By MATT CHANDLER
Buffalo Law Journal

The changing of the guard became official Friday evening as outgoing Bar Association of Erie County President Giles Manias stepped aside and Buffalo criminal-defense attorney Robert Convissar was sworn in as the organization's 103rd president.

Convissar, a solo practitioner and former prosecutor, is joined by Scott Schwartz, special counsel to Lipsitz Green Scime Cambria LLP, who was elected vice president of the association. Schwartz said he is looking forward to working with Convissar on his stated goal of restoring respect for lawyers in the local community.

"Lawyers' reputation with the community is not in as high a regard as it should be," Schwartz said. "We are going to do everything we can to enhance the reputation of the legal community with the public and to show them what we accomplish for our community."

Schwartz said he sees the role of the association as especially important in these difficult economic times.

"We have attorneys starting out who don't make the kind of earnings the public thinks they make, and now we have firms laying off attorneys," he said. "We have some programs we have worked on to benefit them and to assist those attorneys along the way as well."

Convissar too said he was troubled by the legal profession's drop in stature.

"There have been some high-profile matters that have cast a bad light on certain individual lawyers," he said, "and it hurts all of us."

Rounding out the Bar Association's leadership are Vincent Moore, who was elected deputy treasurer; Laurie Styka Bloom, who assumes the role of treasurer; and Patrick Brown, Jennifer Dillon, Lynn Gates and Bridget O'Connell, who were elected to three-year-terms on the association's board of directors.