Washington Lawyer - January/February 2022 - 6

FROM OUR PRESIDENT
A Bar of Gold
By Chad Sarchio
I
f it is, in fact, better to be lucky
than good, then I may be one of
the best presidents in the history
of our Bar as I have the distinct
privilege of presiding over our
golden anniversary. This year marks
50 tremendous years of the D.C.
Bar as we know and love it. I could
hardly ask for luckier circumstances
in which to help lead it forward.
Proper celebration of this milestone requires
consideration of many key people, challenges,
programs, and moments, which is to say it
requires some thoughtful reflection upon our
past. With such a rich history to mine, we didn't
know where to start in discerning a single,
unifying celebratory theme. Accordingly, we
decided to explore a different theme every two
months, with programs and messaging contributing
to the retrospective. Hopefully, anticipation
of those themes will keep you coming
back to Washington Lawyer.
In this issue we examine the paired notions
of competence and integrity. I suppose our
profession has seen its share of prodigiously
competent lawyers who lacked a moral or
ethical compass. Conversely, there surely have
been attorneys who have practiced law with
laudable integrity and good intentions who
nevertheless invested inadequately in their
own legal knowledge and skill, perhaps giving
short shrift to the thoroughness and preparation
reasonably necessary to represent their
clients well. While such lawyers have harmed
our legal system, litigants, and the cause of
justice - and whetted the public's appetite for
renewed quotation of Shakespeare's famous
line about killing all the lawyers - most of our
professional peers seek to get things right. That
is, lawyers generally strive hard both to be right
in a legal sense and to go about their business
in reasonable, fair, decent ways.
If your skeptical legal mind, or even a touch of
cynicism, tells you otherwise, take a moment to
think back on the many lawyers you have practiced
with and practiced against. I'd wager that
you can recall just a few " clunkers " distinctly
and that your memory teems with images and
stories of all the wonderful colleagues you've
had.
Also, ponder how small our Bar's disciplinary
section is in this publication considering a
membership roll that now numbers north of
110,000 - even while acknowledging that not
every incompetent or unscrupulous lawyer will
be identified. And stop and consider the many
hours of formal CLE courses, informal on-thejob
training, and other professional development
opportunities to which you and your
peers have dedicated yourselves in earnest.
So, it seems to me an indisputable fact: In
general, our profession and our professionals
take competence and integrity to heart at turn
after career turn. We try to do well, we try to
do good, and we try to do right.
Why belabor these points? Because it strikes
me that our Bar sits at the crossroads of the
twin imperatives of competence and integrity.
After all, the Bar's core purpose is to enhance
access to justice, improve the legal system, and
empower lawyers to achieve excellence.
How does it pursue these objectives? By
educating our members at the outset of their
careers through critical ethics training like
the Mandatory Course on the D.C. Rules of
Professional Conduct and District of Columbia
Practice. By helping to maintain high standards
for obtaining a license to practice law in the
District. By providing top-quality legal
6 WASHINGTON LAWYER * JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2022
education courses and related programming in
ways and formats designed to reach lawyers in
every practice setting, at all points along their
career arcs, and from diverse professional and
personal backgrounds. And by leading the
nation in the ways a bar can train, deploy, coordinate,
and integrate lawyers of all stripes to
provide effective, abundant pro bono or low
bono legal assistance to the most vulnerable
members of our community.
Evidence that these pursuits have proven
successful abounds within this issue. Check in
with D.C. legal legends and former Bar presidents
Jack Keeney and Myles Lynk for a conversation
about legal ethics and how the field
has evolved since Keeney oversaw a Rules of
Professional Conduct overhaul 15 years ago.
Ponder your own legal journey while reviewing
an article about legal career coaches, and
consider whether one might help you. Peruse
a piece in which contract lawyers, solo attorneys,
and small firm practitioners discuss their
learning curves in starting their own practices
or going solo. And read the story of the Bar's
1972 founding and the challenges it faced
during its infancy as told by three members of
its inaugural Board of Governors, along with its
first woman president.
The Bar exists to foster and maintain the high -
est ideals of integrity, learning, and competence
in public service, and the highest
standards of conduct. In our 50th year, we
rededicate ourselves to these ideals and standards
and to nurturing our members' practice
excellence in service to an ever-improving legal
system. What a half-century it has been, and
what a second act it will be.
Connect with Chad at csarchio@dcbar.org.
Patrice Gilbert Photography
Washington Lawyer - January/February 2022

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Washington Lawyer - January/February 2022
