From The President

I’ve been thinking about change a lot lately. It’s all around me, and I understand it is a necessary and ironic constant in life.

Change can be simple or profound, life-altering or ordinary, fun or frustrating, welcome or devastating. Whether it is watching the dullness of winter transform in the beauty and paradise of spring; meeting new friends or evolving out of relationships; creating or growing a family; taking on new jobs or leaving old ones; discovering a new tv show or book to bring comfort, thoughtfulness, joy, or mystery; experiencing a city grow and shift while being stuck in traffic to rival more populous areas; or experiencing heartbreak, change is fundamental to who we are.

Despite this, I don’t generally embrace change. I’m happy to try new things, but making changes – that’s big. As attorneys reading this, I’m sure a few of you may be in that same camp. We tend to be risk-averse and to find solace in the routine; there is nothing wrong with that. I also recognize that internal transformation leads to outward progress. As the Persian poet, Rumi, once wrote, “Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.” So, today, I’m trying something new: to embrace some change, even when it makes me uncomfortable. I’ll start mixing in new shows with my Seinfeld reruns. I’ll venture to new restaurants (so many options in town now) in addition to the old standards. I’ll read new authors or genres in between my favorites. I’ll step outside my comfort zone. I’ll accept that these aren’t big changes, and that’s okay.

Our ability to change, to adapt, to transform allows us to keep moving forward – to keep progressing. And without progress, we stagnate, whether individually, as a profession, or as society.

I’m proud of the NBA for always growing and evolving. Changing, really. Sometimes out of necessity due to the unexpected, but most of the time because the NBA strives to provide the best for its members. To do that, it has to read the reality of those it serves and see what it, the legal profession, and its practitioners need.

You are holding one of those changes in your hand. Welcome to a new version of our beloved Nashville Bar Journal – quarterly edition! The NBJ has a long and storied history of providing insightful articles that help us improve our practice, challenge us to consider matters in different ways, and teach us about areas of the law outside of our everyday, all while helping us connect better with each other through our activities and events. By moving the publication from bi-monthly to quarterly, we hope to provide even more relevant content, as well as better glimpses into the lives of our members and what makes the NBA a place for connection, collaboration, and community.

I know this is different, but I hope you will try something new with me and embrace it. I can’t wait to see what else we can do.