John B. Lieberman III believes he served his fellow lawyers and everyone else in the area in his two years as Schuylkill County Bar Association president.
"The bar association ... tries to provide the best legal services to the community," Lieberman said Friday at a luncheon at the county courthouse honoring him and other past presidents of the organization. "The bar association reaches out to the community."
Lieberman, who headed the organization in 1972-73, was one of 16 former bar association presidents who attended the luncheon, the first of its kind in the county. Current bar association president Sudhir R. Patel hopes it is not the last.
"I wanted to start a tradition," he said. "We have 18 past presidents. I thought it would be a nice way to recognize them."
Those who came agreed that their two years as the head of the organization gave them opportunities to serve their communities and their fellow legal practitioners. Service to other lawyers and the community as a whole was what they said they emphasized when they headed the organization.
"We established the Schuylkill County Bar Association Scholarship Fund," said Leonard G. Schumack, who served in 1974-75. "We started with $5,000."
Now, that fund has about $185,000 in it, and provides financial help to law students from the county, Schumack said.
"Any resident of Schuylkill County who has been a resident for at least two years can file an application, provided they have been accepted at a law school," he said.
Joseph P. Troy, who spent 1996-97 as the organization's leader, said the position enables the officeholder to make a difference in the county. He said the bar association matters to both lawyers and laymen.
"It's important to the lawyers because it gives us the opportunity to meet and consult with colleagues," Troy said. "For the public, look at some of the things we do."
Those include the annual winter coat drive and the efforts to combat the unauthorized practice of law, he said. That effort protects the public from people who would take advantage of people for their own gain, according to Troy.
James C. Bohorad, who served in 2006-07, said his term as president helped him become a better lawyer by understanding the legal system better.
"(It was) an opportunity to get to know members of the bar association better and to understand how the bar association operates locally and across the state," he said.
James P. Wallbillich said his main contribution as president in 1998-99 was to help lawyers provide pro bono, or free, legal services to people who could not otherwise afford them, a measure that greatly aided the community.
"It's good for everybody," he said. "There's a class of people who aren't served well enough by our legal system."
Making a difference was why the dean of the county's bar, Fred J. Wiest Jr., originally got involved in the association that he headed in 1956-57.
"There were things to be done," he said. "We weren't satisfied with the way it was."
That striving to make things better is why Patel wanted to start a new tradition by honoring the lawyers who have headed the association.
"It's pretty impressive," he said while looking around the room at his predecessors. "There really isn't a single area of the law or a single issue that hasn't been handled by somebody who's going to be in the room today."