Young Lawyers Division 2000-2001
Linda Wohlburck is an assistant editor of The Affiliate and practices law with Nelson, Mullins, Riley & Scarborough in Columbia, South Carolina.
382,000 Opinions on How to Get There:
An Interview with ABA Executive Director Bob SteinBy Linda Wohlbruck
Bob Stein has been the executive director of the American Bar Association for two years, since being appointed at the Annual Meeting in New Orleans in 1994. Before that he served as dean of the Law School at the University of Minnesota for a little over fifteen years and was a law faculty member for fifteen years prior to that. He also taught at the University of Minnesota, UCLA, and the University of Chicago Law Schools. Prior to his full-time career in legal education, he practiced law with the firm of Foley and Lardner in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. His areas of specialty are estate planning, trusts and wills, and property law. He has been elected to the American College of Trust and Estates Counsel, the American College of Tax Counsel, and the International Academy of Estate and Trust Lawyers.
The Affiliate: The coming of the new century has been in the news and on people's minds a lot lately and will continue to be as the year 2000 approaches. What do you think are the biggest challenges facing the legal profession and the ABA going into the next century?
Bob Stein: Well, the continuing challenge for lawyers, to which the ABA has responded, is providing access to justice for all Americans. Our system only works if every person in our society has a fair opportunity to have his or her rights recognized. We have been fighting very hard to save the Legal Services Corporation. A president of Harvard University said a few years ago that there may be too many lawyers for those who can afford them but there certainly are not enough for those who cannot. We must find ways to provide legal assistance to serve the vast unsatisfied legal needs of Americans of lower and moderate incomes.
I would also say there is a constant challenge for lawyers to improve their efficiency in the way they deliver services to clients. We are a custom-made profession and this causes the cost of doing business to be great. We need to find ways of delivering our services in a manner that our clients can afford.
The Affiliate: Those are lofty ideals we hope everyone can aspire to, but Affiliate readers, besides being members of the profession, are involved in the day-to-day operation of their state and local bar associations. Have there been more mundane challenges that you have had to face as a bar executive?
Stein: Membership has been probably the biggest challenge. Like every group, the ABA was encountering a loss of membership in the early nineties. Americans are joining groups less now than they traditionally have. So we identified membership as our major issue and developed a plan to increase membership. I am delighted that we stopped the decline this year for the first time in about five years.
The Affiliate: Was there anything in particular that you did to stem the tide?
Stein: We are attempting to raise the quality of the service we offer to our members. We are rolling out an 800 number so there is one number for lawyers to call us from any place in the United States. We have more than doubled the size of our service center representatives to answer the phone calls and provide the information lawyers seek. We're trying to make the Association relevant to all 382,000 members and not just the 10,000 or so that are most active. In addition, we have increased our use of telemarketing.
The Affiliate: With the success of this effort under your belt, you must have some exciting new initiatives planned for ushering lawyers into the twenty-first century.
Stein: One such initiative is our new communications plan. We plan to communicate with the public more effectively on behalf of American lawyers about what it is they do and the importance of the rule of law. We don't think we can change attitudes toward our profession overnight, but over time we can develop greater public understanding of the legal profession and what lawyers do, if we stay the course. As part of this effort, we have developed a media fact book that provides information about the justice system, and with private sponsorship, we are also beginning to use radio more effectively to provide legal news to the public and to public influence makers.
We also plan to communicate more effectively with lawyers. We will soon begin direct satellite transmission of CLE programming to lawyers' offices. We then plan to begin a legal news program that lawyers can tune into every morning to learn about the major cases that are being decided in the country that day, what major pieces of legislation will be acted on by Congress, and other developments in the law. Within a short time, we hope to use this satellite system for remote registration at our seminars through pay-per-view TV. That way, in addition to the 15,000 lawyers who come to our Annual Meetings, another 200,000 can participate via satellite.
The Affiliate: Technology is certainly transforming everything we do. Has it been a challenge for the ABA?
