Bench & Bar of Minnesota

All the Former New Lawyers
By Brian Melendez

Many weekday mornings, I go running with my neighbor and friend, Jennifer Daugherty, who practices at Larson•King in St. Paul. I soon discovered that Jennifer represents Minnesota and Wisconsin in the ABA Young Lawyers Division, and mentioned that I was active in that organization once upon a time. “Oh,” she said, mildly surprised, “were you a young lawyer too?”

Why, yes, Jennifer, yes I was. In fact, we all were — that is, any lawyer who isn’t a new lawyer still was a new lawyer once.1 Fourteen years ago, I got involved in the bar association in Hennepin County by helping kick-start the new-lawyer organization. Some friends and I had seen the quality and quantity of programs that new-lawyer organizations ran in other states, and were both humbled and inspired. Two years later, we joined up with some friends in Ramsey County and Duluth with similar goals, renamed the MSBA Young Lawyers Section as the New Lawyers Section, broadened the governing boards so that they included representation from around the state, and began reaching out.

To its credit, the bar leadership of a decade ago encouraged and supported that effort. The Association added a new-lawyer seat to the then-seven-member Executive Committee, and several of my predecessors as MSBA President promoted new-lawyer leaders (including me) into committee chairs and other responsible appointments in the senior bar. Some members at the time questioned why new lawyers were different from any other special-interest group in the bar, and why they deserved special treatment. But different they are:

The New Lawyers Section is the only constituency within the Association to which every member has belonged.
New lawyers comprise about a third of those admitted to the Minnesota bar — the same third that the bar association has reached least effectively in recent years, and the same third that is least represented in its leadership.
Compared with the rest of the bar, new lawyers as a group are more diverse, and therefore likelier to help the bar association combat the glass ceiling.
New lawyers bring to the bar association a different perspective on law, practice, and the profession than their more senior colleagues. For example, they are more technologically literate, and therefore likelier to offer fresh ideas about bringing law-office management into the 21st century.

As I begin my presidency, the bar’s leadership is full of the friends and colleagues who got to know each other in our new-lawyer days, as well as the more senior lawyers who mentored us along the way. A month before my own installation, I was honored to watch my friend Sonia Miller-Van Oort take the gavel as HCBA President. My first appointments as your incoming president were the cochairs of the 2008 Convention Committee, for which I turned to two former new-lawyer chairs, Jason Kohlmeyer and Lori Semke. And one of the most significant events during this bar year will be Minnesota’s sesquicentennial, for which former new-lawyer chair Joan Schulkers will cochair a bar committee.

The New Lawyers Section has been holding up its end, too: new-lawyer organizations have sprung up in Rochester and Mankato, with more in prospect, and the Section is as energetic as ever. But the question will always remain: Are we helping today’s new lawyers build the kind of professional community that will sustain the bar association as a coherent, representative organization when they become its leadership? If not, then how can the profession maintain its independence and self-regulation? The bar association’s future as the profession’s representative depends critically on the active and organized presence of new lawyers. Historically, for whatever reason, the culture of the Minnesota bar has not always guided new lawyers into the bar association. The New Lawyers Section has been combating that trend, with considerable success — but the Association must keep recognizing and rewarding the effort in order to sustain that success.

The professional community that today’s managing partners enjoyed when they were new lawyers is not the same community in which the new lawyers of today must practice and, more importantly, survive. The market is more competitive, the hours are longer, the clients are more demanding, and outside activities like the bar association can get short shrift. These trends pose greater challenges to the community-building that many older lawyers have always taken for granted, and thus they require greater effort from all lawyers — not only new lawyers — in order to maintain the strong sense of civility, professionalism, and community that has sustained the bar in generations past.

Any bar association that cares about its future, about building the kind of professional community that will sustain it as a coherent, representative organization when the current new lawyers become its leadership, will welcome talented new lawyers active at every level in its organization — not just on the bottom rungs. I look forward to working not only with all the former new lawyers with whom I have grown up in the bar, but with all the new lawyers of today.

Notes
1The American Bar Association uses the term “young lawyer.” The Minnesota State Bar Association uses the term “new lawyer,” since a lawyer can qualify as “new” based upon either chronological age or time in practice.

BRIAN MELENDEZ is president of the Minnesota State Bar Association and a partner in the law firm of Faegre & Benson LLP. He received his undergraduate and law degrees cum laude, as well as a master’s degree in theology, from Harvard University. He is active in numerous professional, civic, and alumni organizations both locally and nationally.