NEO ACC's Summer Social- A Time For Reflection
It is special pleasure to attend the summer social event of the Northeastern Ohio Chapter. It is a rare opportunity when I get to visit with ACC colleagues of the past that no other opportunity would present.
There is some good news for the Chapter this year; its membership is at an all time high. There could be two explanations. First, it might be that the economy is not as bad here as one might have expected. The other is that in-house attorneys might be realizing the value of networking that ACC provides in tough times. Whichever explanation is the case, the membership level is good news.
The success of this chapter is in many respects a better indication of the value of ACC than the national chapter. The reason is that it had to rise again from the ashes no less than three times before it became a permanent establishment. This in large part was due to the lack of support among senior in-house counsel for the organization. My sense was that Northeast Ohio was one of the hardest locations for ACC to gain a foothold because senior in-house counsel viewed it with suspicion at best and outright antagonism at worse.
Why so? Because the in-house bar had established a traditional relationship to outside attorneys and the ABA, both of whom felt threatened by ACC (formerly ACCA), and viewed it as a bunch of wild eyed rebels who did not understand their place and role in the profession. For those of you to whom this sounds like fiction, you are beginning to understand the debt you owe to the Bob Banks, Carl Liggio and their colleagues who saw in-house as a position in the profession deserving its own distinct recognition and unique services.
I was the first president of the chapter, which lasted only one president beyond me before community support dried up. I resuscitated it a second time, only to have the organizational structure under its new president evaporate. Finally, along came Rick Green, an energetic fellow who along with a dedicated cadre of colleagues such as Cindy Binns created the chapter that exists today and appears to be thriving in the worst economic crisis in our lifetimes.
