Silly me, I thought (o.k. maybe I was hoping) my Jacksonville Bar Association responsibilities would slow down as I finished my last few months in office. Wrong!
Today is the first day of The Jacksonville Bar Association serving as the Fourth Judicial Circuit Residential Mortgage Foreclosure Mediation Program Manager. We are honored to receive this responsibility from Chief Judge Don Moran and we believe we are ideally suited to facilitate the achievement of the primary purpose of the Program: facilitating the communication of the lender and the borrower. Obviously we have been working overtime to get the Program ready to go and we are proud to say that we are ready to start. The Jacksonville Bar Association staff has been burning the midnight oil perfecting forms and checklists, opening bank and e-mail accounts, organizing and putting on a day long certification training for mediators and starting to create a web enabled platform.
Our preparation has certainly been made easier with the assistance from multiple attorneys in our Association. Penny Schmidt, Dennis Schutt, Caroline Emery, Michael Figgins, Heather Owen, Lynn Drysdale, Jim Kowalski, Brian Clarke, Blane McCarthy, April Charney, just to name a few; have each been instrumental in getting us to this point.
Having done all that, we know there will be peaks and valleys as we implement the program. “Fluid” and “evolving” are our favorite terms around The Jacksonville Bar Office these days as we prepare to move forward. Nevertheless, we are proud of the fact that we are the first Bar Association to manage this Program and we look forward to getting started.
During the middle of our preparation The Jacksonville Bar Association hosted its largest non-Law Day monthly lunch with over 420 folks rsvping. Dedicating the lunch to Jacksonville Area Legal Aid (we raised over $800 in one hour), saying goodbye to Judge Weatherby after 21 years of judiciary service, having one of our own (Judge William Van Nortwick Jr.) deliver the keynote address and the live entertainment from Andrew Moritz certainly were all key reasons for the record breaking attendance. Whatever the reason we are excited to have been part of this small piece of Bar Association history.
Two days later, in combination with the Jacksonville Jaguars, we put on a superb event at the stadium to address an important issue facing our community: keeping the Jaguars in Jacksonville. Over 60 representatives from nearly as many firms heard comments from Wayne Weaver and Tony Boselli regarding the state of the team, Wayne’s desire to keep the team in Jacksonville, and the importance of the legal community doing its part.
Although my weekends are generally dominated by my Navy Reserve duties and watching my two kids play travel soccer around the state of Florida and beyond, my wife and I decided last year we needed to financially support the Jaguars so we purchased tickets to three different games. While we ultimately were unable to utilize all those tickets and gave some of them away to others, we understand how important the Jaguars are to our Community. One of the important messages from Wayne and Tony was this drive was not just about purchasing season tickets. There are multiple ways to support the Jaguars that do not include purchasing season tickets. Many Firms match ticket sales with their employees or simply supplement the purchase of tickets for their employees. The bottom line is that the Jaguars are a tremendous economic force in our Community and we cannot afford to lose them.
Lastly, we have been finalizing a set of proposed amended by-laws for The Jacksonville Bar Association and will roll them out in the next few weeks. This has been a year long project, led by Ray Driver and Braxton Gillam, but the changes will bring our decades old by-laws up to date with the current requirements of a Florida not-for-profit entity. While you can imagine that this has not been the most riveting of exercises for me personally, it was clearly necessary and we look forward to you reviewing and approving them in due course.
While my last few months may not be as slow as I might prefer, it will be exciting to say the least and will remind me daily that it is a great day to be a Jacksonville lawyer.