Attorneys praise MCBA director and his efforts toward greater relevance

It’s been three years since Kevin Ryan took over as executive director of the Monroe County Bar Association, but he didn’t need nearly that much time to feel at home.

“It’s really a welcoming community,” said Ryan, who was hired in the spring of 2016 to replace Mary Loewenguth, who became clerk of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of New York.

“I had a lot of help when I came in,” Ryan said, explaining that the Bar Association search committee gave him a list of people to meet and that project took up a lot of time during his first six months in town.

“It made a big difference,” Ryan said. “It’s easy to move into this community in a way because they’re open, and people reach out to you and welcome you.”

Before coming to Rochester, Ryan was second in command at the Vermont Bar Association, which was very similar in size to the Monroe County Bar Association, which has about 2,000 members.

Carolyn G. Nussbaum, president of the Monroe County Bar Association, was a member of the search committee and interviewed Ryan before he was hired.

“We thought that we were extraordinarily lucky in finding somebody who had the experience that he had,” she said.

She called Ryan “steady, experienced, knowledgeable.”

“And he has been particularly effective at making changes to keep the bar current and responsive to changes in the practice of law,” she said.

Nussbaum and others praised Ryan for his work to offer “cutting-edge” continuing legal education (CLE) programs. In the fall, the Bar Association will offer the ability to access CLEs remotely.

“People can participate without leaving their desks, which recognizes that not all of the lawyers are downtown any more, on the one hand, and that many people can’t get away during the day,” Nussbaum said.

Jon Getz, who served as Bar Association president before Nussbaum, said Ryan “has proven himself to be an excellent executive director.”

“He thinks ahead. He wants to show the relevance of the Bar Association,” Getz said.

Attorney Steven V. Modica, another member of the search committee that interviewed Ryan, called him “very effective leader.”

“These are difficult times for bar associations. The demographics are changing. The baby boomers, which typically always joined bar associations, are starting to retire and, unfortunately, pass away. And the millennial generation does not seem as inclined to automatically join the bar association as most folks of my age did,” Modica said.

But Ryan has been “very creative” at making membership attractive, Modica said.

“I think we’ve been holding our own, which is quite outstanding considering the fact that most organizations are losing a significant number of members every year,” Modica said.

Ryan is not admired for his organizational and professional skills alone. He has formed a genuine bond and a personal connection with the local community and the people he works with.

“He was truly somebody who was so amazing to work with,” Getz said. “He went from somebody that I saw as the executive director, and a colleague, to a friend, and a very good one.”

“He’s an excellent human being. He’s very warm, he’s very kind and he’s very member focused,” Modica said.

Ryan was born in Sycamore, Ill., but his family moved to Boulder, Colo., when he was 5. His mother was a nurse’s aide and his father spent most of his career as a security guard at the U.S. Mint in Denver.

In 1977 Ryan received a bachelor’s degree in political science and history at Regis College (now Regis University). He went to graduate school at Princeton University intending to earn a doctorate in political science, but he took a teaching job at Regis in 1981 and never finished his thesis.

After six years, Ryan decided to go to Sturm College of Law at the University of Denver where he received his law degree in 1991.

Ryan is admitted to practice in Colorado, but he’s done a very limited amount of work as an attorney. After receiving his law degree in 1991 he decided to apply for teaching jobs and was hired at Norwich University in Northfield, Vt., where he taught political science and criminal justice.

“I absolutely love teaching. I like doing the research and the reading that you need to do to keep up with your profession … I like preparing lectures, going in the classroom and working with students,” said Ryan, who planned to become a college professor at one time.

But he found some other aspects of academic life less attractive — such as turf battles between departments and office politics.

He taught at Norwich until 2001 when he became assistant director of the Vermont Bar Association. Ryan expected to become the executive director of the Vermont Bar Association after the person in that job retired, but the board of directors had different plans, which led him to apply for the job at the Monroe County Bar Association.

Much of his work now centers on efforts to maintain membership and relevance for the organization.

“Nonprofit associations, membership associations, aren’t doing well no matter what the field,” Ryan said.

“When I came out of law school … it was what you did. You came out of law school and you joined the local bar association. That’s not true anymore. We have to work hard to get those people to join and we have to work hard to keep them,” he said.

One of the changes Ryan made was to make the first year of membership free.

“But that sets up a difficult dynamic because then they’re not used to paying. And when you started asking them for money you need to show why it’s valuable to them,” he said.

Fewer firms are paying the dues for members, who often are paying down large student loans. The annual membership fee is a reasonable amount, but the bar association is facing competition from other organizations, such as the state and national bar associations, local affinity bars, like the Greater Rochester Association for Women Attorneys, and the Rochester Black Bar Association. In addition, attorneys in specialized practice areas may be satisfied with a membership in their specialty’s niche organization.

“We have to spend a lot of time thinking about what’s the case for being a bar member,” Ryan said.

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