ALI-ABA and ACLEA Team Up To Host High-Level Summit on Lawyer Education and Development in the 21st Century

ALI-ABA Continuing Professional Education (ALI-ABA) and the Association for Continuing Legal Education (ACLEA) are hosting a high-level summit on lawyer education and professional development in the 21st century, to be held October 15-17, 2009, at the Fairmont Scottsdale in Scottsdale, Arizona.  

The invitational conference, titled Equipping Our Lawyers: Law School Education, Continuing Legal Education, and Legal Practice in the 21st Century, will call together selected continuing legal education (CLE) professionals, practitioners, bar leaders, judges, law school professors and representatives, mandatory CLE administrators, law firm educators, and other experts on lawyer professional education and development.  Over the course of two-and-a-half days, these 150 thought leaders will debate and discuss critical issues facing law schools, continuing legal education providers, and the legal profession in equipping today's lawyers for practice, and will develop specific goals and recommendations for improvement and change. This will be a milestone summit, with an impact on legal training and the profession for years to come.

The summit will open on October 15 with two panels of experts discussing “The Future of the Legal Profession” and “The Role of Technology in Legal Training and Practice.” These panels will also be webcast live from the summit.  The core of the conference will be six participatory breakout sessions, featuring in-depth discussions of trends, best practices, and goals for law school education, bar admissions, CLE, mandatory CLE, in-house professional development, and generational issues. Recommendations emerging from these sessions will be debated by the conferees as a whole, who will craft consensus recommendations for modernizing and improving lawyer education and professional development to meet the challenges of the 21st century.

A detailed agenda for the summit can be found at www.equippingourlawyers.org.

Media who wish to cover the full conference live on-site or the two plenary sessions on October 15 via live webcast can download a Media Credential package online at www.equippingourlawyers.org.  

The summit’s planning committee includes honorary co-chairs JoAnne A. Epps, Dean, Temple University James E. Beasley School of Law, and Thomas Z. Hayward, Jr., Of Counsel, K&L Gates LLP; executive chair Patrick A. Nester, Director, TexasBarCLE; and reporter and secretary Charles C. Bingaman, Charles C. Bingaman Consulting.

The summit would not be possible without the generous support of its sponsors. Platinum sponsors include the ABA Standing Committee on Continuing Legal Education/ABA-CLE, American Law Institute, Association for Continuing Legal Education, LexisNexis, and West LegalEdcenter. Gold sponsors include Continuing Education of the Bar – California, Massachusetts Continuing Legal Education, Inc., NALP-The Association for Legal Career Professionals™, National Business Institute, Inc., Pennsylvania Bar Institute, Practising Law Institute, and State Bar of Texas. For a complete list of sponsors, go to www.equippingourlawyers.org.  

About ALI-ABA

Located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and founded more than 60 years ago as a joint undertaking of the American Law Institute and the American Bar Association, ALI-ABA provides post-admission education for the legal profession. ALI-ABA is dedicated to keeping the legal community abreast of current developments and providing practitioners with the resources necessary to enhance their practice. ALI-ABA offers a national curriculum of continuing legal education featuring traditional substantive CLE courses, litigation and transactional skills programs, distance learning courses, published books and periodicals, online materials, customized solutions for institutions, and in-house services for lawyers at every stage of their careers. Visit the ALI-ABA website at www.ali-aba.org.

About ACLEA

ACLEA, the Association for Continuing Legal Education, is a dynamic organization devoted to improving the performance of CLE professionals. Established in 1964, ACLEA is an international association. Members are primarily from the United States and Canada, but also hail from Great Britain, Australia, New Zealand, Africa, and Mexico. Administrators, trainers, managers, educators, publishers, programmers and meeting professionals are all members of ACLEA. This diversity in background and outlook makes ACLEA the best source for information on CLE today. Visit the ACLEA website at www.aclea.org.

Manchester-based law firm HL Interactive has announced Chris McSpirit as its operations and finance director. McSpirit was formerly finance director at insurance litigation specialists Keoghs.

