NCBA Professionalism Committee Strategic Plan for 2025-2026

Jim, a white man with grey and brown hair, wears a white shirt, pale blue tie and navy suit.By Jimbo Perry

Goal: “Always leave your campsite better than you found it.” — Allan Head

I am excited to serve as Chair of the NCBA Professionalism Committee. The Professionalism Committee has 40 members this year. Each member is committed to promoting professionalism and civility across the state and leaving our profession better than we found it. Committee members are involved with subcommittees as reflected in this post. In order to accommodate our 19 members who practice west of the Triangle, we will be holding an in-person meeting at the Charlotte offices of Robinson, Bradshaw & Hinson, P.A. on January 27, 2026. Other quarterly meetings will be held at the North Carolina Bar Center. A Zoom meeting option will be provided.

This is a critical time for our profession. We will continue to do the traditional work of this committee of nominating a lawyer for the H. Brent McKnight Renaissance Lawyer Award and putting on the Professionalism Continuing Legal Education (“CLE”) program on December 5, 2025, at the Bar Center. The theme for this year’s CLE is Carrying the Professional Guidon.

Vision casting by our last two Professionalism Committee chairs, Jay Tillman and Gill Beck, has resulted in the formation of new subcommittees as follows:

  1. Publication: Debra Sasser, Subcommittee Chair, has set a goal of no less than ten posts on NCBarBlog by June 30, 2026. These posts will discuss various aspects of professionalism, such as senior lawyers encouraging civility, judges suggesting best practices to promote professionalism in our courts, and a law school career placement counselor suggesting how law firms in underserved areas can best recruit today’s students.
  2. Public Speaking: Many of our committee members have agreed to speak on professionalism at local bar CLE programs, to speak to community groups, law schools, undergraduate pre-law programs, and high school civics classes, and to take part in mock trial competitions.
  3. Essay Competition: Noel Allen, Subcommittee Chair, along with his subcommittee members, plans to offer an essay competition for North Carolina law schools promoting professionalism. They are developing details concerning the specific topic and how to promote the competition.
  4. IDS Support Subcommittee: Jeremy Sugg, Subcommittee Chair, is working with his subcommittee to brainstorm creative ways in which our profession can meet the current challenge of there not being enough lawyers on the Indigent Defense Services’ Attorney Rosters. North Carolina judges are calling this a constitutional crisis.

We look forward to encouraging our entire membership to be zealous but honorable advocates, officers of the court and public citizens having a special responsibility for the quality of justice. (Preamble: A Lawyer’s Responsibilities.)

/by