Inn President Wendy E. Weigler recently sent out the welcome letter to members (with this year’s membership form) explaining the theme, kickoff event, and description of our pupilage teams plans for this year. Here’s an excerpt (in Justice Sotomayor’s favorite color – red):

Our Mission Statement is:

The Justice Sonia Sotomayor Inn of Court is a group of lawyers, judges, and law students from diverse backgrounds and practice areas that works together to facilitate positive changes in our profession and our community.

In keeping with our Mission Statement, our theme for the 2023-2024 Inn year is Community. This year, we are excited to focus on the “YOU” and “I” in Community. We want this year to be about the relationships we build as members of our Inn. Developing and strengthening those relationships will support our well-being in an often difficult profession and enrich our professional and personal lives.

We are excited to announce that our kick-off event will be hosted at the home of Colorado Supreme Court Justice Melissa Hart on Thursday, September 21, 2023 at 6:00 p.m. The address, in the Park Hill neighborhood, will be provided upon RSVP. You do not want to miss this opportunity to mix and mingle and have some fun meeting your Pupillage Team.

So, what exactly is a “Pupillage Team”? The term comes from the English stage of training to become a barrister and has been adopted by the American Inns of Court to refer to smaller groups within an Inn that enable less-experienced attorneys to become more effective advocates and counselors by learning from more-experienced attorneys and judges. The goal is for each Pupillage Team to gather together informally outside of Inn meetings, in order to develop their relationships and benefit one another. Your Pupillage Team is your “inner circle” within the larger circle of the entire Inn.

This year, instead of assigning a Pupillage Team to present a program to the rest of the Inn, we want to use the first half of the year for the Teams to get to know each other in order to provide input and feedback into what the Inn meetings should look like for the second half of the year. At each meeting, we would like you to seek out and engage with your Team so each Team can develop its own sense of community.