Developing the Next Generation of Bar Leaders Through the YLD Inaugural Pro Bono Cohort
Every lawyer has a moment they did not know how to handle, maybe like the first time a client asked a question you could not answer. Do you remember the first time you stood before a judge and felt the room go quiet, or the first time a deal fell apart, and you had to pick up the phone for help? What carried us through those moments probably wasn’t a law school class or a CLE. It was a person — someone who picked up when we called. Someone who said, “Here is what to do next.” We did not arrive at this work alone. We were carried here.
That truth has been on my mind all year. When I stepped into this role, I chose Breaking Barriers as the theme of our bar year. I meant it as a charge to our division to remove the barriers that stand between people and justice, between young lawyers and meaningful service, and between our profession and the communities we are meant to serve.
On an early Saturday morning in February, I stood in a room full of law students and young attorneys and watched them take an oath. They pledged to use their legal education and skills to serve those who need it most, to commit to breaking barriers, to lead with integrity, to serve with purpose and to bring others along. Then, they were formally inducted as members of the inaugural YLD Pro Bono and Leadership Cohort. It was one of the proudest moments of my bar year because it reminded me that leadership in our profession is not something we keep. It is something we hand down.
Pictured left to right, bottom row, are YLD Chair Sheila Spence, Stellarose Emery, Emily Smith, Jessica Colon, Cherell Harris, Jessica Heironimus, April Franklin, Natashua Siler and NCBA Executive Director Jason Hensley. Middle row, left to right, are Sidney Wiswell, Jaida Fisher, Isabella Reed, Tiffany Hughart, Ludny Jean-Baptiste, Garrett Anderson and Alex Gwynn. Top row, left to right, are Rebekah cid del Prado, Kaci Marks, Grant Alexander, Diane Ford and Joshua Batchelor. Not pictured are Brooke McCoormick, Cayla James, David Clark, Kayla Britt and Alesia Miles.
We launched the cohort last fall in response to a quieter challenge facing the bar. The profession needed not just more volunteers, but more engaged young lawyers prepared to lead through periods of resource constraint. Our answer was to build a program where service became the core value of leadership development. The cohort builds on years of pro bono and leadership work by the NCBA and NCBF. Twenty-four law students and young attorneys joined a year-long cohort built on three pillars: hands-on pro bono service under senior bar mentorship, civic engagement education through direct access to attorneys serving in elected and appointed roles, and cross-jurisdictional collaboration and networking opportunities with other young lawyers.
For example, our cohort partnered with the Georgia YLD, the City Attorney and the mayor in Asheville on a joint crisis communication workshop. Then, they participated in a pro bono project with Legal Aid, conducting client outreach on housing concerns, providing legal guidance on habitability and tenant issues and preparing written advice letters for residents who had nowhere else to turn. In Winston-Salem, cohort members partnered with Opt-Inspire and the Shepherd’s Center to provide technology literacy training for senior citizens, a service that is about protecting them from scams and keeping them connected to the legal and financial systems that increasingly assume digital fluency. Across the year, cohort members also served at expunction clinics, name change clinics, Free Legal Answers Empower Hours, NC Lawyers on Call (4ALL) and a pilot cyber safety and anti-bullying program in K-12 schools with the NCBA Privacy and Data Security Section.
Young lawyers in North Carolina and Georgia joined Asheville City leadership for a program on crisis response, collaboration and the evolving role of attorneys in public leadership. Photo courtesy of Envisioning Freedom Productions, LLC.
What I have learned from this work is that you cannot mentor someone from a distance. You must be in the room. At the civic engagement roundtables, our cohort heard from several senior bar leaders who answered hard questions about ethics, public trust, burnout and the discipline of saying no. At our Swing into Your Legal Career golf social, held in partnership with the NCBA Corporate Counsel Section and BarCARES, additional bar leaders shared candid reflections on career pivots, self-advocacy and wellness while also being vulnerable enough to attend golf lessons with us after the lunch discussion.
Although we’ve had a fantastic year building this new leadership program, this cohort is only made up of twenty-four people. Our profession has thousands of lawyers in North Carolina. The work of mentorship cannot live inside one program. It lives in every general counsel who builds in time for the new lawyer to sit in on the negotiation call. Also, mentorship is shown in every partner who walks a summer associate through a closing line by line, knowing it will slow the deal down, or in every district court judge who waits the extra beat for a young lawyer to find their footing. The cohort is one model, but it is not the only one. The rest of this work belongs to all of us!
Young Lawyers Divison and Pro Bono Cohort members at the SWING Into Your Legal Career: Tee Up, Network and Recharge golf social at Lonnie Poole Golf Course (NC State) on April 11.
We are stewards of this profession, not just practitioners in it. Every lawyer who took a chance on us was practicing stewardship. The bar we inherited was built by people who understood that the strength of the profession depends on what we leave behind. The profession is older than any of us and will outlast all of us. Our job, while we are here, is to leave it better than we found it. Mentorship is one of the most direct ways to do that. Passing the torch means we must be a little more patient to make room for someone else at the table.
This program would not have happened without the leaders who chose to make room. I am especially grateful to Alex Gwynn, YLD Civic Engagement and Pro Bono Division Director, whose vision shaped this program from the beginning; Shameka Rolla, YLD Bar Outreach Division Director; and Cherell Harris, YLD Community Outreach Division Director. To every bar leader who simply said yes, thank you!
If you are reading this and wondering where to start, our cohort is looking for senior bar mentors. Please reach out to me directly if interested. The bar will always be in good hands so long as we keep making room for others to join us.
To our inaugural cohort members: the torch is yours now, so carry it well. To every member of this bar who has ever made room for someone behind them, the torch was always yours to share.
Sheila Renee Spence is the 2025-26 chair of the North Carolina Bar Association Young Lawyers Division.