Professional Development Workshop Series Defies Pandemic – Most Successful Ever

The Professional Development Workshop Series is the City Bar’s annual five-part series that provides attorneys with critical training to help them succeed as they transition into more senior roles. The Series offers a panoply of topics and trainings in lawyering skills, diversity, current ethics issues, and practice management programming. The Series’ topics, and frequently the faculty speakers, arise from annual forums with professional development directors from sponsoring firms, where we brainstorm and confer on best practices.

The series regularly fills the Meeting Hall, but just as we started the 2020 Series, the City Bar had to close its doors due to the pandemic. Thanks to the speakers’ ability to pivot to a virtual format, the 2020 Series went on, and City Bar members and lawyers from the sponsoring firms attended the final three programs of the Series in record numbers.

After the live programs in the City Bar Meeting Hall in January and February (Resilience 2.0: Next Steps Lawyers Can Take to Make Bouncing Back Part of the Culture, followed by Tools and Techniques for Giving & Receiving Feedback: Real-Time Law Practice Management), more than 630 people attended the webinar iteration of Interrupt Implicit Bias by Design: How Legal Organizations Are Using Inclusion Nudges and Embedding Bias Interrupters; more than 590 people tuned into Staying Up-To-Date and Out-of-Trouble: The Mantra for Meeting Professional Challenges With Ethical Compliance; and more than 200 people virtually participated in Five Tactics for Making Legal Project Management Work for You: Practice Tips for Managing Cases and Delighting Clients.

This engagement was record-breaking, as was the Series’ sponsorship firm participation.

Looking forward, the 2021 Series is expected to be one of the most essential yet, featuring a brand new lineup of programs. The Series will be virtual, and the programs are tailored for the post-pandemic new reality that attorneys must master and, with one exception, all will offer CLE credit.

Attendance for the Series is free for City Bar members and attorneys of sponsoring firms. For more information on the Series and how your firm can become a sponsor, please visit our Professional Development Workshop Series page, or contact Arlene Bein, Senior Director, Membership & Customer Relations, at 212.382.6685 or abein@nycbar.org.

Thank you to our sponsors: Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP • Allen & Overy LLP • Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP • Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP Dechert LLP • Dorsey & Whitney LLP • Greenberg Traurig LLP • Kelley Drye & Warren LLP • King & Spalding LLP • Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel LLP • Labaton Sucharow LLP • New York City Law Department • Proskauer Rose LLP • Schulte Roth & Zabel LLP • Shearman & Sterling LLP • Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton LLP • Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP • Sullivan & Cromwell LLP • Venable LLP • Wilson Elser Moskowitz Edelman & Dicker LLP