GREENLEE DISCUSSES BAR INVOLVEMENT, LEADERSHIP ON LAWYER/LEADER PODCAST

Free CLE podcast offers insights for future Bar leaders

Getting involved in Florida Bar activities can help lawyers build relationships, find answers to professional challenges, and develop leadership skills, President-elect Paige Greenlee says in a recent episode of the Lawyer/Leader podcast.

Greenlee discusses Bar involvement and leadership with podcast hosts Kerven Montfort and Maria Hossain, fellows of the Bar’s  Wm. Reece Smith Leadership Academy.

Greenlee, founder of Greenlee Law in Tampa, says her goal right now is to get more members involved and engaged in the Bar. She doesn’t have a major project planned for her presidency at this point, adding that the Bar does a good job of addressing members’ needs.

The Bar’s standing committees and sections are listed on its website, and Greenlee recommends getting involved in whatever interests you. Members can fill out a committee preference form when it becomes available in December and she recommends asking their Board of Governors circuit representative to follow up with her on their behalf.

“All you have to do is raise your hand,” Greenlee says.

Whether at the beginning of their careers, in the middle or nearing the end, or even retired, members bring perspectives that help the Bar operate more effectively, she says.

Greenlee’s professional background spans government work, a large law firm, a midsize firm, and solo practice. Combined with her pre-law education in philosophy, politics, and economics, that experience gives her a broad perspective.

A self-described type-A perfectionist, Greenlee said that when she started out as a litigator, she found herself “always being confronted with something I did not know how to do, and I was not used to that.” She found answers through colleagues and by volunteering with the Bar, she says.

She became involved in Bar service early in her legal career, starting with the Young Lawyers Division. She also joined the Business Law Section and the Real Property, Probate and Trust Law Section. When she launched her own practice, she was invited to participate in Solo & Small Firm Section committees.

Her years of committee service helped position her as a candidate for Bar president. Given the institutional knowledge she had gained, she felt almost an obligation to run for the office.

She calls her participation in YLD leadership “one of the best personal and professional opportunities I ever had in my entire life.”

Greenlee says YLD programming is an important resource and encourages young lawyers to take advantage of voluntary activities, such as the YLD Leadership Summit.

The Florida Lawyers Helpline is another free resource that is “vastly underutilized,” she says. Available around the clock, the free and confidential helpline gives Florida Bar members and Florida Registered Paralegals immediate access to mental health and wellness support, including licensed clinicians, counseling, coaching, and practical work-life resources.

“There’s not a lawyer or a human being on this planet, for that matter, who could not benefit from a session with a therapist,” Greenlee says.

Spending more than 400 days on the road while campaigning for Bar president taught Greenlee to make the most of brief moments of downtime. She keeps to-do lists in the notes app on her phone and, instead of scrolling, pulls up the list and picks a quick task she can complete in about 10 minutes while waiting at an airport or riding in a car.

“Five or six of those over the course of the day gives you back an hour,” she says. “There are 24 hours in a day; use them.”

The episode was hosted by Leadership Academy Class XIV fellows Kerven Montfort, assistant general counsel for the Florida Department of Transportation in Tampa and chief medical justice with the Army Reserve, and Maria Hossain of Ausley McMullen in Tallahassee.

It was produced by Jamy Barreau of Barreau Legal in Port St. Lucie, Kimano Edwards of Edwards Law in Jacksonville, Assistant State Attorney Claire Kelly of Jacksonville, and Rebecca Stoltenberg of Widerman Malek in Melbourne. The podcast is presented by the Bar’s Henry Latimer Center for Professionalism.

The October 9 episode, “Leadership Basics: The Importance of Personal Missions and Vision,” course No. 260070, is approved by The Florida Bar Continuing Legal Education Department for 1.0 hour of General CLE credit and 1.0 hour of Professionalism CLE credit.

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