"The long and winding road that leads to your door will never disappear. I've seen that road before. It always leads me her-lead me to you door.
"Many times I've been alone, and many times I've cried, anyway you'll never know-the many ways I've tried.
"But still they lead me back, to the long winding road. You left me waiting here a long, long time ago. Don't leave me standing here-lead me to your door (yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah)
"The Long and Winding Road," Paul McCartney, releaseed May 8, 1970.
Between 1964 and 1970, The Beatles were unquestionably the most popular and commercially successful rock-and-roll band in the world. Between my sixth-grade year and my senior year in high school in 1970, I watched The Beatles evolve from a local band from England to an international phenomenon. Most Beatles fans only remember the tremendous success the group had after their debut performance in New York City in February 1964. However, like most successful entities, The Beatles traveled a long and winding road from a start-up rock-and-roll band in Liverpool, England, to becoming the greatest rock-and-roll band ever.
From 1957 to August 1960, The Beatles performed mainly at a Liverpool entertainment venue known as the Cavern Club, playing more than 300 performances there. While it is fair to say The Beatles got their start in Liverpool, the band came of age when they performed extensively in Hamburg, Germany, between 1960 and 1962. During this period, The Beatles grew as a band. This period of professional growth transformed the group from scruffy amateurs to seasoned professionals.
By early 1963, The Beatles had achieved significant stature in the rock-and-roll community in England and Germany. By late 1963, The Beatles' music was making its way across the Atlantic Ocean to the United States. After their performance on "The Ed Sullivan Show" in February 1964, The Beatles solidified themselves as the pre-eminent rock-and-roll group in the world. The Beatles were not an overnight success, but rather the group's rise from being a good rock-and-roll band to being a great rock-and-roll band took years of hard work.
Similar to The Beatles, the OCBA is a success story that has evolved over a period of time. The OCBA was founded more than 80 years ago by a handful of young lawyers in their 30s. These young lawyers had a vision of establishing an organization that would work to better serve the legal profession and the public. Over the past 80 years, the OCBA has improved in many ways.
When I joined the OCBA in January 1978, the bar association had approximately 2,000 members. Today the OCBA is more than 3,000 members strong. In 1978, the bar association had two employees. Today the OCBA has 11 full-time employees. In 1978, the bar association had two small offices in the west wing of the Oakland County courthouse. Today our bar association has an outstanding facility on Telegraph Road that accommodates all sorts of different activities we need to perform as a bar association. Like The Beatles, the OCBA has gotten better with time.
At the June 2015 Annual Meeting of the OCBA, I asked those in attendance two important questions. One question was whether the attendees believed the OCBA is a good bar association. The response to this question was yes. A second question I posed to the attendees was whether our members wish to see the OCBA go from being a good bar association to being a great bar association over the next five years. The answer to this question was a resounding yes.
In order for our bar association to go from being good to being great, there are five tasks each of us as members need to perform over the next 12 months. Between July 2015 and July 2016, I am requesting that each member of the OCBA bring in one new member to our organization. New members bring energy and fresh ideas to the organization. We must have more members to be a viable bar association in the future. There are approximately 10,500 lawyers practicing law in Oakland County and roughly 30 percent of those are members of the OCBA. We need to do a better job in terms of growing membership.
A second task I am requesting of our members is to become a sustaining member of the OCBA. Becoming a sustaining member only requires an investment of an additional $100 with your annual dues. This extra contribution pays huge dividends to the OCBA. The sustaining member dues are used to upgrade our technology, which is becoming more and more important with each passing year for the bar association. With more updated technology we will have better ability to reach out and we will be able to do things that attract younger members to our bar association. An increase in the number of sustaining member dues will assist the OCBA in achieving this crucial goal.
A third task I am requesting each of you to perform over the next 12 months is to become an active member of one of our OCBA committees. We have 28 substantive law committees and seven special-purpose committees. Pick the committee you like the most, the one you find that benefits your practice the most, and get involved in its activities.
I want you to be a seminar speaker in your favorite OCBA committee, to write scholarly articles on behalf of this committee for LACHES, and to participate in the monthly meetings. Furthermore, I want you to consider becoming a vice-chairperson, and ultimately a chairperson, of this committee. Committees are the lifeblood of the OCBA and strong committees are the result of active member participation.
A fourth task with which I want OCBA members with more than 10 years' experience to become involved is the mentor/mentee program. This program takes the form of helping new lawyers draw upon the experience and talent of our more seasoned lawyers. By sharing in the wisdom and experience of our more seasoned lawyers, our new lawyers will become better attorneys, better citizens and better members of our bar association.
Lastly, I want each of you to reach out to the Oakland County community through the OCBA. Speak at OCBA Law Day school programs, get involved in the OCBA-sponsored legal aid clinics, and participate in any of the other outreach programs the OCBA provides. All of these community outreach activities enhance your stature and reputation in the Oakland County community and makes our bar association more respected by the community at large.
In conclusion, I want each of you reading this article to pledge to the bar association, and to your fellow OCBA members, that you are going to do these five growth tasks over the next 12 months. These tasks are imperative in our long and winding road from being a good bar association to becoming a great bar association. If all of our bar members do these five tasks, the OCBA will unquestionably be an even better organization than it is today.
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David Carl Anderson, of Law Office of David C. Anderson PC, is the 83rd president of the Oakland County Bar Association. Share thoughts about the OCBA or anything else with Anderson at 248-649-5502 or dcalaw08@att.net.
Published: Fri, Sep 25, 2015
