PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE

By ROCKY ROBINSON Andrews Kurth LLP

Be Proud – Give Back

The Houston Bar Association was founded in 1870, over 130 years ago. At that time the HBA was 37 members strong. To-day we have over 11,500 members and are the fifth largest voluntary bar in the United States. From its creation in 1870 to the present, the mission of the Houston Bar Association has remained unchanged. That mission is service – service to the community and service to our profession. We should all take great pride in our achievements as an organization.
Unfortunately, there are people in this country, in this state, in this city, who are quick to lay blame on our profession for the real or perceived problems of the society and community in which we live. Of course, this is not a particularly new phenomenon. Over 400 years ago, we first heard the now oft-quoted line from Shakespeare’s Henry VI, Part I: “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.”
We continue to hear echoes of that sentiment today; however, rather than a line from a theatrical production, it now takes the form of short-sighted mistrust in our legal system and its constituents – our judges, juries, litigants and their representatives, the members of our profession. When our profession gets blamed for a problem, the reaction has often been knee-jerk; the most recent example being the cynical, and unfortunately successful, effort to limit the access of our citizens to our courts and the remedies available to our citizens once they get in the courthouse door.
How soon these critics forget. This past May we celebrated the 50th anniversary of what many believe, myself included, is one of the most significant Court decisions in the history of our country. That case is Brown v. the Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. It is a decision of which I am confident all who read The Houston Lawyer are familiar.
Without Brown, where would we be today as a society? Would we be better off? I think not. Members of the Houston Bar Association were instrumental in enforcing the Brown decision here in the City of Houston, Harris County, and elsewhere in the State of Texas. Subsequent to the Brown decision members of the Houston Bar Association were instrumental in bringing about the desegregation of our courthouse facilities, including the cafeteria [Derrington v. Plummer, 240 F.2d 922 (5th Cir. 1956), cert. denied, 353 U.S. 924 (1957)].
Without the legal profession there would have been no Brown. Without lawyers here in Houston, members of the Houston Bar Association, there would have been no enforcement of Brown in our community.
Brown is but one prominent and lasting example of the greatness of our profession. There are many others, some visible, some not so visible. Is our profession perfect? Of course not. Can we do better? Absolutely. However, we, as lawyers, should never be ashamed of who we are as a profession. We should take pride in what we do. We should always aspire to uphold the highest standards of our profession and continue to serve the community in which we practice.
The Houston Bar Association has 38 committees serving our approximate 11,500 members and, more importantly, serving the community here in the fourth largest city in the United States. For our members we have such committees as the Continuing Legal Education Committee, the Professionalism Committee, the Minority Opportunities in the Legal Profession Committee, and the Houston Lawyer Referral Service, each of which, as their names imply, serve our HBA membership, future lawyers in our law schools and the legal profession in general. On the community service front, our membership reaches out in a variety of ways with such activities as LegalLine, the Houston Volunteer Lawyers Program (which provides free legal service to the economically disadvantaged in the Houston area), the Special Olympics Committee, Lawyers for Literacy, Adopt-a-School, Lawyers Against Waste, and the annual John J. Eikenburg Law Week Fun Run which benefits the Center Serving Persons with Mental Retardation. In addition, we have 25 sections of the Houston Bar Association that give our members the opportunity to interact and exchange information and ideas with their colleagues concerning specific areas of the practice of law.
Space does not permit me to mention and discuss each of our committees and sections, and the fact that I have not given mention to each one does not diminish their importance. My point is that the Houston Bar Association provides each of our members the opportunity to get involved, the opportunity to better serve our profession, and the opportunity to serve our community, whether it be by way of representing the indigent through the Houston Volunteer Lawyers Program or spending a Saturday morning, as several of us did a couple of months ago, cleaning up MacGregor Park.
Over the last five years the membership of the Houston Bar Association has devoted an average of approximately 40,000 volunteer hours per year to a variety of community service activities and pro bono representation. That may sound like a lot of hours and, indeed, it is not insignificant. However, simple mathematics tell us that it is less than five hours per year per Houston Bar Association member. Our community needs us. Our profession needs us. Each of us leads extremely busy and frequently over-scheduled lives, juggling the demands of our profession, our families and the other aspects of our personal lives. Nevertheless, as we go forward into this coming bar year, I want each of our members to think about ways that you, as a lawyer, can give back something to our community or our profession; whether it is taking a case for the Houston Volunteer Lawyers Program, volunteering at one or more Special Olympics activities, driving nails and sawing wood for the building of an HBA Habitat house, or simply showing up and donating a pint of blood through our Year of Giving program. These are just a few examples of what the Houston Bar Association does for the community. Please think about what each of you can do to give something back to our community. Please think about carving out a few hours over the next year to help the HBA continue its successful community service initiatives. If we do so together, in time some of those critics I mentioned above will eventually be silenced.
I look forward to the privilege of serving as your Houston Bar Association President over the coming 12 months. Working together, we can make it another successful year.

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