Stein: A third area of challenge is technology enhancement. The ABA had let itself get behind the curve in technology, so we currently have a catch-up project, called Project 2000, to improve our telecommunications and computer systems. In the past two years we converted our main frame system to a PC-based local area network which gives us many opportunities for interacting with our members that we didn't have before.
The Affiliate: Does the ABA have a presence on the Internet?
Stein: Yes, we have a website. It receives many hits, or visits, each day. It has received a number of awards for the quality of the information and presentation. We would like it to be the gateway for all inquiries relating to law. So, we're developing it in a way to provide much information about the ABA as well as links to other legal directories and services that are available on the Internet. We hope this will be the first stop that everyone makes when they have a legal question.
The Affiliate: With so many exciting things going on, what was the biggest challenge in getting things moving?
Stein: First, to build a leadership team for the Association, and I am thrilled with the people we have in place now. We added two senior level managers including an Associate Director for Communications, Sarina Butler, and an Associate Director of Administration, Elaine Weiss. We also added some very strong people as department heads in our continuing legal education division, our marketing research division, our publishing area, our information systems department, and our fundraising area. So I feel, number one, that we've assembled a very strong leadership team to manage the Association, along with the senior managers who continue from a previous time.
The Affiliate: Leadership is something our readers can relate to, but were other management initiatives called for?
Stein: A second challenge was to develop a planning process so that there would be consistency in our budget decisions over time. We've implemented a three-year planning process three years because members of our Board of Governors have three-year terms. I was told when I came that one of the ABA's problems was that it was lurching from side to side each year and didn't have continuity of direction. Our planning process has helped correct that. The planning process this year resulted in a reallocation of almost $3 million from existing programs to new initiatives.
The Affiliate: Was your appointment as executive director part of these changes in the ABA?
Stein: In the early nineties, the ABA went through a re-examination of its operation and management structure. A consulting firm came in and worked on the problem for a couple of years and redefined the executive director's position somewhat. Then the Association began a national search, and I was eventually appointed to the position.
The Affiliate: How was the position of executive director redefined?
Stein: Well, it had always been that of chief operating officer, but I think the principal change was giving the executive director complete responsibility for staff hiring, termination, and compensation, and this relates not only to direct Association staff but to staff of all Association entities, including sections and divisions. There was a resolution by the Board of Governors that management be left to the executive director to implement and policy be developed by the House of Delegates and Board of Governors.
The Affiliate: What have you found to be the most enjoyable part of your job?
Stein: First and foremost, I have learned of the incredible number of great programs the ABA has to offer. I am so proud of this organization and all of the good work it does. There are thousands of programs that make the justice system work better and that serve the public and I am proud to be associated with them.
The Affiliate: What are some of these other programs?
Stein: We have programs throughout the world for assisting fragile democracies develop the rule of law. In twenty-two countries in central and eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union we have volunteer lawyers of the ABA assisting in the training of judges, writing legislation, forming bar associations, and advising the legal community in those countries how the rule of law should work.
The Affiliate: What about the Young Lawyers Division?
Stein: In so many ways the YLD leads the way for the whole Association. They have done a wonderful job of reaching out to form coalitions with ethnic minority bar associations, and identifying innovative programs to improve access to justice. One YLD program that comes to mind is our disaster relief legal services, which every American lawyer should be proud of. In the past year the YLD provided leadership to establish emergency legal services in twenty different states and the Virgin Islands that had experienced disasters ranging from hurricanes to forest fires to floods. This program has made a real difference in people's lives.
The Affiliate: Is there anything else that you have particularly enjoyed about working with the ABA?
Stein: Just the satisfaction of working with 382,000 members. There are probably 382,000 opinions on how we should get there, but everyone is united in trying to carry out the mission of the ABA, to improve the administration of justice and improve the quality of services that American lawyers provide their clients. I really take a great deal of satisfaction in every meeting that I go to and in meeting volunteers who are giving of their time just because they are committed to this mission.
