Our Bar is 100 years old! What a great year this is going to be. We not only celebrate our history but we embark on a journey into the new millennium. As we take this exciting trot down memory lane, we also look forward to understanding and deciding what the future of the Bar should and can be.

  The sole purpose of this, my first President’s Page, is to extend a very hardy invitation to all of you to come and join me in this Centennial Celebration. (Don’t get too giddy that I said, “page,” as in “one.” The next 11 will undoubtedly be President’s Pages.)

  I hope that you will take part in the many events and programs we have planned for the coming year. There will be some wonderful surprises and, we hope, many good times! You will be hearing about these great events at Judges’ Night and in the following months.

  As for our year long “blast into the past,” we intend to make the Orange County Lawyer magazine one of the main modes of information and entertainment. So, settle down in those loge-seats in "The OCBA 20th Century Theater” and let’s see a “Preview” of things to come.

  Follow our walk back to the future from 1901 to 2000. Each issue of the OC Lawyer will focus in on one of the ten decades of the Bar’s history. I think you’ll see that as we wander through the decades, looking at the history of the Bar, of the legal community and of the practice of law with respect to the history of Orange County, some very common themes and issues will surface and re-surface through out the 100 years. Our preliminary research of major events and trials of the ’20s, ’30s, ’40s, and ’50s seem to support an over-all theme of “The More Things Change, the More Things Remain the Same.”

  I intend to devote my President’s Pages to each decade. In December, we’ll take a look at what all of this means for our Bar and for its future. As contradictory as it may sound, the best way to look forward is by studying the past.

  So fasten your seat belts, you are in for an “E” Ticket Ride! And for those of you “kids” in our Young Lawyers Division who don’t know what that means: pay close attention when we review the 1950s!

Danni Murphy is a senior attorney with the Orange County Public Defender.