Bench & Bar September/October 2025

YOUNG LAWYERS DIVISION

– AND BEYOND PLANTING THE SEEDS FOR A Successful Year BY KYLE R. BUNNELL

R ecently, the Kentucky Bar Association’s Board of Governors and Young Lawyers Division’s Executive Committee held their summer meeting to begin the new bar year at Shaker Village in Harrodsburg, Ky. It was my first opportunity to share my plans for the upcoming year. Sure, I want to continue the great programming that the YLD has offered for years including the Legal Food Frenzy 1 , U@18 Program, 2 and the Road Less Travelled Program 3 at our law schools. However, I also want to offer mini-CLEs (30 min utes or less) on important practical topics for new lawyers, offer real-life information to our members about law school debt, buying their first home, and saving for retirement – because those are all topical to our lives and practices as young lawyers. Further, I want to engage our law schools and other sections of the KBA through an initiative called “Section Connection” that will take our YLD members and other Section leaders into our Commonwealth’s law schools to discuss different practices of the law. 4 I want to focus on engag ing our members and future members early – and hope to offer a YLD student-membership program. Moreover, our YLD Executive Committee has voted to provide free membership for an entire bar year to newly licensed attorneys who pass the July 2025 and February 2026 bar exam. As I regaled (but maybe bored) our Executive Commit tee with these ideas, I also told them that I recognized that my year as chair was only for a short time – but that does not mean I should not start planting those seeds now – even if I don’t get to harvest them during my tenure. To echo that sentiment, I offered the words of Kentucky poet, Wendell

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