Bar Leadership in Action: Wellness, Technology, and the Rule of Law

Episode Notes

Transcript

John Mudd:

When we talk about the rule of law, big picture, a lot of people don’t understand what is that, but when you bring it down to some other values in that more understandable level, then I think we can move forward in a better way. So I would encourage my fellow executive directors to focus on that and bar presidents focus on explaining. Lawyers are great teachers to teach a jury, go out and teach.

Patrick Palace:

Welcome to the next episode of Leading the Bar, brought to you by the National Conference of Bar Presidents. I’m your co-host Patrick Palace, the president of the National Conference of Bar Presidents, and I’m joined by Amanda Arriaga, the past president of the Austin Bar Association and a member of the NCBP Executive Council. Welcome.

Amanda Arriaga:

Thanks for having me.

Patrick Palace:

The National Conference of Bar Presidents was founded in 1950 to provide information and training to state and local bar associations across the country. Our mission is simple to empower, connect, and inspire bar leaders and the organizations they serve. So today we’re excited to bring you a conversation about three dynamic bar leaders from across the nation on issues that are front and center for bar leaders. Today. Joining us are Jonathan Ditz, the immediate press president of the main bar, John Mudd, the executive director of Montana Bar, and KKevin Plachy who’s the director of advancement at the Washington State Bar. And of course, I’m thrilled to have my co-host the amazing Amanda Arriaga with us for this discussion. Amanda, thank you for joining me today. How are you?

Amanda Arriaga:

I’m good. I’m jealous that I couldn’t be there in person for your discussion. Y’all talked about topics like wellness, the rule of law, the oath, the lawyers take ai, things that impact every lawyer and that are relevant to us today.

Patrick Palace:

Yeah, it was a fun episode to make and one of the reasons was that we taped this podcast live from the exhibit hall at Clio Con in Boston, Massachusetts, where everyone was buzzing about fresh technology and all the new AI developments. So guess what we’re going to talk about today?

Amanda Arriaga:

Well, you do love ai, but it is an important topic that impacts all of us, whether we want it to or not.

Patrick Palace:

No, it’s true. And this discussion was fun because it was with Kevin Platy who was really integral in the Washington state by putting together this task force report all about this. We’ve talked about it at the conference, at the National Conference of Bar Presidents mid-year. This is a report that I think is going to reshape how bars think about technology, but we also had a conversation to one of your favorite topics, wellness.

Amanda Arriaga:

That is my favorite. People get so stressed out being lawyers that you have to figure out a way to calm yourself because those lawyers who walk around unhappy just make me sad. So if you want to be a lawyer and you want to help people, then also figure out how to center yourself so that you can do that and be healthy at the same time.

Patrick Palace:

Yeah. So here we go. The Guide to Happiness and Health, it’s coming up. And then last but not least, we dug into the lawyer’s Oath and why it’s critical to the independence of the profession. And I know you’re a fan of John Mudd from Montana. I loved his conversation.

Amanda Arriaga:

Absolutely. And as lawyers, we do take an oath. We’re supposed to protect the law. We’re supposed to protect people we serve, and we should be talking about that more often.

Patrick Palace:

Yeah, I think this is a fun podcast. I’m glad you’re here with me. Let’s get this done. Here we go. Hello, and welcome to On the Road with the Legal Talk Network. I’m Patrick Palace, the president of the National Conference of Bar Presidents, and we’re recording live from the exhibitor floor at Cleo’s, Clio Khan 2025 in Boston, Massachusetts. I’m happy to tell you that we have three amazing bar leaders joining me today. We have Jonathan Ditz and John Mudd and Kevin pci. Jonathan is immediate past president of the main bar and he really is an expert on wellness and we’re going to drill down a bit on wellness today. I also have Jonathan M. Dunitz, who’s executive director of Montana Bar and also the general counsel. And John, we’re glad to have you here. And last but certainly not least is Kevin Plachy who is the director of Advancement at the Washington State Bar Association, who is intimately involved in building out the Washington State Bar task force on technology.

Gentlemen, welcome and thank you all for taking time out of this rather busy conference the last two days to be here with me today. Let me start here. There’s a lot going on in the legal space these days and bar leaders have all the work that they could possibly want. And my job, I think today, and I’m going to ask you to join me in this to make their lives a little easier, and let’s start here. Jonathan, you’ve done a lot with the state bar in Maine focusing on wellness. And I’m going to say that presumes, as I think many of us know that the law professions a stressful place, our numbers of people who are at risk for alcoholism, those with the depression, mental health conditions. I mean, there’s a laundry list of studies that have gone on to show that this is a real problem, but there’s real solutions. Tell me what some of the things that you are doing and have been doing in the main bar to help address wellness. And let me just do it the other way around for happy lawyers with well-balanced lives who are living and succeeding as leaders.

