Day. We go up to The Hill and we talk about things like Legal Services Corporation and proper funding for that or other issues that are important to the profession. In recent memory, we’ve lobbied on things like law student debt and attorney-client privilege, things of that nature that affect how we are able to practice law.”

Through initiatives that she would be able to implement, Behnke would set the direction of the association, just like the current president.

“The current ABA president has an initiative she calls the Three Cs: Civics, Civility and Collaboration,” Behnke said. “It is focused on trying to model that civic dialogue that we were talking about and make sure that people understand what is involved in the issues and having civil conversations and not just devolving into the presumption of what we think someone’s politics are. Trust and confidence in our legal system might get in the way of criminal justice reform and things of that nature, the Legal Services Corporation and making sure that there is proper funding so that people can actually navigate and use the system and have proper representation. You are the voice of the profession. Sometimes you get to choose the issues that you get to focus on and sometimes life presents an issue that you need to address.”

While it has been overshadowed by The Federalist Project in terms of evaluating the qualifications of nominated Supreme Court justices, the ABA has historically done its own evaluation of nominated judges.

“The ABA does still do its judicial review,” Behnke said. “We are non-partisan. We do look at the judicial temperament and intellectual horsepower if you will. That process is a very robust process whether the administration depends on or relies on what we do. But we feel that it is very important and we continue to do that work. The media doesn’t focus on it as much. And I think people don’t often actually look at the spreadsheet because we have done that same work under every different administration. And we found people highly qualified under each of those different administrations. So we’re not doing it based on politics.”

It is important for Behnke to make sure that the ABA is visible within the legal community and beyond. Its programming has incredible reach.

“It’s often the case that I will talk to someone about the ABA and someone will say, ‘The ABA ought to do something about X,’” Behnke said. “And I say, ‘We do.’ Now the good news is we do. The bad news is they didn’t know it. So we have to do more to help people understand the breadth of the work that we do. Or sometimes people will say, ‘You know, I just had the most extraordinary experience …’ And I will say, ‘That’s great. That was done by the ABA.’ They understand the value of what they were participating in. But they also wasn’t done by the ABA. Again some of the things I want to work on are making sure that we do a better job connecting lawyers and the public to the work that we do so they understand the breadth of what we have available. If someone says, ‘I really want to work on X’ or ‘I am concerned about Y, that they know that the ABA is a place that they could roll up their sleeves and get involved.”

Behnke will be helping the ABA get ahead of the curve as it tackles current and emerging legal issues.

“And I want to make sure that — the ABA will soon be celebrating its 150^th anniversary — we are looking ahead, that we are preparing for the way law is practiced in the next 20 years,” Behnke said. “You hear things about Chat GPT and AI and all of those kinds of things. We have new areas of the practice of law as laws change such as legalized marijuana. There are people who are setting up businesses legally to do that. There are different things and it is going to continue to change. And we need to be able to have the resources to help lawyers figure out how to practice in those various new areas, how to practice effectively and ethically. People need to think about the ethical issues just because there is a new technology. How do you ensure that you are still meeting your ethical obligation to your clients?”

IT technology is a huge area that the ABA will have to confront. With the emergence of Chat GPT and other IT, it is speculated that it could put some lawyers out of work. But there is a lot of complexity to the issue.

“It’s like every new technology,” Behnke observed. “I think people thought with fax machines they wouldn’t need a lawyer. There are ethical issues. This is a technology that scans the web for everything that has been written. If you have a case and an argument that hasn’t yet been made, Chat GPT isn’t going to say, ‘Oh, but we could go this step further.’ It can find stuff that is like what you have. It may not be able make an analogy, ‘This is not exactly like that, but it is somewhat like that. And so I can take these arguments and use them and I can take these arguments and use them, but I shouldn’t use that argument.’ That not what Chat GPT will do at this point. I don’t know if you will replace lawyers. But those are issues that we have to think about and figure out how to use them ethically and incorporate them to be effective and efficient or watch out because they actually might harm someone. They might write their brief using Chat GPY and completely miss the argument in the case that you are actually writing.”