The new head of the Connecticut Bar Association has relocated to the East Coast out of a strong desire to spend more time with his family and to embark on a new professional challenge. D. Larkin Chenault, 61, was the executive director of the Cleveland Metropolitan Bar Association before relocating last month.
Chenault comes to the CBA with 25 years of experience as a professional bar executive. He began his career with the Kentucky Bar Association in 1984, where he served as assistant director and continuing legal education director, drafting Kentucky’s original mandatory continuing legal education rules. In 1987, he became executive director of the Cincinnati Bar Association. As executive director of the State Bar of Michigan for six years beginning in 1994, he managed a 33,000-member unified state bar association. Chenault has been with the 6,200-member Cleveland Metropolitan Bar Association since 2000.
“I have never been executive director of a state bar association that was voluntary vs. mandatory,” said Chenault. Attorneys in Connecticut are not compelled to become members of a bar association. “This is a very interesting, if not unique, state,” he added. “I like voluntary bar associations and all the challenges it presents.”
Future growth for the bar association could come through outreach to the community, Chenault said. He said the CBA already has a strong history of continuing legal education, but its educational resources could be made available to non-lawyers, too.
“We’re well situated to grow our community programs and we can inform our community for the better,” he said. “Lawyers are not just custodians of the law. We also believe in service to the community.”
Chenault’s wife, Martha, is an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ. He has two daughters: Cordelia, who is studying in Germany on a Fulbright scholarship; and Carey Noel, a marketing manager who lives with her husband in suburban Boston. He said part of the appeal of relocating to Connecticut was the strength of the United Church of Christ in New England. Chenault’s wife is still in Ohio attending to her ministry.
In his spare time, Chenault enjoys architecture, music, travel, gardening, and spending time with what he refers to as his “remaining child,” a West Highland terrier named Mungo.
