Message from President Emily Coughlin and CEO Dean Martinez Regarding 2021 In-Person Programs

February 26, 2021

Dear DRI Members, Leaders, and Friends,

We hope you and your families continue to remain safe and well.

Over the past 12 months we have seen how much energy our members are devoting to their practices, families, and to DRI, and we realize the lingering toll COVID is taking on everyone. General fatigue from the pandemic is very real, and it continues to affect all of us, even with some promising news on the horizon.

COVID has dealt a particularly tough blow to lawyers. As attorneys, we spend our days mitigating risk, and we are accustomed to having the ability to influence outcomes for our clients, providing them – and ourselves – with some sense of certainty and dependability. As a Law.com article recently observed, "The Coronavirus has a particular impact on the types of people who lawyers tend to be – people who like data, control, and predictability. They’re used to outcomes based on their input. One of the features of the pandemic is this absolutely unknown, lack of control." There is no doubt that COVID has added uncertainty and often frustration to our personal and professional lives.

Our job at DRI is to do all that we can do to help make your lives easier and more predictable, especially now. Our mission is to provide you with the programs you need to succeed and to help you navigate your practice and your life. DRI is working hard to not only monitor the fluid COVID situation, but also to carefully consider how our decisions affect your member experience. We know how much everyone wants to get together and reconnect with their DRI family.

We want to acknowledge that DRI’s shift from live to virtual programming in 2020, and our continued need to shift in 2021, has put extra demands and burdens on our volunteers. As we attempt to be as responsive as possible to all of you, our members, the burden and uncertainty on our volunteers has increased. Please join us, the Executive Committee, and the Board of Directors in thanking all of our volunteers and, in particular, our programming steering committee leaders and Law Institute leaders for all of the extra time, effort, and flexibility they have shown and continue to show. Although no doubt fatigued, they have worked tirelessly to put on as much virtual programming as possible, and to return to live programming as soon as we can. We are humbled by their unwavering commitment to us, each other, and most importantly, to you – our members. Thank you!

Sincerely,