BarTalk June 1999
Volume 11, Number 3

Should a President Be Compensated?

by Doug F Robinson QC

An active, vocal, and well-prepared President can make a difference to the legal profession...

An interesting question has been put before your elected representatives at Provincial Council: should the Branch President, in recognition of the time commitment involved in the role, receive a stipend? Our counterparts at the Law Society of BC and at the National CBA Office both receive stipends, but doing what others do is not the point. What’s at stake, say many of our members, is the Branch’s ability to attract and support the efforts of the best possible person for the Presidential position.

I believe that a stipend is necessary. The fact is, I maybe the last of a vanishing breed. The “good old days” often had large law firms absorbing the loss of a significant portion of a senior practitioner’s billable time for the prestige of having someone from their firm be at the helm of the CBA. Every firm is competing in an incredibly constricted market and constricted economy, and the larger firm is no more capable or willing to absorb the loss of billable time than the smaller one. In addition, the majority of our members are sole practitioners or in small firms, and the economic impact of taking on an active role with the CBA is even more significant.

The role of President includes both figurehead and operational components. There are many official engagements which require the president’s attendance and, more often than not, contribution to the speech-making of the day. That in itself is time-consuming. But what has astonished me the most since I accepted this task, is the time involved in meeting and talking with members of the Branch, the judiciary, the government, the media and the general public. There is an ever-increasing responsibility that comes with this role: people want to talk to me. They want to tell me their opinions about what we are doing, they want to know why we do what we do and what we’re going to do to make things better, and they want to understand what is going on in the justice system from our perspective. It is a fascinating, challenging experience. I wouldn’t trade a moment of it; but I would caution every member to consider the amount of time involved and to consider the toll it takes on anyone’s practice to give up more than one half of one’s time both on weekdays and weekends for one year which is the time necessary to advance the profession properly.

When this issue was discussed at the April Provincial Council meeting, there was some passionate dissension from the floor. “How can I go back to my members where they are struggling for every dollar, and say that I voted to give the President a monetary stipend. Anyone who takes on the role of President should be prepared to volunteer their time.” I agree that everyone in our profession is working harder for a smaller piece of the pie, and it may seem a burden to conceive of having some hard-earned dollars go toward supporting the role of the President. But an active, vocal, and well-prepared President can make a difference to the legal profession when it comes to improving the public image of lawyers, and in speaking up on all of issues that affect our livelihood. The reality is that a President donates much more than a stipend will ever repay, not only during his or her year of service, but in the many years of CBA activity which usually precedes and antedates it.

I believe that it is essential to each of us that future Presidents receive a stipend. I encourage you to consider this issue and discuss it with your Provincial Council representative, or with me, prior to our next meeting on June 26, 1999.

This article was published in the June 1999 issue of BarTalk and is subject to the copyright by the British Columbia Branch of the Canadian Bar Association, 2005, all rights reserved.