SKILLS DEVELOPED BY A STRONG LEADER

Communication
Leaders are only as powerful as the ideas they communicate. Effective communication is one of the most important tools an attorney can have. Communication with Chapter Officers First and foremost, Chapter officers must communicate with each other. Hold officer meetings at least monthly. Invite your Chapter’s Committee Chairs and your Advisors to the meetings.


ORGANIZATION & PLANNING
Upon entering law school, a young first year student was advised by a long-time practicing attorney that the “simple trick” to law school and law practice is organization. Effective leaders are always good organizers. To organize, you must plan ahead. Professors admonish their students to “look at the big picture”. If you focus on the “big picture”, you see how small details fit. The “big picture” for your Chapter is your Calendar of Events. Plan ahead and follow through! How Can Our Chapter Get Organized?

VISION AND CREATIVITY
Without vision, your Chapter will perish. In examining successful leadership, it becomes apparent vision means creating a focus. Officers must create a focus for their Chapter’s members. When focus or direction is clear, it inspires confidence from the membership.

COMMON ERROR:
Officers conduct a general meeting, expecting that members will spring forth with a wealth of ideas and direction for the Chapter. When they do not, the wheels of progress screech to a halt.

SOLUTION:
Never wait for a mandate from the general membership before the officers take action. Members depend on the leadership to provide direction. As a leader, you should be attuned to programming desires of your membership. Ask your members for suggestions, and consider any suggestions that are made. Do not wait for your general membership to create a focus for the Chapter. Creating a focus and direction for your Chapter is the sole responsibility of the Chapter’s officers. Every successful attorney knows alternatives always exist. Think creatively and develop alternatives.

Overcoming The “Our Law School Does Everything” Syndrome
Leaders assess their members’ needs and strive to meet them. Look at the needs of your law school and its student body. Critically analyze each need you identify. Examine what you, as a law student need that you are not getting. Assess which needs are met by other groups; then examine the needs not currently or adequately being met by other organizations. This will let you think about programs your Chapter could pioneer to meet student needs. Visit your Deans or Faculty members. Tell them your dilemma, i.e., “There is nothing for our Chapter to do. We want something to do, but we just can’t find anything.” When the Deans finish laughing, explain what resources your Chapter has in terms of members and finances. You will not leave empty-handed.

TIME MANAGEMENT
Developing good time management skills is an important aspect of your professional development. Time is your most valuable commodity as a law student and as an attorney.

DELEGATION OF AUTHORITY
The old adage, “if you want something done right, do it yourself” is not true for effective leaders. If you find yourself doing all the work and handling all the details of every program in your Chapter, then you are doing something wrong. You may be lacking the ability to delegate.

Successful delegation of authority has three major components:
1. Get things accomplished at the lowest possible level.
2. Assess the talents and areas of interest of each member and delegate tasks accordingly.
3. Check each member’s progress periodically. Delegate, don’t abdicate! Delegation ensures that everyone participates in your programming. This allows future Chapter leaders to emerge and develop a track record for themselves. When you delegate, make sure everyone understands the desired result, the means of achieving this result, and the time frame. People take pride in what they have a stake in achieving.

How to Win PAD International Awards Checklists

The above checklists are from the Nuts and Bolts of Chapter Awards. They should be printed out and used throughout the year in planning events.

Example Calender

Below is what an award winning calendar looks like. Notice that this calender has at least one event from each of the categories of events that are necessary to achieve Chapter Merit Status and Chapter of the Year. Please review this calendar. If you have any questions call me or e-mail me.

Nuts and Bolts of Chapter Awards

OK here's the nuts and bolts that you need to know if you want to win international awards. This is the very bottom line basic stuff, so refer back here if you need to refresh your memory:

CHAPTER MERIT AWARD

Before you can even think of applying for Most Outstanding Law School Chapter, you have to qualify for the Chapter Merit Award. You will need to do the following:

• File your Spring and Fall Reports with the International Executive Office (heads up Chapter Clerks!)
• File your Roster of Officers within 10 days of elections (or any other changes in leadership)
• File your Form G's within 10 days of initiation (and if you really want to be outstanding, file it BEFORE initiation)
• Have an officer transition meeting after elections (and pass along those Officer's Manuals)
• Have a Faculty Advisor (be able to describe who they are and why you selected them)
• Have an Alumni Advisor (ditto, as well as what they have done to support you)
• Give an Outstanding Service to the Chapter Award to a member of your chapter
• Give an Outstanding Service to the Chapter Award to an alumni
• RUSH more new members than the year before
• Run new programs that you did not run the year before
• You also need a minumum of the following programs:

Four Professional Programs (PP)
One Fundraising Activity (FR)
Three Social Activities (SA)
Two Community Service Programs (CS)
One Alumni Activity (AL) or Inter-chapter activity (IC)
Rush Progams (no amount is specified)
One Academic Program (AP)One Specialize Program (SP)

OUTSTANDING CHAPTER AWARD (KOHN AWARD)
On top of all that, you will have to do all of the following in order to meet the minimum qualifications for Outstanding Chapter. OBVIOUSLY you want to do all this and more so you can not just qualify but WIN!