Jonathan M. Dunitz:

Well, one of the things that we started to do when I was president is to have folks who suffer from depression, substance use issues, talk about their experiences to try to de-stigmatize those issues. Because part of the problem with folks getting help is that they’re afraid that it would be their end of their legal career. And just actually earlier today I was doing a webinar with one of the superior court judges from Maine talking about his experience with alcoholism. And I was talking about my experience with depression and talking about the fact that we have both currently live successful happy lives as lawyers because we got the help that we needed. We had support from our firms for him, support from the bench and bar. One of the key things is to try to de-stigmatize it and to have folks recognize that this is just like any other disease.

If I had diabetes, I would take my insulin, I would measure where things are. As somebody who suffers from depression, I have to take my antidepressants. I have to practice my cognitive behavioral therapy to remind myself that just because something went bad, the whole world isn’t going to unravel. And the other thing that we talked about is that law can be kind of all encompassing and really take you away from the things that make you happy. And so if you want to be a happy lawyer, you have to bring yourself back to those places. For me, it’s music, it’s photography, it’s cooking, and I lost those things when I was depressed. I lost those things. And when somebody asked me what makes me happy? And I started thinking about those and started getting back into those, those are the things that really helped a lot.

And so I think it’s trying to just remember that that balance is important. I think law firms have to make sure that they support their lawyers, they have to support their staff. And that’s one thing that I’ve come to really realize also is it’s not just lawyers When we’re having a bad day, our staff’s having a bad day and probably our staff is also having issues. So it’s really trying to make sure folks have that work-life balance. And it’s a numbers business. And so there are some studies out there. This is something I tried to convey is if you’re not going to do it for the human factor, there are studies out there that suggest that mental health and substance use and stress and all the things that go with go along with the practice law costs firms $14,000 per person per year. So if you don’t want to do it for humanity, which you should, you’re going to help your firm’s bottom line by having happy lawyers.

Patrick Palace:

Let me drive this into two different categories, and one is let’s say theBar side of this lawyer assistance programs way that people can get help. And the other side of this you started to mention it was about firms, and I’m going to just call that the culture side. Firms can have cultures of health, wellness, trust, collaboration on things. Right? Let’s talk about that trust. Let’s talk about the collaboration culture side first. What recommendations do you have for firms that are trying to build a culture of health and wellness?

Jonathan M. Dunitz:

Well, I think it’s really important that they recognize the difference between talk and the talk and walk in the walk. A lot of firms have wellbeing committees that talk about eating correctly, getting exercise, those sorts of things. While they don’t necessarily focus on the day-to-day stresses of being a lawyer. There’ve actually in the last year or so, there’ve been a few articles about bullying and the workplace at law firms. And so I think the collaboration piece is important and you really need to know how your lawyers are interacted with each other, with the staff and make sure that you take care of those things pretty quickly. I mean, I’ve seen a lot of instances where it’s all collaboration and teamwork on the surface, but if you dig down a little bit, there’s some friction there. There’s miscommunications. Sometimes saying it’s a miscommunication is generous, but you need to really dig deep and make sure you’re really focused on the wellbeing of your attorneys and not just kind of glossing over it with saying, okay, well we have a wellness committee that had a walk-a-thon last week or that encouraged people to hydrate, that’s great, but if you go back to your office with your big gloss of water and you’ve got an obnoxious email from somebody, your health is going to suffer.

And so I think it’s just really important that you really dig down and make sure that you are concerned with the wellbeing. How you message things hates billable hours. Except for some attorneys who don’t have billable hours, but everybody hates having to do their billable hours. It’s always a focus of we got to get that money in the door. What if it was, look, you have to do it. If you wait till the end of the month, you’re going to stress yourself out. You are going to have unnecessary stress. So make the messaging about how entering it every day helps you, helps your wellbeing.

Patrick Palace:

And turning the hat now to being a bar president as you have been and now a bar leader with the executive council for the National Conference of bar presidents, what kind of advice do you have to bar presidents who are trying to set both an example and to be assistive in lawyer assistance programs and bringing their members along? What kind of message do you have to bar leaders? What can they do to help further this wellness in our profession?

