Philadelphia Bar Considering Doing Away with Nominating Committee

The Legal Intelligencer
By Amaris Elliott-Engel

March 27, 2008

The Philadelphia Bar Association is considering the elimination of the nominating committee because of criticisms that a body that gives official approval to some leadership candidates and not others shuts out participation in the bar association's top positions.

During the Feb. 28 Board of Governors meeting, the board adopted a resolution that will eliminate the nominating committee and create an "elections committee" in its stead. The resolution referred the matter to the charter and bylaws committee to draft an amendment to the association's bylaws. The bylaws amendment will be considered for the board's approval at today's Board of Governors meeting.

A. Michael Pratt, current chancellor of the bar association, created a nominating committee task force at the beginning of the year to evaluate if the nominating committee had any value and if it was an objective process and to consider what reforms or alternatives could be developed to improve the leadership election process.

Pratt said he formed the task force to address the fear that nominating committee selections were an "insider's game [and] not a fair process, not a confidential process" and "kept out a number of potentially good candidates because of the perception it's an insider's game."

The task force, chaired by Bruce A. Franzel of Oxenburg & Franzel, recommended the elimination of the nominating committee and the creation of an elections committee. Franzel also co-chairs the charter and bylaws committee with Rudy Garcia of Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney.

Pratt said he felt the nominating committee needed to be at least reformed because of the perceptions that it was not an objective process and that only leadership candidates with an inside connection to the committee membership got an official stamp of approval.

However, Pratt was indifferent to whether the task force chose to reform the process or elected the larger overhaul of eliminating the nominating committee. He said he left it up to the group to come up with proposals for the Board of Governors to consider.

If the Board of Governors adopts the bylaw at today's meeting, the bylaw will be put to the vote of the membership at the next quarterly meeting. If the bylaw is approved by the membership, the new system would be in place by this year's annual meeting and in time for the selection of the next vice chancellor and other bar leaders.

In late 1997, during the tenure of former Chancellor Clifford E. Haines of Haines & Associates, the Board of Governors passed a resolution calling for the re-examination or the abolishment of the nominating committee, according to Ken Shear, the bar association's executive director.

"But it didn't go anywhere because it was a timing issue," Shear said, because the resolution was passed at the end of the year just before the board's composition changed.

Haines said that the nominating committee imprimatur on some candidates can be irrelevant to whom the membership picks in an election. He pointed out that he won the vice chancellor election even when he wasn't a nominee of the nominating committee and that he's not the only candidate who has done so.

Haines said he also feels that a leadership candidate is running to seek the support of the entire bar, not just the support of the Board of Governors' current crop of leaders, to receive a stamp of approval.

"It certainly is true that outside organizations, the trial lawyers, the Justinians . . . all have historically endorsed a particular person to run. I don't have a problem with that . . . Those organizations consist of members of associations that were outside the political structure of the bar association," Haines said.

"When a candidate announces he or she wants to run, they are running to the entire membership of the organization. It didn't seem to me appropriate that the leadership of the association creates a committee that says, in effect, 'Here's who we support.'"

But despite the lack of action stemming from that 1997 resolution, the nominating committee has remained an itch that needed to be scratched for the bar association, Shear said.

"There was always the feeling on the part of some individuals that it was anti-democratic for an organization that really strives for transparency . . . If people wanted to run, were they being discouraged by the actions of the nominating committee if they weren't nominated?" Shear said. "Those are questions you can't answer, but you know there was an itch there. Finally, it not only had to be scratched but it had to be excised."

Shear said he personally used to think there was utility in the nominating committee, but he began to wonder - since the committee only nominates three candidates for the Board of Governors while there are two more openings on the board, requiring some candidates to run outside of the nominating process - if getting rid of the committee entirely was the best option.

Shear said he changed his mind about the value of the nominating committee in the last five years after hearing from some candidates who said they were embarrassed they weren't nominated and decided to just not run at all.

He said he wondered, "What is it doing to the association?"

The nominating committee is responsible for endorsing one or more nominees for vice chancellor, secretary, treasurer, assistant secretary and assistant treasurer as well as three nominees for membership on the Board of Governors.

The nominating committee is made up of the chancellor, chancellor-elect, vice chancellor, the two immediate past chancellors, three members of the Board of Governors picked by the board, one person designated by each section or division from among its executive committee members and four chairs of standing committees picked from four groupings of committees.

Under the proposed system, Franzel said, the elections committee would be chaired by the immediate past chancellor and 10 others appointed by the current chancellor and approved by the board. The elections committee would hold candidate forums during which candidates would present their qualifications and their interest in the positions they're running for. The candidate forums also would be available via podcast on the association's Web site.

Candidates for a board membership post would be required to collect 25 signatures and submit their nominating petitions to the secretary of the association. Thirty-five signatures would be required for line officers, and 100 signatures would be required for the vice chancellor.

Under the proposed system, "no one runs with a step up because they've been endorsed by the nominating committee. Hopefully, this will encourage more people to come forward and run for the positions," Franzel said.