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Happy Law Day, BBA! As promised, we want to share a couple of the beautiful office views that were sent in.

From Carla Moynihan at Sherin & Lodgen — “New law firm, new downtown view and new orchid plant:”

And from Phelps Turner at Sugarman, Rogers, Barshak & Cohen: “Sunset over Boston from the offices of Sugarman, Rogers, Barshak & Cohen, P.C.:”

Gorgeous! But these totally can’t compare to the incredibly scenic, picturesque, romantic view from the office of the BBA’s very own Director of Communications:

You know you’re jealous.

Missed the chance to send in a picture? Don’t worry! We’ll have plenty of other interactive opportunities coming up on Voices of the Bar.

On Friday, the legal community will be celebrating Law Day, which offers special recognition to the legal community and how it shapes our society. Naturally, the BBA is ready to have a week-long celebration and reflection of the profession leading up to the day itself. (Actually, who are we kidding — we celebrate the legal community and its members all year round!)

Part of the purpose of Law Day, besides educating others about the law, democracy, and the justice system, is about communicating what it’s really like to be a lawyer and what lawyers do on an everyday basis — including some of the more nitty-gritty details. We want to really dig into the idea of “A Day in the Life of a Lawyer” to give a more comprehensive picture of what it’s actually like.

To that end, we’re asking for your participation! An open call:

Send us a picture of the view from your office!

We’re looking for all types of submissions. Maybe you’re on the top floor of a downtown skyscraper and look out over the whole city; or maybe the most accurate view of your office is the piles of important legal documents you’re working on. We want to see it all! With enough responses, we’ll run a photo set this Friday on Law Day itself.

To participate, send in your photo (with a brief caption, if you’d like) to bbaweek@bostonbar.org by 4:00 pm on Friday, May 1.

We’re excited to see what you see on a daily basis — so start sending those snapshots!

As told by otters. Because who doesn’t love otters? (Plus, they’re famously smart and charming – just like our members.)

So you’ve looked at the BBA’s calendar and an interesting program caught your eye. Maybe it promises to offer details about an area of your practice that you’ve been curious about; maybe it will cover a cutting-edge topic outside of your practice area that you’ve been dying to explore; or maybe it has a networking element where you can meet high-profile attorneys and knowledgeable experts in a particular subject area. Whatever it is, you’re ready to dip your toes into the water and attend.

You decide to enlist another member of your organization to come with you: after all, the more the merrier, and they’re sure to find the program fascinating too.

You walk into one of the BBA’s historic meeting rooms and find yourself face-to-face with other like-minded attorneys waiting for the program to begin. Who knows – you might even say you’ve found your pack.

The program starts, and after a while, you find that you’re learning new developments, practice tips, and other important information that you might have missed otherwise. The speaker is well-versed and offers a compelling presentation. You are, in a word, captivated.

What’s more, with your new knowledge, you’re ready to continue to explore these uncharted territories and develop yourself into even more of a leader in the field.

At the conclusion of the program, you walk out feeling inspired and vowing to check the BBA’s calendar to see what else is on the horizon – you can hardly wait!

Make sure to cheer extra loud for these names on Monday during the Boston Marathon! And runners, we already have some words of encouragement coming your way in this week’s Voices of the Bar question.

Susan Bourque (Parker Scheer) – Fifth Boston Marathon

Kathy Henry (Plymouth Rock Assurance Corp.) – Ninth Boston Marathon; running on Team MR8 in honor of Martin Richard

Emily Hodge (Choate Hall & Stewart) – Sixth Boston Marathon; running on the Dana-Farber Marathon Challenge Team

Kathleen Joyce (Boston Redevelopment Authority) – Third Boston Marathon

J. Patrick Kennedy (Bulkey, Richardson and Gelinas) – Eighth Boston Marathon

Sa’adiyah Masoud (Wilson Elser Moskowitz Edelman & Dicker) – First Boston Marathon

Ryan Pace (Anderson Kreiger) – Twenty-second (!) Boston Marathon

Chinh Pham (Greenberg Traurig) – Seventh Boston Marathon

William Sinnott (Donoghue Barrett & Singal) – Fifth Boston Marathon

Congratulations, all!

P.S. Are you running but missed our initial call and don’t see your name up here? Please let us know by emailing bbaweek@bostonbar.org — we want to cheer for you too!

If so, the BBA wants to know!

The 2015 Boston Marathon is coming up on April 20. Always a special event in our city, it’s been even more meaningful in these past couple of years. We want to make sure to commemorate and celebrate the participation of our members by offering a special shout-out before the race.

So if you’re running this year, please send an email to bbaweek@bostonbar.org by Wednesday, April 15, including your name; your firm, company, or school affiliation; and how many years you’ve participated in running the Marathon. We’ll include your info in a round-up post that will appear in the April 16 edition of BBA Week so that all of our members can cheer for you on the big day – and make sure to congratulate you after you’ve finished!

Looking forward to hearing from our runners…

This seasonally appropriate bunny looks ready for mischief…

Well, there’s no joke here (Voices of the Bar is, of course, extremely serious and never makes jokes at all, ever). But have you been to our homepage yet? Notice anything a little…unusual?

The BBA does like a good joke, so keep an eye on our website and social media pages throughout the day!

…and we hope you are too!

     10.  Warmer weather

Let’s just start by laying out a universal truth: we’re all sick of snow, transit delays, freezing temperatures, and the concept of winter in general. Time for sunshine and roses, literally.

