What 250 Years of the Rule of Law Asks of Today's Lawyers – 2026 ALPS Bar Leaders Retreat

As Virginia marks 250 years since its lawyers helped shape American democracy, Susan Bradford Tarley, President of the Virginia State Bar, is framing her term around what that legacy still demands of the profession today. A real estate and business law partner at Tarley Robinson PLC, she's built her presidency around four priorities: foundational ethics, attorney wellness, the bar's strategic plan, and Virginia's shortage of lawyers in underserved areas, detailed in the bar's own EGAD Report on where new attorneys are and aren't landing. She also weighs in on attorneys caught submitting briefs built on AI-hallucinated cases, some of whom doubled down even after a judge flagged them, arguing it's a symptom of skipping the work rather than a problem with the tool itself. Tarley closes on wellness as the precondition for everything else, arguing that lawyers can only take the small steps that sustain the rule of law if they put their own oxygen masks on first.

Proving once again that ALPS Insurance puts the "treat" in retreat, they gathered leaders in law from across the country this summer. These sit-down conversations reveal flavors of leadership and legal trends from a variety of perspectives. Cool takes, one scoop at a time, recorded live at the 2026 ALPS Bar Leaders Retreat in Missoula, MT. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices