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It was a Wednesday night, a little after 8 p.m., when Senior Judge Thomas J. Felts got the voicemail.
It was from Leslie Craig Henderzahs, the 2020 president of the Indiana State Bar Association, telling Felts that he’d been elected vice president of the ISBA. That meant he was in the rotation to eventually become president of the bar — a position he’ll formally assume at the end of this month.
It’s an interesting position for Felts, who is retired from the Allen Circuit Court, to be in. Admittedly, he wasn’t a particularly active member of the ISBA in the early days of his career, although he’s been a member since he was admitted to the Indiana bar in 1979.
But then came a judicial reception about a decade ago when Felts met Tom Pyrz, who was then the ISBA’s executive director. Felts offhandedly offered his assistance to the ISBA should the bar need it, and Pyrz took him up on the offer.
From representing Allen County on the Board of Governors to chairing the House of Delegates to leading the Leadership Development Academy to serving on committees, Felts has made good on his offer to help out the bar. Now, he’s taking the top spot in a unique position: the first judge known to serve as ISBA president.
Felts doesn’t have a specific “agenda” for his year as president, he said. Rather, his plan is to focus on “access to justice” as a broad theme, with a number of sub-issues falling under that umbrella. He also said he wants to engage with younger members to ensure the bar’s continued relevance.
“I see the ISBA as a big tent — there’s room for everybody,” Felts told Indiana Lawyer. “There’s room for the big law firm people and the small practitioner and the tax lawyer and the public defender. There’s room for everybody. We want to be welcoming of everybody coming in.”
Felts recently sat down with IL for a wide-ranging conversation about his career and his plans for his year as ISBA president. A portion of that conversation, edited and condensed for space, follows:
IL: Why has a judge never served as ISBA president?
I’ve heard various comments about that. I think in some people’s minds in the past, there was a perception that perhaps the rank-and-file lawyers would not want to have a judge as president; it just wasn’t something that would not be a good fit. That’s been told to me from people who have been involved in the state bar for a number of years. I think looking through the judicial canons, it would be very difficult for a sitting judge, primarily from an advocacy standpoint. When you’re a sitting judge, you’re very much representing the whole court — certainly the court in your county, but also the court system as a whole. Senior judges have a wonderful status in the sense that you’re not bound by the administrative or the more broad-ranging parts that a sitting judge is, who serves a term and runs for election; you don’t have those things going on in your life. That’s an amateur reason for why I think there’s never been a judge before.
What’s on your agenda for your year as president?
I want to focus on the broad term of “access to justice.” I have a couple other things of my own that I want to work on separately, but if there is an identifiable theme for the year, it’s access to justice, very broadly termed.
I also wanted to re-up on the committees I was familiar with, so I went back on State Legislation and back on Improvements in the Judicial System. As a result of my first term on the board, I got very involved win the Leadership Development Academy. Mentoring and training young lawyers and also young judges has been a passion of mine, and I was Leadership Development Academy chair for four years. I reengaged with the Leadership Development Academy, which was cool this year because my youngest son is a lawyer and is a member of the 2023 class.
Some of the more established committees I reengaged with are the Well-Being Committee and the Diversity Committee. The Diversity Committee, I’m so proud of them — they’re not very old in terms of being in existence, but I believe they’re up to around 80 members. That seems to be the place where the young lawyers are going, and I want to go where the young lawyers are going because that’s the future of the association. Young lawyers are also very invested in well-being and wellness, so I want to reengage with those committees. My idea is to take it a step further and include diversity in every aspect of the bar structure, like selecting of faculty, committee chairs, planning events. And then well-being and wellness, personally I am very much an advocate of that.
Tell us more about your plans for A2J work.
It’s access to the profession itself, so trying to increase efforts in colleges and high schools, working to get people involved early on and interested in what being a lawyer is all about and at the same time making sure to include schools and communities who might not normally think this (the law) is a possible path for them. That’s been so important to Indiana. Rural justice, talking with bar presidents around the country, it’s an issue everywhere.
And then the whole pro bono situation. I have served two terms plus a year on the Indiana Bar Foundation, and what Chuck (Dunlap) and Marilyn (Smith) and the staff have done there, it’s just phenomenal, especially the last year and a half with their housing initiative. The point is that the state bar can’t do any of these on its own, so you look for partners. There’s the courts innovation project, the people there, the people at the bar foundation — we can collaborate to work out these things.
And then there are some internal things we’ve been discussing. Some states are calling it the “nurse practitioner model,” which has pros and cons — some people like it and some people don’t, but tackling what the definition of a paralegal is. I think the term is “allied legal professional,” and there’s a whole wide range of thoughts about that. These are all ideas for people who can’t afford real licensed attorneys but can still have access to legal assistance. We want to do what we can to help with that. And then, how is AI going to come into that?
Are there any issues at the ISBA that you’ll need to address?
Membership is always at the forefront because you want to make sure you’re providing value to your members and encouraging more lawyers to become members. As you know, membership in all organizations post-COVID is difficult. People got used to not being part of stuff, and to reengage after being away has been difficult. People just aren’t in the joining frame of mind. When I came out of law school, it was the normal course of business that you join the bar association, but young lawyers are questioning a lot of stuff.
That’s another reason why I want to identify committees where I think young lawyers are involved. They’re just a lot more independent thinkers — they don’t do things just because that’s the way it’s always been done, and bravo for that. So we want to make sure we provide value to all lawyers, and I especially would like to be an attractive organization to young lawyers.
So what’s your pitch to convince young lawyers to join the ISBA?
I’ve got a young lawyer at home. I think I’d sell him on the fact that people are just more isolated, so the bar association can be a matter of connection. When lawyers my age are asked, “What advice would you give young people?” it’s consistent: It’s always, always, always been about relationships. It always has been and it always will be, in my opinion; it’s the most important. How many things in life are built on relationships? That connection piece that maybe we lost or set aside during COVID — it’s about reengaging that thought again.
The state bar is a great value for the money. Members get quality CLE programming at no cost to them. LDA is a great recruiting tool. The president has three appointments — secretary, treasurer and counsel to the president — and all three that I appointed are LDA grads and are diverse.
So it’s trying to energize them (young lawyers). This bar association is open to new ideas. Don’t’ sit back and whine and complain; here’s your chance to come in and step up and do something. So I think it’s just trying to impress on them that it really is worth their while.•
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