Washington Lawyer - May/June 2024 - 34

H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H
SPECIAL SECTION
Revised Rules
Help Guide the
Bar's Future
By Jeremy Conrad
I
n January, more than 50 years after the D.C. Bar was
founded, the D.C. Court of Appeals approved the
first comprehensive amendments to the Rules
Governing the District of Columbia Bar, capping a
three-year effort by Bar leaders and staff to modernize
the organization's foundational documents to reflect
current procedures.
The historic change
was also made possible
by the Bar's
close partnership
with the D.C.
Courts. " This is one
of many ongoing
efforts that exemplify
the critically
important collaboration
between the
D.C. Courts and the
D.C. Bar, " says D.C.
Court of Appeals
Chief Judge Anna
Blackburne-Rigsby,
thanking Judge Roy
McLeese, chair of
the court's Rules
Committee, for his
thorough review of
the proposed
amendments.
MARK A. SALZBERG
Squire Patton Boggs
The D.C. Bar was established
by the
D.C. Court of Appeals
in 1972, and since then the Bar has modified the Rules, as well as its
Bylaws and Membership Manual, on an as-needed basis as the Bar grew
and developed over the years.
34 WASHINGTON LAWYER
* MAY/JUNE 2024
" As an official arm of the D.C. Court of Appeals, the Bar has always looked
to the court's Rules Governing the Bar as our constitution, providing the
fundamental guidance on how the Bar should operate, " says Geoffrey M.
Klineberg, who was president of the Bar when work on the Rules amendments
began in 2020.
" As the Bar looks forward to its next 50 years, it now has in place the
Rules and Bylaws that will allow it to thrive, " adds Klineberg, partner at
Kellogg, Hansen, Todd, Figel & Frederick, P.L.L.C.
At the center of the effort to bring greater clarity to the documents was
the D.C. Bar Governance Committee (formerly Regulations/Rules/Board
Procedures Committee), led at the time by Mark A. Salzberg, partner at
Squire Patton Boggs. " The primary challenge we faced was the scope of
the project, " says Salzberg, now treasurer-elect of the D.C. Bar.
" The committee wanted to ensure that the Rules, Bylaws, and Membership
Manual were internally consistent, that the topics were addressed
in the correct document, and that the governing documents were userfriendly
so that someone could navigate the documents and find the answers
to whatever questions they had. We also wanted to provide the
Bar with flexibility to address governance issues, " Salzberg says.
Washington Lawyer recently spoke with Salzberg about what this milestone
means for the Bar and its future.
How did the process of analyzing and revising the Rules begin?
We started our analysis by retaining Nancy Sylvester, who is a parliamentarian.
She really showed us what the best practices were in terms of
[where] topics should be addressed. When we first looked at these documents,
we found that a topic could be addressed in multiple locations in
various documents when it should be addressed in one place, and one
place alone. Nancy was instrumental in providing a parliamentarian's
perspective on how the documents should be organized.
Describe the important steps the committee took to ensure a
comprehensive review.
We first addressed the Bylaws and the Membership Manual, and finally
the Rules. Starting with the Bylaws, the committee [proceeded] section
by section. Nancy provided the parliamentarian's perspective on how
the Bylaws should be organized, particularly what matters should be
covered in the Bylaws and what matters should be addressed in the other
organizational documents.
We then tried to streamline the provisions. We modified some definitions
and made sure that [they] were consistent, both internally and among all
three documents. We also wanted to make the documents user-friendly
and readable so that anyone who had a question could easily find [the]
answer to [that] question.
We did this on an article-by-article and document-by-document basis,
and then [we] made a presentation of the revised Bylaws to the D.C. Bar
Board of Governors, which approved the [revisions] on April 12, 2022. On
March 6, 2023, the Board of Governors requested that the Court of Appeals
consider and approve the amendments to the Rules. The amendments
were adopted by the court on January 10, 2024.
The process took a lot of time and was very involved. No one on the
committee was an expert in parliamentarian matters apart from our outside
expert and, again, I can't stress enough how important she was to
our process.
Squire Patton Boggs
Washington Lawyer - May/June 2024

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