Each of us, the members of The Jacksonville Bar Association Board of Governors, are extremely proud of our chosen profession as well as The Jacksonville Bar Association. While each of us choose to serve on the Board for multiple reasons, we each share the belief that The Jacksonville Bar Association provides an important forum for lawyers to congregate and to go forth and make a positive impact on our Community. The Jacksonville Bar Association provides each of us with the opportunity to be a part of something that is much greater than we could ever be individually.
Whether it be through the Senior Holiday Project, which again served over 500 local senior citizens this past Holiday season (way to go Mike McCoy and team), pro bono projects, charity golf tournaments, skin cancer runs, Special Olympics events, Holiday in January projects, food and clothing drives, etc., each of these substantial community projects leave a large footprint which is far greater than any single lawyer could create on his or her own. We also recognize that the success of The Jacksonville Bar Association is dependent upon individual lawyers like you that are willing to make a difference in our Community by volunteering. In other words, without the efforts of each of you, The Jacksonville Bar Association could not consistently produce the positive impact on our community that it routinely does.
One of our recent initiatives is to publicly recognize the Jacksonville lawyers that are making a difference in our community by volunteering. We publish every Monday within these pages a section entitled “Lawyer Snapshot.” By doing so, we hope to achieve multiple goals. First and foremost is to recognize those lawyers that are truly making a difference in our community by volunteering.
Secondly, the Board wants to place increased emphasis on publicizing the good works of our peers. Far too often we allow our profession to be defined to the public by the actions of a few non-Jacksonville lawyers. In order to level the playing field we will consistently publicize the positive actions by our Jacksonville lawyers. We believe this will also help to create a stronger positive perception of our profession. While we realize this will not be an overnight project but rather a sustained one, we also realize that there is no time better than the present to commence such an initiative. We are also optimistic that by promoting the volunteer works of our peers, we will inspire others who have not taken the leap to reconsider their priorities and place increased emphasis on volunteering in the Community.
If you know of anyone that deserves to have the weekly spotlight please contact us at The Jacksonville Bar Association or you may e-mail me directly at [email protected] with the name and a brief explanation of why your nominee deserves the weekly spotlight.
Another initiative we recently started, and you may have already heard it on one of the seven local Clear Channel radio station airways, are public service ads promoting the great volunteer work of Jacksonville lawyers. These radio ads are designed to promote the legal profession by highlighting all the outstanding volunteer work performed by Jacksonville lawyers. The ads differ from the weekly Lawyer Snapshot in that the weekly newspaper story goes into detail about individual achievements, while the radio ads talk generally about the achievements by Jacksonville lawyers as a whole. Through the assistance of Eddie Farah and Marla Lucas of the Scott-McRae Advertising company and obviously the Clear Channel folks, our thirty second ads have run hundreds of times on the Jacksonville airwaves in the past six months.
A different initiative that is in its second year is our sustaining members program. Susan Sowards, the executive director of The Jacksonville Bar Association, brought this concept with her from The Nashville Bar Association. This program has grown from approximately 35 members last year to over 70 members this year and our goal is to double the number again in the program’s third year. A sustaining member of The Jacksonville Bar Association is a member that pays an extra $100 in addition to their annual dues.
While we have not interviewed each sustaining member to determine the basis for their generosity, we believe that the substantial majority of them make the extra commitment not for the public recognition or the $100 CLE coupon or exemption from the rsvp policy or the red ribbon on their name tag, but rather they do so, because, like us, they have a significant appreciation for The Jacksonville Bar Association and understand that the extra funds permit us to fund the various projects that we sponsor throughout the year. The monthly lunches, Bench & Bar party, talent show, low country boil, judicial investitures, CLE programs, the JBA Web site, the JBA weekly publications, committee and section meetings, etc. all have associated expenses that this not for profit entity has to satisfy. These extra funds help us to do just that and permit us to expand our services.
While we have other initiatives that we are continuing to develop and implement, we would appreciate learning if you have an idea to make The Jacksonville Bar Association even more responsive to its members. We are constantly looking for ways to improve our product and make The Jacksonville Bar Association more responsive to its members. Please help us to do so.