My second week at the OBA

Last week at the OBA, I worked six hours on Monday, Wednesday and Friday and accomplished many tasks. It was the final full week before the Oklahoma Bar Journal (OBJ) goes to press for the February issue, so much of my time was spent working on assignments regarding the publication. Throughout the week, I became much more familiar with the office and what responsibilities the public relations staff has on a day-to-day basis.

For the OBJ, I was responsible for compiling the final version of the "Bench & Bar Briefs" section for approval before printing. The OBA has its own style manual the communications staff uses in conjunction with the AP Style Book. I keep both out on my desk when working with print pieces, because some of the guidelines conflict.

In the spring, the OBA Communications Department spends much of its time preparing for the Law Day event I mentioned in last week's post. As part of of this event, the OBA Law Day Committee judges the art work and creative writing entries submitted to the Law Day competition. This week, the winners were finalized and I created a document containing the names, grades and schools of the first, second, third place and honorable mention winners along with samples of their work. This document will be put on the OBA Web site at a later date along with photographs of all the art work entries that I took. I also finalized the Excel spreadsheet containing all the information about the entries for the OBA Law Day database.

I was most excited about getting to compose a few pieces last week. I wrote press releases about the Oklahoma Supreme Court School of the Year and Teacher of the Year Awards and about the Tax Attorney of the Year. These were the first real press releases intended for publication that I've ever written. It was a gratifying learning experience to have them approved by the public relations staff. I hope I am asked to write more in the future.

Because working on the press releases went so well, I was asked to compose an article for the February OBJ issue, highlighting Black History Month. The article covers the careers of four prominent African-American members of the Oklahoma legal profession. The research for the piece was interesting and it was a great feeling to know that what I was working on had the purpose of recognizing successful attorneys and judges.

Last week, I also filled a brochure order. The OBA provides informational legal brochures at no cost to certain establishments and charges a small fee for attorneys who wish to use the brochures for various educational purposes. I made an exciting trip to the OBA storage and mail rooms and was able to see how the behind the scenes operations work.