Jonathan M. Dunitz:

Well, there’s two issues there. One is making sure you stay healthy. There’s a lot going on when you’re theBar president and things happen. Unexpected events happen in your personal life, so just make sure you’re taking care of yourself. But then the other issue, the other thing to do is again, try to find programs that will destigmatize the mental health and substance misuse issues. There’s a couple of things that we did. One was we started a column where a bar member, an attorney or a judge wrote about their experience just so people could see that there were attorneys who had setbacks, who suffered from depression. I do judge who suffered from alcoholism.

Patrick Palace:

So this is just telling stories, get the stories

Jonathan M. Dunitz:

Out there so

Patrick Palace:

People can relate.

Jonathan M. Dunitz:

Getting the stories out there so that not only can you relate, but you can understand that it’s not the end of your career.

John Mudd:

You’re

Jonathan M. Dunitz:

Not alone. When I didn’t get help for years because I was afraid it was the end of my career until I had no choice but to, I’ve talked about this pretty openly in May now, I was hospitalized because I wouldn’t get the help. Once that happened and I started getting the help and when I got back to my firm, they supported me, they made sure I was still a valuable member. It was a huge difference. And so I think it’s really important to get those stories out there so people know it’s not the end of their career. The other thing we did is we started a wellness track at our summer bar meeting where we talked about, we basically, I will may sue me for infringement, but we stole I will’s five days for the wellbeing week in law. We stole their five themes and we had on that wellness track, we had something for each one of those days, or not each one of those days, but we had something for each subject matter

John Mudd:

To

Jonathan M. Dunitz:

Talk about wellbeing. It was so popular that in our reviews people said, I will come to the summer bar meeting every year if you do a wellbeing track. So that’s the other thing that I thought was really telling is our members wanted it. The feedback I got from our wellbeing programs was phenomenal. And so people know it’s out there and they really want you to try to do something. So just start talking about it, get it out there and I think your members will follow.

Patrick Palace:

Jonathan, I love the story and I love the blueprint. I think that’s a great takeaway for our leaders. Let me turn the page a minute. So here we are at CLE Con and we just heard really a very engaging keynote by Jack Newton, the CEO, about the way technology and AI is changing the practice of law. And not only changing it now, but what’s right down the road, what’s right in front of us. The amazing advancement are going on and it was, I dunno how you all felt, but it was eyeopening to me to see how fast things are moving. These aren’t talking points, these are things that are coming into play. Kevin Plachye, you’ve been working very closely with the Washington’s state bar. The state bar has finished both creating, working through a task force on technology and ai and you’ve been at the center of this. Tell us a little bit about this task force and what its purpose was and then we’re going to talk about what you’ve done.

Kevin Plachy:

Yes, absolutely. So in 2024, our board of governors received feedback from our members. They also just noticed that things were happening in the profession with technology that prompted them to create an organizational priority around technology. And so part of the advancing that priority was to establish a legal technology task force. And so they worked diligently with our department and some internal staff to create a charter for the technology task force that was slated to last for 15 months. The charge was for the task force to examine the opportunities and threats posed by legal technology within Washington for legal professionals and to help the board understand the Washington State Bar Association’s role vis-a-vis regulation, consumer protection and support to legal professionals.

Patrick Palace:

I mean, this is a big umbrella. This is a big as that was out there. And one of the first things you went out and did was pushed a survey out to the membership just to find out what’s the current state of technology. Tell me a little bit about some of the high points of that survey because for all the states who don’t have the money or the time or don’t know those answers, what did we learn?

Kevin Plachy:

Yes, we learned a lot. And I will preface this by saying we actually worked with a national survey company, so it’s a very statistically valid survey that we got back. And what we did is polled our members and surveyed our members on their usage of technology and their understanding of technology because we wanted to come from a place of understanding where our members were in terms of how they interact with technology. And what we learned was very interesting, particularly around AI usage. We learned that different categories of legal professionals are either further behind or ahead of the curve. So we learned that about 22% of solo and small firm practitioners have adopted AI usage. It’s fairly low among that group, but among practitioners in larger firms and particularly in corporate, in-house council settings, about over 70% have adopted AI technology. So there’s a lot of disparity within our membership about AI usage. The primary reasons we learned that those who don’t use AI are not using it is because of concerns about ethical violations. And interestingly enough, 70% of our members thought that the rules of professional conduct within Washington didn’t adequately cover ai. So it was great information to find out and it really set the foundation for the task force’s work as they moved forward. So we did that survey at the very beginning of the origination of the task.

