Win a free trip to the City of Brotherly Love

by Nancy Gallego
Chair

Do you know what a NABE Scholarship is and what it means to you and to your bar association? Receiving a NABE Scholarship means that you will be able to attend a NABE Mid-Year or Annual Meeting. It means that your association will save close to $1,000. It means that you will be able to meet other NABE members. It means that you will come away from the meeting with terrific ideas that will help your association.

Every year NABE offers 3 scholarships for the Mid-Year Meeting and 3 scholarships to the Annual Meeting. The scholarships consist of $500 plus the registration to the meeting. If your organization has financial issues and you think you are automatically precluded from attending when you receive your meeting information please consider applying for a scholarship for either yourself or someone else in your association. Click here for information on scholarships for the Midyear Meeting (pdf) and click here for an application (pdf).

What has a NABE scholarship meant to me and my association? When I was hired as the Executive Director of the El Paso Bar Association in El Paso, Texas I had no idea what an Executive Director did but I had been a legal secretary for over 10 years so I assumed it would not be much different than that. Boy, was I wrong! I had a two day training period and then I was on my own. The first thing I found out was that I was responsible for editing and publishing the monthly publication for the association. I was completely clueless. Thankfully, the printers helped me enormously and I got past that situation. The next thing that came up was a Board meeting. Are you catching my drift here. It was nothing like being a secretary, sure you answer the telephone and you send out correspondence but the similaries end there. I had to learn from trial and error, some days I was so scared that I did not know what I was doing and truthfully, I thought I was not cut out for this. But everyday I came in and did the best that I could. Little by little I gained more confidence in my abilities. About a year later I received a notice from the State Bar of Texas about attending a Local Bar Leaders Conference. I called the State Bar and talked to Barbara Earle to find out more information on this conference and should I attend. I made arrangements to attend and was so thankful that I did because I met so many wonderful people. I was able to cultivate friendships and network with the other executive directors around the state. It was during this time that I met Patricia Graham, Executive Director of the Tarrant County Bar Association. Trish became my mentor and through the years has helped me so much. It was through Trish that I found out about NABE and what a great association it is.

My association with NABE began when I applied for a scholarship to attend the 1996 Mid-year meeting in Baltimore and I received the scholarship. I met so many great people at that meeting and I came back to El Paso with lots of useful information for our association. One of the most important things that I did was to make a detailed report to my Board about the mid-year meeting and why I felt that our association should implement a line item in our budget to cover staff travel. One of the most important things you will learn at a NABE meeting is that it does not matter if you are a small association or a large association we all have the same general problems. The great thing about NABE is that someone will always have a solution. Even though I have been with the El Paso Bar Association for almost 9 years, I am always learning something new and useful for my association. We never stop learning. NABE gives you the chance and opportunity to keep on learning. What you learn at the NABE meeting will be beneficial to your bar association.

Please remember that you don't have to be an executive director to reap the many benefits of attending a NABE meeting. Whether your bar association duties include meeting/events planning, financial management, administration, communications/publications, member services, etc. you will come away from a NABE meeting with a network of resources to call on when needed.

Won't you take a moment and fill out the NABE scholarship application? You have nothing to lose and everything to gain.