Find Your Path With the YLD
Welcome to the 2021-2022 Bar Year! I am thrilled and honored to serve the young lawyers of our Association as YLD Chair. We have lots planned for the coming year. I hope you will read on to learn a little about our efforts, and I hope even more that you will get involved – either as a young lawyer or as a partner in our efforts to better connect with the “Big Bar” this year.
As I sat down to write this first article about our YLD goals for the coming year, I had an idea. I said to myself, “Will, maybe you should go read the YLD Bylaws” – I know, novel idea for a lawyer – governing documents! I have probably said those words or something similar a couple dozen times to clients over the years, but it took me a whole year as chair-elect and about a month into becoming chair to think about taking my own advice.
Not surprisingly, the YLD Bylaws have as the first purpose for our organization, “the promotion of the general welfare of the community and public service.” And, we do that so very well. The YLD is often and affectionately referred to as the “service arm” of our Association because of our history of developing, nurturing, and supporting in large numbers some of the most popular pro bono projects that members of the Association participate in each year such as 4ALL and Wills for Heroes.
We also have a great track record when it comes to non-legal community service through projects like the Legal Feeding Frenzy, Legal LINK, and our popular Law Week moot court competition for high school students. If you are looking to get involved with pro bono or legal-tangent community service, we have a path for you.
As I read on in our Bylaws, I realized that some wise young lawyers before us thought to include as our organization’s second, third and fourth purposes the “advancement of the professional education and welfare of young lawyers,” the “provision of a more effective means for young lawyers to participate in the activities of the Association,” and the “promotion of fellowship among all members of the bar.”
Even before reading the Bylaws, our leadership team had decided we should spend a good portion of this year looking inward to our own membership. It may not be nearly as exciting as external service, but after the challenges of the past year, it is important that we indulge in that kind of organizational self-care.
While self-care is a focus that is, unfortunately, sometimes viewed as a luxury for young lawyers, it is essential to each of us individually and to our organization. In the organizational context, it means creating ways for young lawyers to learn from those who have come before them and encouraging social connections and support groups to help each of us on the journey to becoming a person and a lawyer who enjoys themselves and their practice twenty or thirty years down the road.
We will promote our core purposes and the concept of self-care this year by turning some of the passion and excitement our division has for serving others into helping young lawyers find their own pathways to personal and professional development.
This past year we created an award-winning Lunch and Learn series spotlighting lawyers working in practice areas ranging from Sports and Entertainment to Nonprofits. This effort, which was the brainchild of Division Director Sheila Spence, was recently recognized by the ABA YLD with an Award of Achievement in the Service to the Bar category.
This coming year we are going to expand on and improve this effort with a “Sections Spotlight” program. Through this effort, we will work with our thirty-one (and counting) NCBA Sections to plan at least one “lunch and learn” session with each over the course of the year. If we pull it off – or even come close – that would see us hosting informational sessions every other week.
Sessions could range from “a day in the life of” a particular type of lawyer to “hot topics” in a particular area of the law to a discussion of the opportunities available by participating in a section. The options are nearly endless with the great variety we have in our sections.
Fortunately, we have a built-in Section Liaison program that has existed for many years. With a little re-envisioning and some help from the young lawyers who have committed to being involved in both the YLD and their section and other section leaders, we can bridge the gap between these complimentary parts of the NCBA to both educate our members and help them find ways to get more involved in their section of choice. The hope with this program is that our young lawyers will engage with a section early in their career and stay involved with the NCBA long after their YLD days have ended.
Speaking of aging out of the YLD, I often meet older “young” lawyers – of which I am definitely one – who tell me some variation of the same story:
I spent the first decade or so since law school (a) figuring out how to practice law, (b) living outside of the state, (c) growing my family, or (d) otherwise getting my feet under me. Now that I have a little more time on my hands and a steady paycheck, I would really like to get more involved, but I don’t know how, and I am just about to age out of the YLD. The “Big Bar” seems so big!
To address this recurring story our Membership and Outreach Committee will hold a “Life After YLD” event targeted at those about to or recently aged out of the YLD. With this event we will look to introduce the oldest young lawyers among us to the various ways to continue or get involved with the NCBA after aging out of the YLD. After all, the path does not end with us!
We will also continue using Zoom and other virtual platforms to provide meaningful and substantive content virtually throughout the coming year. So many events we put on this past year were wonderfully planned, well-executed, engaging, and able to reach a statewide audience through the use of technology we had largely overlooked in the past. We will embrace what we have learned this past year and improve on our efforts to connect with young lawyers throughout the state.
For example, we saw great success transitioning our Civic Engagement Committee’s speaker series online this past year with events like the 2020 election post-mortem and a panel delving into what it is like to run for and serve in political office as a lawyer. We will look to improve on these successes by developing resources and programs to educate and empower young lawyers to become the next generation of dynamic and innovative leaders in our community through politics, nonprofits, appointed positions, and advocacy.
Our Diversity and Inclusion Committee also saw success in the past year with putting on a virtual “Build Your Brand Event” that featured a diverse panel of attorneys from various backgrounds and practice areas sharing their experiences and strategies for success in the legal field with young lawyers. We will look to grow and expand this event in the coming year to include both an in-person and virtual option to reach the widest possible audience while further allowing the participants who can be there in person to engage in meaningful post-event networking and fellowshipping.
Not a week goes by that I do not have a conversation with some other young lawyer about how they are trying to achieve or maintain the work/life balance they want as more and more offices open up. For some, the challenge is how to transition from working from home over the past year back to the office while still seeing their family or getting in as much exercise as much as they did the past year. For others it is trying to figure out how to reestablish boundaries that were broken down over the past year as our homes and apartments became our offices and conference rooms.
On these issues we each have to work out what works best for ourselves, our employers, and our clients, but we do not have to do it alone. Our Wellness Committee will look to provide resources, guidance and a place to discuss these challenges with each other as we continue to figure out work/life balance in a post-pandemic world.
This is just a sampling of the great things our YLD hopes to accomplish in the coming year. To learn more about the YLD and our various initiatives visit our Communities page here. If you are reading this and wondering how you can help or get involved, please reach out to me at [email protected]. I will do my best to find a place where you can make a meaningful impact as a North Carolina young lawyer as you walk your own path in our shared profession!
And now for a little about me, because whenever I read these “welcome” columns I find myself wanting to actually be introduced to the person writing them and not just where they work! First and foremost, I am the father of two extremely energetic little boys, Shep (5) and Sutton (2). They constantly keep me laughing and on my toes. My loving, patient and supportive wife Meghan manages to somehow both keep me grounded and pushes me to be and do better at the same time. I will always be grateful to her for the rock that she is for our family and am so proud of the things she does to make our state a better place! When I am not chasing after our kids, you can often find me cheering on Wolfpack athletics, running, hiking or playing tennis. Somewhere between all of that, I find time for a litigation and data privacy practice out of the Raleigh office of Brooks Pierce McLendon Humphrey & Leonard PLLC. Thank you to my partners and colleagues for giving me the time to indulge in Bar service and for backing me up when I find myself pulled in too many directions at one time.
Will Quick is 2021-22 chair of the North Carolina Bar Association Young Lawyers Division.