Indiana State Bar Association’s annual meeting focused on career development, CLEs

The Indiana State Bar Association is changing its approach to this year’s annual meeting, choosing to expand its focus to include several Continuing Legal Education topics related to career development.

Last year, the state bar association’s annual meeting focused primarily on addressing the ongoing attorney shortage in Indiana.

At the time, the Indiana Supreme Court Commission on Indiana’s Legal Future had been deployed to seek remedies to the ongoing shortage.

The bar association also established a task force to look at alternative licensure models for the state. One breakout session at last year’s event explored the possibility of allowing some non-attorneys to do legal work. The idea was that some non-attorneys could be specifically trained to handle certain legal tasks, similar to the role nurse practitioners play in hospitals.

Now that the Commission on Indiana’s Legal Future has issued its final set of recommendations, the state bar association is returning to a traditional meeting model by offering a variety of CLE sessions, Joe Skeel, the state bar’s executive director said in an email.

Attorneys can receive 6.2 hours of CLE credit at this year’s event on Oct. 9-10 in Indianapolis.

When leaders with the bar association spoke with its members about the challenges they face in their legal careers, they rarely made comments about the law itself, Skeel said.

Instead, they emphasized their struggles in “practicing” as an attorney, in areas like work-life balance, remote work, and management.

Over the past two years, the bar has been focused on helping its members be better practitioners in ways that aren’t taught in law school, Skeel said.

This year’s meeting is no exception, offering CLE credits on topics like communicating with empathy and clarity, strategies for managing your workload, mentorship, and how to use AI effectively.

Attendees will hear from several speakers on the topics and have a chance to discuss the topics with one another during the event.

“One thing that’s really unique about this conference is our effort to embed peer-to-peer support that we hope extends beyond the conference,” Skeel said in an email.

On Friday, attendees will be separated into “homerooms” at the beginning and end of the day. In their homerooms, attorneys will participate in facilitated discussions about the challenges they’re facing and what they hope to eventually learn from the day’s CLE topics.

“One of the most important things we do at ISBA is help our members build a support network,” Skeel said. “We are taking that concept to the next level with this intentional approach during our annual meeting.” •