Patrick Palace:

Yeah, one of the parts that when I was reading through the survey that I thought was very interesting, and I really do believe that this taskforce report is a blueprint for bars across the country. There’s no reason to recreate the wheel. It’s been done. And I think the survey is fairly representative of across the country. But one of the things that I thought was interesting was that a majority of members of theBar wanted CLE credits to be mandatory for learning about technology and ai. They’re not saying we’d like to have a primer like saying, please make it a requirement.

Kevin Plachy:

Yes. And we were very surprised by that result. Actually it was over 70% of our members said they would be in favor of the MCLE requirement requiring CLE education in the area of technology.

Patrick Palace:

So fast forwarding 15 months, 18 months of this task force. And I have to say it was a brilliant group of people from all walks of legal life and some of the best minds that we had to offer and put together a very long and very detailed report, but a very user-friendly report that came up with I think very practical recommendations. And I’m wondering if you can’t, I mean we can’t touch on all of them, but maybe some of the highlights that you think might be useful for theBar presidents and other bars to take from.

Kevin Plachy:

Yeah, I’m happy to summarize the main key findings. So in the report, the task force identified 10 key findings. And what they did across the 15 months that they studied this subject is they looked at how can theBar help? How can the Washington State Bar Association help, but how are other entities related to the legal profession implicated in this? So the recommendations not only center around what can the Washington State Bar Association do to help improve technology and technological competence among the profession, but how does this play out in other entities within the profession? And so the key findings are really around what can Wiba do in the areas of probably more around educating our members in the competence of legal technology in cybersecurity. And another interesting thing, Patrick, in the survey that we found out is a very high percentage of our members thought they had good cybersecurity protocols, but when we ask questions beyond that such as what types of cybersecurity protocols do you actually use, we learned that what they thought wasn’t really playing out in the answer. So there’s some gaps in what our members think they have covered with cybersecurity versus what is actually being covered when they answer

Patrick Palace:

The question. Something that really is an

Kevin Plachy:

Important thing today,

Patrick Palace:

It’s really important.

Kevin Plachy:

Yeah, cybersecurity was a part of it. That’s the kind of stuff, what can Wiba do to bring resources to our members to help them better accept and adopt technology as important? And really the first key finding we identified in the report was the role of legal practitioners themselves because the way technology is transforming the legal profession, now, whether you use AI or not, it is going to impact you and your practice. And the real message in the report is that AI is not likely to replace lawyers, but what it will do is change the way lawyering is done. And so it will be incumbent on practitioners to understand all of this because it is a part of how we will be working as lawyers. And it is now, I was going to say in the future, but it’s not the future anymore. Now.

Patrick Palace:

I love that one of the pieces of the task force focus was understanding that we’re not taking a snapshot and saying, here you go, but that this is a continuum that’s going to be changing rapidly in the coming months and years. And the task force addressed ways on which to continue to stay on top and help practitioners talk about that for a bit.

Kevin Plachy:

Well, that gets into sort of the other entity part of what I was discussing. One way to keep this going and evergreening it is to instill it in institutionalized technology, the importance of technology in law schools. That is one of the key findings. The other one is through the courts. And so we have several recommendations in the report around increasing competence around technology in the courts. In Washington specifically, there’s a recommendation around possibly standardizing the data infrastructure for courts. And then another recommendation is to create a Washington Supreme Court board that would sort of oversee be charged with overseeing the future landscape and change of the technological landscape. So it’s interesting because it sort of started out as what can wispa do, but as the task force did their work, it became very clear, this goes way beyond the Washington State bars.

Patrick Palace:

What can law schools do? What can the Supreme Court

Kevin Plachy:

Do? What can the courts do? What can the legislature do in terms of consumer protection around these

Patrick Palace:

Things? Another piece of this was I thought there was really a great discussion and smart ideas about how to partner with tech companies and partner with theBar so that it’s easier to vet products, to share products, to push out things that work and to really be a resource. Talk about how that’s playing out.

