Paying It Forward: Senior Advisors Section Offers Guidance and Coaching for SDCBA Lawyers

Hello, New Lawyers! I am the first Chair of the new Section of the SDCBA, the Senior Advisors Section. This new section is meant to provide help for all lawyers who need it – because practicing law is challenging, and being a licensed attorney is not an intuitive undertaking. Besides a nuanced set of ethical obligations that defy simple explanation, lawyers, even new ones, are expected to know how to deal with “clients,” who are human beings with legal problems, which means they are full of hidden anxieties and life-issues that their lawyers know nothing about. I have yet to meet a seasoned lawyer who disagrees when I say that practicing law would be much better and easier if we didn’t have clients.

The Senior Advisors Section is meant to be a place where Senior Advisors – which means a member of the SDCBA who has practiced law for more than 25 years and wants to be of help to other lawyers – can be requested to provide help to a SDCBA member reaching out for guidance. We are calling it “coaching,” because it is more than what has become known as “mentoring,” which is also extremely important to a new lawyer’s success. The senior lawyers who join this new Section will be found on our Listserv section, and we invite all lawyers to join our new Section, because our goal is that the Senior Advisor Listserv will be a place to find help.

Many of the Senior Advisors will not charge to provide help of a personalized nature, because they see helping other lawyers as their way of “paying it forward.” Sometimes a SDCBA lawyer needs help for which they will be charging their client, in which case the senior lawyer can be compensated for their help. What kind of help will be found in this new Section? You name it. Maybe a new lawyer needs help setting up a solo practice; maybe a new lawyer needs help understanding an area of the law that is unknown to them; maybe a new lawyer is dealing with a client that is out of control; maybe the new lawyer has made an error on a case that needs correcting. As sure as the sun rises and sets, problems can crop up in the practice of law that are completely unexpected – and new lawyers are especially vulnerable, for obvious reasons you all know so well.

The SDCBA Board of Directors approved our new Section, but it will only succeed if lawyers participate – and that means all of you. Some Senior Advisors who might be perfect for solving a new lawyer’s sticky problem will never know of your need for help if you don’t make yourself and your need known. That is what the Senior Advisors Listserv Section is for! Everyone who belongs to the Section can see posts for help, and Senior Advisors who think they might be able to provide it can respond privately to the poster. All discussions regarding who might be able to help, and what that help might entail, will be private and confidential between the poster and the responder.

This is something that is brand new; there is nothing like it anywhere in this country that we could find. We are creating it as we speak, and hope you will allow us to fashion it according to the needs of lawyers in this great bar association. The Mission of the Senior Advisors Section is to promote the success and fulfillment of all lawyers by providing a place to connect senior lawyers with each other and with lawyers who need help, support, or advice, a place to find solutions to problems facing senior lawyers, and a place to share the knowledge and talents of senior lawyers with the rest of the legal community.

Too many lawyers are sidelined because help seems not to be available, and we are out to change that unfortunate reality. Senior lawyers know how hard this profession is. Their longevity in the face of the known difficulties of this profession makes them particularly well-suited to coach other lawyers who may be having trouble navigating a specific situation. Senior lawyers know a thing or two, and many of them stand ready to be of service to lawyers facing a situation that needs a seasoned, experienced, helping hand.

There will be an Evening of Influence on October 15 at the Bar Center to debut this new platform and install the inaugural Executive Committee, which will include the Chair of the New Lawyers Division, Claudia Salinas. Claudia will be the liaison between your group and the Senior Advisors Section. The Chair of the NLD will always be invited to serve in that spot on our new Section’s Executive Committee. At that Evening of Influence, the Executive Committee of the Senior Advisors Section will explain how we hope to meet our Mission and what we hope to achieve. Claudia will make sure you all are able to register for this important debut. And, please know that our Executive Committee will want to hear your ideas for how your needs can best be met.

We hope to meet many of you on October 15!