As much as we all look forward to summer as the traditional time of picnics, vacations and enjoying the outdoors, the season can be one of disasters with floods, hurricanes, fires and tornadoes. This Bar Leader Toolkit focuses on how you can prepare your home and family, your practice, your bar association and your community to handle a disaster and its aftermath.

There's a Chinese proverb: don't wait until you are thirsty to dig a well.  And we believe the same can be said for preparing for a disaster: it's too late to plan when there's a tornado overhead.

This toolkit includes information for you to share with your community, offering links to excellent government resources that have checklists to use in advance and tips on managing afterwards.  It also includes information from the Division for Bar Services that can help your bar association plan to serve members during a disaster.  And, it includes ABA information that can help you in managing your practice and assisting your clients, in the event of a weather or made-made disaster.

The common theme through all of these resources is the need to put people first in planning and preparation as well as in recovery efforts.  Your family, your staff and your neighbors all need protection.  You can replace everything else.

We hope you find these tools useful and at the same time we hope you never have to use them.

As always, I welcome your thoughts on this toolkit.

Sincerely,

Roseanne Lucianek
Director, Division for Bar Services

© 2008 American Bar Association