The Oklahoma Bar Journal November 2025

F rom the P resident

embarrassed to ask some one who does. If a client wants to bring suit on principle, get a large retainer. Where appropriate, social ize more with opposing counsel and judges. Let your word be your bond – character matters. Your career and life will go by quickly. Recognize that right now, you do not know how to practice law. Become edu cated in subject matter and procedure! Practice in an area where you have talent. One of the few perquisites of private practice is your ability to fire a client. Keep your priorities straight. I congratulate each of our association’s new admittees who entered practice in 2025, and to them and all OBA members, I wish each of you a very long and satisfy ing career. Thank you all for your service to the legal profession! Consider this order: faith, family, country and clients.

our society is that we walk away from these debates, arguments and trials having listened to those who oppose us, having learned from our opponents and having conducted ourselves in a civil and professional manner. I cannot stress enough the importance of your adoption early in your career of a personal commitment to be both civil and professional in all that you do. I would like to share some thoughts provided by members of the OBA Board of Governors at a recent meeting. I asked the gover nors for advice that, if they could go back in time, they would give to their younger selves at the start of their careers. Here are a few of those thoughts: Believe in yourself. Spend more time with your family. Take time to reflect before responding. Enjoy each stage of your career. Take it on faith that there are Be patient. Fight the urge to respond in anger. Sometimes it is better to listen and say nothing. Try to understand your audience when framing your message. Do not let your soul die. Do not be tacky. Be civilized in your speech – not strident. Be willing to stand up to your clients. It is ok to not know the answer – do not be many paths to the career you can find rewarding.

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Each of you has an individual and unique opportunity to make a real difference in the world. With regard to doing good in your new career, I want to encour age you to look to the less popu lated areas of our state for such opportunities. Oklahoma has at least 14 counties with six or fewer attorneys. Coming from a rural county and a small community, I can speak from personal experi ence when I tell you that there are many professional advantages to being one of a very few attorneys in a county. A smaller community is also a great place to raise a fam ily, have a less stressful life and be connected to that community in a way that is difficult in a large com munity. If you come from such a community, please consider return ing. If you are not, please consider it. The OBA is looking for ways to incentivize attorneys to serve the underserved communities and would love to hear from you. On a different but related topic, it is absolutely necessary that we have civility and professionalism in our profession. We live in a society that sometimes seems to be broken or fractured when it comes to civility. The default for many citizens today is to be offen sive in their speech and attitude when responding to those with whom they disagree. Attorneys live with disagreement every day – we thrive on disagreement! Disagreement is what we do; we debate, and we argue, and for litigators, we try cases in front of judges if we cannot reach a reso lution by agreement. The import ant difference between us and

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THE OKLAHOMA BAR JOURNAL