Kevin Plachy:

So that embodies two or three of the recommendations in the report, and that is strictly stuff that Wispa can do. The Washington State Bar using the platform that we have is to help members gain access to technology. So part of the recommendations is to create a technology hub, for instance, within theBar that will provide not only resources and education around technology, but connect our members with vendors that are really offering legally specific technology solutions. And as we learned here, AI is very important, but it’s also important that it’s developed with an eye towards legal professionals because the generic AI is not going to be adequate given the special requirements, particularly the ethical requirements and those kinds of things that are placed on attorneys.

Patrick Palace:

So thinking about bar presidents who are coming into their position or people who are already bar presidents and they’re saying, we really need to get our hands around our arms around this AI and technology. How can I improve? What can I do? Maybe I need a task force. You’ve done it. What advice do you have to them to avoid recreating in the wheel here?

Kevin Plachy:

Well, I think one thing is probably read the report we’ve put out and it’s available on our website. It’s at www.wba.org. And you can also, there’s a page, a legal technology task force page that has our charter, a bunch of information that will help them get going on it. And certainly feel free to reach out to any of us, to me or others at the Washington State Bar Association, and we would be very happy to share information and we have information beyond what’s on the website that we could share with other bars in terms of how to put this together and get it going.

Patrick Palace:

And Kevin, if you would repeat the website URL again and also maybe an email people can

Kevin Plachy:

Reach out. Yes, it’s www.wba.org and just feel free to reach out to me. And my email is Kevin, K-E-V-I-N [email protected].

Patrick Palace:

That’s perfect. I love that. And I couldn’t encourage you more of our leaders by our presidents, people who are involved in legal space and ai. This is a great current task force report that really brings everybody up to speed right now. And I hope that it is one of those pieces that the shoulders you can stand on as you continue to develop this for your bar and take these tools and move them forward. John Mudd, lemme turn this conversation to you. You’re such an interesting person to have on as an director and as a general counsel for your bar. You’re a man who does all of the things for this really tight knit bar with such a great culture. I have to just tell people who are listening. I had the pleasure of addressing the Montana bar at their state conference, and one of the takeaways I had was how close this bar is. This is a bar of culture, of being together, of working together no matter what your differences are. This is a bar that believes in professionalism and its culture. And I guess I know how you created it just happened over time, but how do you maintain that as an executive director to have that kind of culture?

John Mudd:

First of all, thanks for having me Patrick, and thanks for coming. I am lucky in that we are really basically a large high school. We have 3,200 lawyers in state and everybody knows everybody else. And so that’s part of it is I talked to lawyers who practice in California or other places. You may never see the same lawyer twice in your career unless you practice in a very specific area. And so in Montana, you’re going to see that same lawyer a lot. And so civics civility rather matters. And so I think that that’s a big part of it is that people know each other and you give each other the benefit of the doubt and you’re going to run across each other throughout your career and you’re going to know the judges personally because you probably went to law school with some of them. So I think it creates a different dynamic and we feel that we’re very lucky to have that and getting together like we do at the annual meeting and so forth, we’re able to really pull a lot of people together over the course of the year with the number of CLEs that we do.

And so that’s part of it. Some of it is just the environment and then some of it is just people really being remaining committed to not losing that because it’s a little bit of the old circuit writing kind of thing, people flying to depositions together out of state and who are opposing counsel on the case, and we pride ourselves in that culture.

Patrick Palace:

One of the challenges I think most bar leaders have is their relationships with those they have to work with. What’s their relationship with their Supreme Court? What’s the relationship with their legislature? What’s relationship with their governor? Right? And some states are lucky that everybody’s on the same page in Washington. We have a great relationship with the legislature and our Supreme Court and our governor works very nicely with our Board of Governors, but not every state is so lucky, and I want to talk to you about that very thing. I was very impressed at your conference. I sat down at one of the dinners you had, and I had a former dean of your law school sitting next to a Supreme Court justice, and then you had your lieutenant governor and they’re there at theBar conference all working together and talking. And I thought, this is really amazing, this kind of synergy, but not everybody agrees, and yet they’re all there. Tell me about how you work with your legislature and how you work with your Supreme Court to build the opportunity that would all come to one place, even if they don’t agree on things.

