legal services, and (4) to assist in improving the legal profession and the judicial system. Every activity we pursue must be consistent with, and advance, at least one of these criteria.

My goal for the coming year is for us to review our adaptations from last year to see how they can be applied to advance the criteria set forth in our mission statement. Yet as we do so, we should also remain cognizant that the risk that should be feared most is not the risk we can easily imagine; it is the risk that we can’t, to paraphrase a statement I recently read in a book on the importance of good project management.

I encourage each of our committees and conferences to consider its role in our mission. Consider how it can be better advanced by implementing and modifying what has been learned from the changes wrought by the pandemic, while trying to anticipate future, currently unimagined, threats. Consider how we can use these tools to better regulate the quality of legal services provided to the people of Virginia. Contemplate how we can adapt them to improve and protect the legal profession and the judicial system.

This process is already underway. For example, the Better Annual Meeting Committee is exploring if there would be an affordable avenue to conduct a hybrid meeting, preserving the best features of gathering in-person, yet making valued information available to those unable to attend in-person. I have asked former VSB President Len Heath and Margaret Ogden, Wellness Coordinator in the Office of the Executive Secretary of the Supreme Court of Virginia, as well as the Virginia Judges and Lawyers Assistance Program Board and staff, to work with me to explore the impact the pandemic has had on the health of the profession and to build on the work started during Len’s administration on the wellness of the profession. I hope to work with the Standing Committee on Access to Legal Services, the Diversity Conference, former VSB President Doris Henderson Causey, and Immediate Past President Brian Buniva to focus on the ever-present challenge of access to legal services based on our recent experiences.

I invite every VSB lawyer to share their thoughts with VSB staff, conference and committee chairs, and me. I hope that you will join with us in this undertaking.