     9.  Outdoor activities

Hand in hand with warmer weather is the opportunity to take advantage of outdoor activities – like the 16^th Annual Charles River clean-up. Soak up the sun while doing good for our city!

     8.  Law Day in the Schools

And speaking of doing good for our city – Law Day in the Schools is coming up April 29-May 6, centered around the theme of the Magna Carta. It’s a great way to volunteer your time to support Boston public school students…and particularly in the younger classes, it’s really, really cute.

7.  The spring edition of the Boston Bar Journal

No spoilers, but we’ve heard that there’s a great line-up of articles on the way. Catch up on your reading here.

6.  Bench-bar conferences…

The perfect chance to meet and ask those burning questions of our esteemed members of the judiciary. Our first one on the calendar is the Superior Court Bench Meets Bar Conference on April 6, along with the Young Bar Meets Bankruptcy Bench on the same date and Bankruptcy Bench Meets Bar in May.

     5.  …and spring receptions

The perfect chance to catch up with other attorneys! We have several lined up with more on the way, so once again, we urge you to keep an eye on that calendar.

     4.  Let’s not forget our affinity bar partner galas!

Our six affinity bar partners throw some pretty great events for the end of the year; not to mention, we’ll be capping off the spring with a multi-bar association mixer.

     3.  The end of the semester

For our law student readers who have been poring over their readings, spring signals the end of, well, seemingly endless studying. Now you can focus on career-oriented events, like our Essential Skills for Succeeding in Multigenerational Workplace (this one is for everybody) and several speed networking events.

     2.  That reminds us – plenty of networking opportunities (with a twist)

The BBA believes in getting groups together as often as we can over educational topics, pressing matters in the profession, and evening events. Of course, we like to spice these up when we can. Have you heard about the New Lawyers Scotch Tasting with the Junior Fellows, with oysters to boot? You have now.

     1.  The Law Day Dinner

Because seriously, have you seen this lineup?

We all know the feeling: you need to get your professional headshot updated into something a little sleeker and modern. You get dressed to the nines. You’re ready to go. In front of the camera, you take a deep breath, throw your shoulders back, and give it your best 100-watt toothy grin. You feel calm, cool – regal, even. You feel a little something like this…

…but in reality, you look a little more like this…

…or this…

…or maybe even this.

Something about being in front of a camera changes a lot of people. We go from well-adjusted, functioning human beings to something that looks like Dr. Frankenstein got a little too carried away halfway through and then gave up. We go from the Jekyll of our regular personas to the Hyde of our photographed selves. There are so many rules about how to hold yourself to put your best features forward – and the more you try to follow them, the more those features go running for the hills and your worst features decide to throw a party in their absence.

You also need to think about what your headshot says about you: the best professional headshots will communicate that you’re serious and competent, but also affable and approachable, with a background to match.

Never thought this hard about the psychology of your headshot before, or not quite sure if you believe in it? Let us prove it to you with the help of the BBA’s own Director of Communications, Kerry Crisley, who has bravely offered herself as a subject of our headshot What Not to Do portion and has personally provided candid interpretations of what her past headshots are really saying.

What Your Headshot Says About You

In the “no, never” category:

And in the “nice try, but still maybe not” category:

If you’re starting to feel a bit sheepish about your own headshot, don’t worry: as usual, the BBA has you covered. With the backdrop of the BBA’s classy-chic Claflin Center, we’ll be hosting a headshot photo shoot for BBA members from 2:00-6:00 on Thursday, April 2. Just sign up here, email Maggie DeMoura with your preferred time frame, and you can get on this level:

p.s. here’s a picture of a kitten with a camera. Because – well, do we really need a reason?

There’s a big week ahead for ‘Voices of the Bar,’ but we don’t want to forget anything that happened last week — including Casino Night, one of the most unabashedly high-energy BBF events, which not only transformed 16 Beacon Street into a two-levels casino but also raised money to provide Boston youth with summer job opportunities. Not a bad deal* right there, eh?

We hope you didn’t miss out on Casino Night; if you did, you can relive the magic by scrolling through our event photo album, linked to the right. Keep an eye on the sidebar, since we’ll be changing it up from time to time to feature different albums and events.

Stay tuned later this week for notable quotes, more photos, the week’s question, and of course, the next round of March Madness!

*even worse puns than this to be continued…

“Since when do I click on ‘Voices of the Bar’ and wind up on a blog?” you might be asking yourselves. It’s a fair question — and, if we’re being honest, one we’re asking ourselves as well. A ‘Voices of the Bar’ blog? How did that happen?

Ultimately, we couldn’t be more excited. See, we love sending out the weekly ‘Voices of the Bar’ question and finding out what our members think about subjects ranging from pro bono work to favorite comedians, and we know that you do too; but we realized that there are so many other opportunities to hear from our members. The ‘Voices of the Bar’ question goes out every week to a limited number of people, meaning that most of our members aren’t reached on a weekly basis, and some may never have had the chance to answer at all!

That’s why we decided to have ‘Voices of the Bar’ live on a blog platform where we could expand it and hear more from all of you — and have some fun along the way. We’ll still continue the tradition of asking a group of members the question of the week, so you always have that to look forward to every Thursday in BBA Week. If that’s all you want to read, then that’s great! But if you’re curious about what else we have up our sleeves, check back during the week for more material. We’ll be including Q&A sessions with members, open questions, photo sets, polls, and much more — basically, adding even more ways to hear, learn about, and interact with all 12,000+ Voices of the Bar that we consider ourselves so lucky to have as our membership.

Plus, we’ve already posted a picture of a puppy dressed as a superhero….so we think we’re off to a pretty good start.