John Mudd:

That’s a good question, and we live in really interesting times. I think that’s probably the elephant in the room here in some ways is that there’s so much polarization and you have to find ways to sort of break that down. I was out for a run this morning and I was thinking about John Adams and being here in Boston and David McCullough’s wonderful book and for a couple reasons. One is I can’t imagine him sitting down with an oil lamp and writing out his pleadings as a new lawyer. And here we are at Con talking about AI and how much has changed over 250 years, but also him representing the British soldiers in the Boston massacre and sort of those enduring principles. And I think that relates to the question in my mind at least in terms of we have to focus on common principles and some of those common principles are the independence of the legal profession,

The independence of lawyers to represent who they choose to represent and to sometimes represent people who are not popular and the courts need to be fair and impartial and make speedy decisions. Those are sort of the things that I think we can learn to agree on and we can find people on different sides of the current political divide who coalesce around those. I would say the way we’ve been able to try to transcend polarization is to focus on fundamental values. And I think we’ve been largely successful. We’ve had a very active legislative agenda for the last three sessions in particular where we had our legislature that was fighting with our Supreme Court. They were subpoenaing Supreme Court records and so forth and so on. And we had a little bit of a constitutional crisis, but we came through it. And I think what you saw is I think, I hope being a little bit on the tail end of that and sort of remaining focused on the things that do unite us rather than the things that divide us. And I think there’s much more that we have in common than those things that divide us, and we just have to kind of keep, as bar leaders keep focused on those things because there’s people of goodwill on both sides of these debates or the multiple sides of these debates who hold those same truths and believe in them.

Patrick Palace:

I’ve read through your Montana’s preamble to your rules professional conduct.

John Mudd:

Yes.

Patrick Palace:

And the preamble looks a lot like a lot of other bars across the country, very much. I mean, we talk about protecting the rule of law, the independence of the judiciary, the independence of the profession, a lot of the same things that come up that are basic duties of lawyers and their oath to protect the constitution, both state and federal. But one of the things I thought was so fascinating, Montana is known for being fiercely independent, right? You think about independence, it’s Montana, it’s

John Mudd:

In our DNA,

Patrick Palace:

It is in your DNA and in your rules of professional conduct, you not only talk about the independence, the importance of the independence of the profession, but it goes on to say, and I wish I could quote it, but I’m close. I’m paraphrasing that the importance is to protect against the tyranny of the government, that lawyers see themselves as really critical to be independent, to protect against overreach of the government. You’re the general counsel for theBar. Tell me how these words come into play in the practice of law and maybe the vision of theBar.

John Mudd:

Well, our preamble has a lot of different elements to it, and that’s I think maybe the most important one is there’s language in there about lawyers should not be dependent upon the branches of government that they are frequently called on to challenge on behalf of their clients for their right to practice. That if you are having to your practice and your license is controlled by the governor or the legislature when often, whether it’s a Second Amendment case about gun rights or it’s a First Amendment case about free expression of religion, you shouldn’t have to be afraid that your license is going to be taken away if you take on the government. Again, that kind of goes back to these fundamental principles. I stress that in both, in talking to law students and in sometimes giving a speech to new admits to theBar at their swearing in ceremony, that’s really such an important piece of that, and it’s imbued through the rules in other places.

But that preamble really does set forth that independence of the profession in really very direct terms as you allude to. And again, I think that’s something that we all sort of take for granted sometimes when we get into practice. There is so much changing around us as we see here at this conference. And I was a solo practitioner and I’ve worked in a variety of settings, but as a solo, we’re focused on trying to get your bills out, trying to represent your clients, trying to do good work, and it’s pretty easy to lose sight of those other things that oath to the constitution of both the state of Montana and the United States Constitution. That obligation to uphold the rules of conduct and to really go back and focus on basic principles from time to time, I think is really important for us as lawyers. And so when I go out and speak or teach on ethics, it’s something that I like to stress because theBar has an important role in that regard. You are not going to go to a CLE by a for-profit CLE provider who is going to focus on water law or land use planning or so forth and so on. They’re unlikely to probably focus on the preambles of the rules of professional conduct. But we need to do that as bar leaders. We need to remind ourselves and our members that these are fundamental principles and we can’t lose sight of them. Just as it’s important to understand ai, which it’s terribly important to, it’s also important to go back to those first principles.

Patrick Palace:

I love this, and it’s so appropriate because we’re here in Boston at the home of Revolutionary times, the place of some money of our forefathers, and you mentioned John Adams. I recently learned that looking up some research on our oath of oath to the Protect the Constitution. And it turns out that before we became the United States, our oath was to a monarch. It was right to the king.

