DTCI’s incoming president looks for new approaches to attract younger members

The incoming Defense Trial Counsel of Indiana president didn’t start out with his sights set on becoming a lawyer.

In fact, Scott Cockrum started out studying engineering at the University of Southern Indiana in Evansville.

He found his way to a career in law after speaking with a professor in graduate school at Indiana State University. Cockrum also had a friend at Notre Dame Law School at the time and that’s where he ended up receiving his law degree.

After graduation, Cockrum began working as a defense lawyer on medical malpractice cases in Hammond and eventually became a partner in the northwest Indiana and Indianapolis law offices of Lewis Brisbois.

Cockrum one of the things he looks forward to the most with DTCI are the annual meetings.

“The opportunity to actually see people, talk to people, listen to the different people we have, and the knowledge and experience, the depth and breadth of experience is always a great learning opportunity,” Cockrum said.

Ahead of DTCI’s annual conference this week, Cockrum sat down with the Indiana Lawyer to discuss his plans for his year as DTCI president. That conversation, edited and condensed for space, follows.

When did you get involved with DTCI?

My partner here, Renee Mortimer, (who) was my partner at a prior firm as well, … was involved pretty heavily, and in fact, I think, was treasurer at the time, when she asked if I would present at the annual meeting. So I came and did a presentation at the annual meeting (at Indiana University) Bloomington one year, about eight to 10 years ago. I did an article for the journal a year or two later, and then just kept coming back, and then got more involved here as time went on, became a board member, and then an officer.

I think it is interesting, because I know looking at some of the other questions and other people, I came to it a little bit late, because I didn’t really maybe see the benefit of it as a young lawyer. And it wasn’t until a little bit later in time, when I had the opportunity to present at an annual meeting that I said, ‘Wait a minute, this actually would be a good organization to be part of.’

What is your agenda for your year as DTCI president?

I think one of my jobs is really to just keep the train on the tracks. DTCI has done a lot of good things before I was around, and we’ve done a lot of good things in the last few years, that there’s been a lot of forward momentum and movement, especially post-COVID, as things have changed kind of over time. But we’re starting to move forward, and I feel like just keeping things moving in that direction is one of the easier approaches.

One of the jobs that happens to be for my year is looking at the long-range plan, and we put together kind of, what’s the long range plan going to look like for DTCI for the next five years and then some. And we are really looking at trying to bring in younger people, newer lawyers, to start to get more involved and more engaged.

There’s a saying that, ‘we stand on the shoulders of giants.’ A lot of times in scientific fields, they talk about that situation, you learn from the past, and you look forward and see how you do it. And I said that’s kind of where I am, is we’ve seen all the good things that people have done in the past, and all the great lawyers who have been a part of the organization for many years and have put this organization to a point where we’re at this place we are now, and we’re in a great place.

For that reason, we take those people, we look forward and we say, what can we do next? And how do we look beyond the horizon and start to do more? And so that’s one of my goals, is to honor what we’ve done in the past, but really look forward a little bit in the next few years and see how do we move to the next, maybe not next generation completely, but at least involve the next generation and look at things in the future.

And then the other thing would be just to kind of start to develop, or not start, but to revisit and redevelop this engagement, both individually as groups and kind of geographically across the state, and get more people involved from the corners, as opposed to, sometimes we get a little concentrated on Indianapolis, and having me here from northwest Indiana, predominantly, coming in. I have an interest in seeing people coming in from these other areas and maybe becoming more involved than they would have in the past, because of the limitations of geography.

Do you have many young lawyers in DTCI and continuing to join?

We have a pretty active young lawyers group, and we have had quite a few starting to be involved. It’s a little more difficult now, maybe than it was in the past, to get younger associates or younger lawyers, because firms don’t want to pay for the fees. Maybe the lawyers themselves don’t see the benefit of networking as much as perhaps we used to, but we do have a fair amount, and really the ones we have in our young lawyers section have been really active and really involved in working with trying to attract other young lawyers and also just trying to get more engagement.

Even having them as members is one thing, but to try to get them where they’re coming to meetings or calling in or being part of our newsletter or organizing events, where we really need to have those young lawyers kind of step up and give them an opportunity. And we have quite a few. We’ve had a couple of good events around the state. I know this year, we always have a CLE in the summer that the young lawyer (group) sponsors. So really, our young lawyers group is one of the more active sections and it would be nice to see them continue to expand their role in the next year or two, as we have more of them, hopefully feel more engaged and see the opportunities.

Do you foresee any challenges for DTCI?

I think every organization has had some, you know, challenges with regard to either membership or again, engagement is always a big issue, and COVID only exacerbated that for a lot of organizations, not just ours, but it does seem like it’s a problem for everybody to make sure they keep that membership up, keep new people coming in, and keep people engaged, particularly when you’re trying to decide, how do you handle a different kind of practice, the work from home mentality, the being on Zoom approach, which certainly can work.

I mean, do lawyers in particular have a lot more experience with going to court via Zoom and things like that? And it is learning how to meet those lawyers where they’re at and give them an opportunity to be involved, but also realize that there’s still a lot of lawyers that like having an annual meeting in person that we can be at, and yet, we can find other ways to engage people when they have those opportunities remotely or don’t have necessarily.

I mean, my daughter, for example, went to law school, as she was in law school in 2020, she did a lot of her practicing, her learning, how to do moot court things was all remote from her living room with Zoom. We have to realize that these lawyers who are coming up now, and that’s lawyers now, who have three to five years of experience, sometimes more, have a much different experience in terms of how they’ve developed than somebody who’s been around a long time like I have.

We do have to realize that, but I don’t know if that’s unique to DTCI. I think that’s an organizational problem for any group that’s trying to maintain the membership and engagement that they need is to recognize that there is a difference in the way people practice now, and so we’ve got to find ways to meet them where they’re at.

What is your pitch for why someone should join DTCI?

I think there is such an opportunity in an organization like this to get to work with people with the knowledge and experience statewide, in a similar practice to what we all do, but also sometimes different, sometimes unique, at least sometimes specific to a location or a type of judge or even a type of case.

But the opportunity to both learn from those people, meet those people, have that experience, to network is really the great opportunity that you have as part of the organization. And then on top of it, you can get the additional CLE, I mean, at the annual meeting, or some of the other CLE that they have during the year. And it’s actually quite a bit of fun in the process. Because we do have, at the annual meetings, a young lawyer-sponsored pub crawl, typically, or some event where there’s socializing and friendships and camaraderie to be had that we don’t always get outside or in court.

Even with fellow defense lawyers, you don’t always have the opportunity to connect on that level. So to have that experience, to be able to learn from the people who are here, network with them, experience all that, and still have a good time, is the elevator pitch for what someone really should take a look at, particularly if they do more than 50% of their time as a defense attorney.•