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Friday, Mar 29, 2024

Bar President Gets Digital With Lawyers

Barry Goldberg, personal injury attorney in Woodland Hills, is this year’s board president at the San Fernando Valley Bar Association. He plans to modernize the 93-year-old organization through social media networking and connecting to young lawyers. Goldberg has been a member of the association for roughly eight years, serving as chairman of the Attorney Referral Service Committee for four years. He discussed coming chnages with the Business Journal via phone. What’s your reaction to being elected president of the board? It is a bit overwhelming – there’s so much that I’d like to do. I’m going to do the best I can with the energy and resources I have, within reason, and hope for the best. We’re going to be shaking things up and I’m going to be asking a lot of this trustee class to do more than they’ve ever done before. What makes your approach different? It brings two sensibilities that I have, that other presidents may not have had: number one is I’m a PI lawyer. I’m not reckless, but I’m willing to take calculated risks with PI cases. The other thing I bring to the table, which is probably better for our membership, is that I’m pretty media and marketing savvy. Maybe certain types of lawyers that do certain types of law don’t have to be as savvy in these areas. What changes or updates do you plan? How we market ourselves and things like online presence and social media. (During the election) I had all these candidates out there going on social media, some of them for the first time, and a lot of them learning how to be a lawyer online with dignity, and also engaging with people that wanted to be engaged by them. We had people sign up memberships with the bar association just so they could vote. I think that has probably never happened in the past. We had one candidate, on one of his posts, get over 100 engagements. How will social media help the association? The L.A. County Bar Association and other regional bar associations are really struggling to engage younger lawyers. It’s all because they do things the old-fashioned way. They have dinners that cost $200 a plate and young lawyers don’t see why they should be there. On social media, they’re seeing me shake hands with the presiding judge of the superior court and hanging out with their opposing counsel, and so we are getting engagement with a much younger class of lawyers, which is a huge thing. I have to give credit to Rosie (Soto Cohen), too. Rosie is a young, fresh face as the executive director, and I think that is part of the equation that is making things work for us, under her direction, her leadership and learning on the job. It makes her very accessible for young lawyers to say, “OK, I can do this.” Any other changes in the works? At every one of our meetings and events, we’re going to be collecting different items that are required by LA Family Housing. I’ve also been working very closely with L.A. City Councilman Bob Blumenfield to support some of his initiatives that will reduce the homeless numbers. We are going to be providing at some of his events a legal panel in order to give some pro bono legal advice. Homeless people, you’d be surprised, a lot of their problems have a legal component.

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