It is an honor and privilege to serve as President of the Tuscaloosa County Bar Association. During the hours and weeks after the tornado on April 27, 2011, everywhere we turned we saw our members helping with rescue efforts, removing debris, volunteering at Temporary Emergency Services, providing food for victims, donating resources and time, working volunteer hot lines at the municipal courthouse, assisting local agencies, and helping their neighbors as well as people they didn’t know.
Our members quickly coordinated with the UA law school and State Bar to create legal clinics throughout the disaster area to assist victims with their legal needs. Without hesitation, our members donated thousands of hours of their time to help victims with all of the various legal issues and recovery efforts. Several members of the TCBA received the Alabama State Bar President's Award in recognition of exemplary service to the profession for their efforts for tornado disaster relief assistance.
Recognizing that the recovery effort will be a marathon, many lawyers are still responding to the call to service today by continuing to donate their time, talents and resources to help victims and their families. We continue to offer our prayers and thoughts to the victims recovering from the disaster and invite them to contact the TCBA if we can be of any assistance in helping their recovery.
Members of the Tuscaloosa Bar have a tradition of answering the call to serve throughout our community, state and country. Members of our Bar currently serve as a US Senator, Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, State Legislators, recent Alabama State Bar President and various other judicial and leadership positions.
TCBA continues to support the local Food Bank, police athletic leagues, E! Huskateers, and local charities. Our members are ensuring equal justice and helping those less fortunate by taking a leadership role in the creation and implementation of the Indigent Defense Services legislation recently enacted.
We are blessed to have a talented and energetic Executive Director and group of lawyers serving on the executive committee and the various other committees for our association. In October we will celebrate Pro bono week which provides us another opportunity to provide legal services to the poor and underserved.
On December 19th, we will celebrate the dedication and opening of the new federal courthouse which will serve the legal needs of West Alabama for decades in the future. Thanks to our dedicated CLE organizers, we are looking forward to fantastic speakers at our Fall and Spring CLE seminars that our provided free to our members.
Our Executive Director has been working hard to improve our website to better serve and communicate with our members. Our officers and executive committee are also working on plans to continue the tradition of serving our community, judicial system, and members. Please know our door is always open to you if we can help you or if you have any ideas to help serve our members and community.
Sincerely,
John Lloyd, President