Sean Dolan, executive vice president of operations and general counsel for DRI, discusses what the organization is doing to support its members during these difficult times – and beyond.
CCBJ: DRI is one of the leading associations for civil defense attorneys and in-house counsel. Can you tell us a bit about your background and what drew you to your new role there?
Sean Dolan: During my second year of in law school, I did an externship at the American Dental Association, which was my initial exposure to the association space. From there, I went on to work as a law clerk at the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation, where I eventually transitioned to the general counsel’s office. Then I got connected with APICS, which is now known as the Association for Supply Chain Management. I was there for seven and a half years. I started in the legal department and worked my way up, eventually becoming director of business operations and deputy general counsel, which is when I really started to take on the business side of the association space. I got my certified association executive credential through ASAE (the American Society of Association Executives), and when the opportunity at DRI came about, I knew it was a chance for me to really put my association knowledge to work in combination with in my profession as an attorney. It was the marriage of those two aspects of my career that really excited me and drew me in.
You are one of several recent hires at DRI that indicate that the organization is really investing in its members and ensuring that it has the staff and resources it needs to provide great support for defense attorneys and in-house counsel. Can you talk a bit about those investments?
Yes, I’m very proud of the investments that DRI is making. Most organizations right now are pulling back and trying to weather the storm created by the pandemic. But we’re really seeing it as an investment opportunity. What we’re really trying to do is invest in the best possible staff. For example, the organization did not have an in-house general counsel before I arrived. My role extends beyond that, but I am the general counsel within the organization. We’re going to continue to invest in these roles and additional new hires as well, in order to position DRI for future growth now and into 2021.
DRI is uniquely positioned in that we’re focused exclusively on the defense bar.
In your opinion, what are the most important ways DRI can support its members’ professional and personal development?
Unlike some other bar associations, DRI is uniquely positioned in the sense that we’re focused exclusively on the defense bar. We are lawyers representing businesses, and that affords us the opportunity to focus in on that, rather than trying to cover the entire spectrum. And since we’re so focused on the defense bar, it really allows us to know our members. When they enter this community, they know that they are surrounded by other individuals who are practicing in the same space, whether it be in-house counsel or the law firms that represent businesses. It makes DRI a very, very robust community.
Our corporate counsel community alone has more than 1,200 members, and we’ve found that over 80 percent are engaging with us either in real time or on a daily basis through our community platform. They’re able to exchange ideas and go back and forth on different issues that are arising in the profession. That community of like minded people coming together is the strongest developmental aspect of our organization.
What new initiatives or opportunities can we expect from DRI?
One big one is that we’ve transitioned our annual meeting this year to a virtual event. It’s going to be happening from October 21 to 23, and the theme is “Back to Business with DRI.” We have a number of interesting keynote presentations that are going to be taking place. The first keynote session is going to be with political consultants Paul Begala and Michael Murphy. The annual meeting is just a couple of weeks before the election, so we’re going to have these two political strategists talk about how the upcoming election may affect business and law. We’re also going to have a fireside chat with former U.S. deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein that we’re really excited about. There are more than 1,700 people already registered for the annual meeting virtual event, and we’re still two months out, so we expect that number to continue to grow.
In addition, because we aren’t able to have the face-to-face summit we were hoping to have this year, we’re going to do it next year. We’re hoping to do that in May 2021, in Washington, D.C., though we’re still trying to finalize the details. So stay tuned for that.
We’re trying to do everything we can to ensure that we maintain that sense of community.
How has DRI has been responding to COVID-19?
Well, a lot of our programming had been face-to-face, so we had to transition a number of our seminars to a virtual environment. There were 13 seminars in total that we pivoted to a virtual platform. We’ve also had more than 50 webinars on a variety of topics. Some have been related to the pandemic, others just relating to the law profession in general. And we’ve had more than 400 Zoom calls to engage with our communities and committees and all of our members. The thing that we’re really striving to do is to not only provide great content but also maintain that community feeling that is so important to what we do. With every event that we do, we have some type of social engagement. We’ll have breakout sessions where we can get small groups of people interacting, so that it has more of the feel of a traditional seminar. We have social events. We even have sessions where we’ll do a virtual 5K or morning yoga and things like that. Because we understand that it’s not just content that our members need right now – it’s that sense of community. We’re trying to do everything we can to ensure that even though we can’t physically be together, we still
Published September 17, 2020.