And as soon as we became independent and we started having constitutions, and John Adams wrote the first Constitutions for Virginia, we had something to swear to protect. And so the oath became not an oath to a monarch or to a king, but rather an oath to a constitution. And that was 1777 in Virginia. And here we’ve had this proud tradition for 200 years since then. And it’s worth, and I appreciate you said that it’s worth a reminder that this is a solemn oath that lawyers have had to always put the Constitution first ahead of other challenges, populous politics, the coming and going of what happens in this country that our oath remains solid and has for all of those years.

John Mudd:

Well, in our oath in Montana is the three part oath. It’s to the constitution of the United States, the constitution of the state of Montana, and to the rules of professional conduct. And so there’s three parts of that. You say, well, I have to zealously represent my client. We got rid of the word zealously in Montana

Patrick Palace:

Because

John Mudd:

It was being misused by people to say, well, I was just zealously representing my client, but to do a good job on behalf of your client. But that’s in the rules of conduct. There’s these other pieces of that oath too to the constitutions that are just really, they need to remain central for us. And as we get ready to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence,

John Mudd:

What

John Mudd:

Greater opportunity for bar leaders to take a role in helping remind ourselves of that and of our oath? I think it’s really a good year for us to focus on those things.

Patrick Palace:

I feel like you were just reading my mind because the next question I wanted ask you is what kind of advice do you have for executive directors and for bar leaders right now across the country in this environment that we’re in for things like that, for discussions like that?

John Mudd:

Courage is not the absence of fear. I think that it’s a very challenging time, particularly for those of us who lead mandatory bars, which have their own set of challenges in terms of what we can say and what we can’t say.

And we have to be mindful of those in those constitutional protections for our members. But I think that doesn’t mean that you can’t talk about improving the quality of legal services to the people we serve. And that part of that is this greater understanding of what we do. And I think the other part of it that we can use as bar leaders and executive directors is to focus on the civics gap that we have. And we clearly have one that’s a source of a lot of the friction between our legislature and our courts, and theBar, frankly, I say to the legislators, look, I couldn’t fix a combine. I’m in Montana. We have a lot of ranchers and farmers who serve in the legislature, but that doesn’t mean I’m dumb. It means I’m just not aware of how to do it. And the same goes for understanding how lawyers function, how courts function.

It doesn’t mean that people who don’t understand that are not smart, it means that they haven’t been educated about it. And I think we have an obligation to the public we serve and to the government branches that we serve with to do some of that education and to make sure that people understand that judges are normal people and they are umpires. They call balls and strikes. They do their best. They’re going to miss some. You may not like what they always decide, but if we’re going to have an independent judiciary, then independence means not that I always win, but that I have a fair shot. And I think lawyers have an obligation to do that work. And again, I think this coming year is a great opportunity to do that, and I think it can help heal some of these divisions. When we go back and we talk to people, you talk to your local civic groups about what the rule of law is. It means your contract gets enforced. It means if somebody defrauds your business, you have an opportunity for redress.

John Mudd:

It’s

John Mudd:

Those kinds of things that when we talk about the rule of law, big picture, a lot of people don’t understand what is that, but when you bring it down to some other values and that more understandable level, then I think we can move forward in a better way. So I would encourage my fellow executive directors to focus on that, and bar presidents focus on explaining. Teach lawyers are great teachers to teach a jury, go out and teach.

Patrick Palace:

Those are such great words. I am so thankful for the way that you present this. I think it’s such a smart approach to this in these times. If people wanted to reach out, other executive directors or bar president want to reach out to you, how would they find you or get more information about how the Montana Bar is doing this?

John Mudd:

Absolutely. My email is J Mud, MU [email protected]. I’d be happy to talk with anybody about these issues. And there’s some things on our website under our legislative affairs portion of our website where you can actually look at some of the bills and so forth that we’ve had to deal with involving the profession. So those would be the two things, but happy to chat anytime.

Patrick Palace:

Well, thank you for doing that and sharing that, and I want to thank our guests so much. Thank you very much to you, John Mudd for your time. Thanks for having me and consideration. Thank you, Kevin Fci for being here and representing the State bar. I appreciate

Kevin Plachy:

You. Thank you for having me.

Patrick Palace:

And thank you Jonathan Dun, for being here and talking about a really heartfelt story about what’s happened to you and the importance of wellness. Thank you, Patrick. Thank you for joining this episode of Leading theBar. Lawyers Are Leaders, so subscribe to Leading theBar [email protected] to get the tools to empower lawyer leaders in every episode and learn more about the National Conference of our Presidents and how you can get [email protected].

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