• have chapter bylaws (If you don’t have them already. I can give you model chapter bylaws, adapt them and adopt them)
• have regularly scheduled membership meetings
• have regularly scheduled officer meetings
• keep written minutes of meetings
• have a treasurer's report at every meeting
• have a written calendar of events
• form committees (you will have to list what committees you have, how many members in the committees, and what events these committees have run)
• maintain a separate account for initiation fees (DO NOT PUT THEM IN YOUR ACCOUNT WITH CHAPTER FUNDS!)
• have a written chapter budget(If you need help writing a budget call me and we’ll come up with one for you)
• initiate faculty members (for free) into your chapter
• create local chapter awards
• put announcements in your school newspaper about your events

The two forms attached below are to be filled out and maintained to assist in filling out the application at the end of the year.(Both can be e-mailed to you upon request in Word format.) One was adapted from the Kohn Award to be used in the planning of the event. The other is the programing information section for the Kohn Award. It is in your best interest to fill these out as the year progresses. I would also appreciate receiving a copy of the forms so that I know what’s going on with your chapter. Its easier to brag abou y’all if I know what’s going on.

ANY QUESTIONS? You know where to find me.

(Borrowed from Pam Nash, former District 21 DJ, with changes from me.)

Here is some stuff you should call your DJ/ADJ about:

1. Your Dean/Administration/SBA is giving you a hard time.
If you run into any snags at your school, give me a call. First we will brainstorm some solutions. If those solutions don't pan out, then Plan B I will get on the phone and give your dean a call or I will get an alumni from your chapter to do so.

2. The IEO is ignoring you.
If Frank, Byron, or Andrew are not answering your emails, sending you your Rush stuff (pins, certificates etc.), or otherwise generally not helping you, let me know and I’ll find out what is wrong. This comes with some caveats though... Whatever you have asked them for has to be reasonable. I am not putting in a call to Frank because you called him two days before initiation and asked him to FedEx you some pins. Also, they have to be legitimately not responding to you. I am not going to bug Byron on his cell phone because he hasn't answered your email within an hour. But if you have sent two or three requests, and have received no response, let me know and I will put in a call for you.

3. You have a rush question you can't answer.
You never know what some random wiseguy at your school is going to come up with, and if you don't know the answer, don't worry about it. Tell them you will make a call and get back to them with the answer. And then call me.

4. You have ANY question you can't answer.

5. What you are doing is interesting to me.
I want to hear how your chapter is going. I want to know how school is going. I want to help you with anything that I can. Seriously, I would NOT volunteer so much of my time to this organization if I didn't care about you.

Communication is key to making your chapter successful. I’m here to help you in any way I can. There may be times I won’t know the answer to you questions, but I’ll find the answer and get back with . So call me with questions, comments, just to chat, whatever. I’m here for you guys!

Branding, Marketing, and Advertising

Branding, Marketing, Advertising

If you want to win international awards then you have got to make sure EVERYONE knows who you are. How do you do that? See below.

BRANDING: the average law school chapter bills itself around school as Phi Alpha Delta. Those of you who have attended convention are well aware that you are more than just Phi Alpha Delta. Each chapter should strive to develop its own identity within the school community and within the fraternity at large. Now this is not to say that you should focus your efforts exclusively on one type of programming in order to establish some sort of "branding". All award winning chapters have to have balanced programming, and meeting the requirements of chapter merit award will insure that you do.

MARKETING: I am not going to get into a debate about the exact definition of marketing vs. advertising, so for the purposes of this post you will have to accept that marketing means getting new members to join your chapter by making them aware of what all you are doing and how great it is to be a member of this amazing organization. This is more than just posting flyers around the school. Here are some ideas: get all members to wear PAD t-shirts one day per month it promotes bonding among current members, and it inspires other people to want to be a part of that in-crowd.

ADVERTISING: You do have to do some flyer posting, so that people know what you are doing and when.

PADLAW yahoogroup. Sign up for PADLAW yahoogroup (on the front page of www.pad.org) What you want come June 1 is for Board members to be sitting in their offices, rubbing their hands, pacing the floor and WAITING for your award application to come in, because they have been following your progress all year. Get it?

PAD REPORTER. Free advertising extraordinairre. Send pictures and a one or two paragraph description of the event to andrew@pad.org and let the whole entire fraternity see how awesome you are.

School Newspaper. If your school has one, or a newsletter, or a docket, get your events in there, along with a random little announcement from the chapter every month. Here are some examples: a congrats message to newly initiated members, a thank you to outgoing officers, a happy bday to all the PAD members with birthdays that month, or a follow up to tell the the school about a particularly successful event, with recognition to all members who helped organize the event. (save copies of all this stuff to include with your award application).

Bar Journal. Put announcements about upcoming events in the local bar journal. Make sure you put a prominent statement that ALUMNI FROM YOUR SCHOOL are welcome to attend. (save copies of all this stuff to include with your award application).

Chapter Calendar. Make sure everyone you can think of gets a copy of your chapter calendar. Post it on the padlaw and District 15 yahoogroups, email it to the DCO, pass it around your school, and to any of your members who graduated last year.

The Vice Justice is in charge of Communications and Branding/Marketing/Advertising. The best way to make sure they do this, is to make sure the rest of the E-Board is doing their job so the Vice Justice has time for this stuff. Chapter Justices, with the exception of officer training YOUR job is to make sure your E-Board is all doing their jobs. Also think about creating a position for publications and another for publicity/advertising. The Vice Justice would oversee these positions since the Vice Justice is in charge of all forms of communications.

(Borrowed from Pam Nash, former District 21 DJ, with a few changes of my own.)