“This is a great time for Chris to join the team”, said CEO Matt Wightman. “His in-depth understanding of our market and successful track record for driving performance is ideally suited to the role”.

McSpirit joins a new executive team that includes former RBS Retail MD Mike Hutchins as chairman, which has been put together following Wightman’s MBO of the firm in May last year.

Sands Anderson Marks & Miller, a regional law firm based in Richmond, plans to spin off its workers’ compensation practice group as a separate company.

A name has not been chosen.

“We are looking for more flexibility to follow the market and keep our clients at the cutting edge of the best service we can give,” said Cecil Creasey, chairman of the workers’ comp group and one of four partners that will head up the new firm.
Creasey did not get into financial terms but said that they reached a very “equitable arrangement” with Sands Anderson. He said he expects the law firm to be independent of Sands Anderson by the end of the year.

The firm will employ 25 to 30 people, including attorneys, paralegals and staff, most of whom will come from the existing practice. It will have offices in Richmond and Blacksburg. Creasey said they are searching for office space.

The workers’ comp unit has 10 attorneys, about 13 percent of Sands Anderson’s roster of 75. Creasey said the unit handles hundreds of cases a year.

Companies often spin off into separate entities, but it is fairly unusual for law firms to do so. Typically lawyers leave a firm and start from scratch.

Sand Anderson was formed about 150 years ago in Richmond and has five offices in Virginia and North Carolina. According to Virginia Lawyers Weekly, the firm is the state’s seventh largest.

Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens has hired fewer law clerks than usual, generating speculation that the leader of the court's liberals will retire next year.

If Stevens does step down, he would give President Barack Obama his second high court opening in two years. Obama chose Justice Sonia Sotomayor for the court when Justice David Souter announced his retirement in May.

Souter's failure to hire clerks was the first signal that he was contemplating leaving the court.

Stevens, 89, joined the court in 1975 and is the second-oldest justice in the court's history, after Oliver Wendell Holmes. He is the seventh-longest-serving justice, with more than 33 years and eight months on the court.

In response to a question from The Associated Press, Stevens confirmed through a court spokeswoman Tuesday that he has hired only one clerk for the term that begins in October 2010. He is among several justices who typically have hired all four clerks for the following year by now. Information about this advance hiring is not released by the court but is regularly published by some legal blogs.

Stevens did not say whether he plans to hire his full allotment of clerks or whether he will leave the court at the conclusion of the term that begins next month. Retired justices are allowed to hire one clerk.

A New York law firm is soliciting shareholders to join a class-action lawsuit against Tween Brands Inc. over Dress Barn Inc.'s planned acquisition of the Central Ohio apparel retailer.

Levi & Korsinsky LLP said Tuesday it filed a suit in Delaware Chancery Court, alleging Tween's stock-swap deal with Suffern, N.Y.-based Dress Barn Inc. values the New Albany-based merchant lower than its book value and analysts' stock price targets. Based on terms of the $220 million transaction, Dress Barn is paying about $157 million for Tween shares and paying off the troubled retailer's outstanding bank debt.

The deal for Tween is expected to close in October, provided it gets regulatory and shareholder approvals.

The law firm, which specializes in securities and shareholder litigation, said other terms of the deal, including a break-up fee of more than $5 million, “all but ensure that no superior offer will ever be forthcoming."

Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor's thin record on the limits of presidential power suggests she will be neither reflexively hostile to broad expansion of a president's authority nor a reliable rubber stamp in support of it.

Three cases in particular offer clues:

_ As a judge on the 2nd Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, Sotomayor dismissed complaints of commuters about random searches aimed at stopping terrorists on a ferry 300 miles north of New York City.

_ Citing an earlier ruling by the Supreme Court on the same topic, she upheld President George W. Bush's decision to prohibit U.S. aid to international family planning groups that support abortion.

_ On the other hand, Sotomayor joined colleagues in striking down parts of the anti-terror USA Patriot Act that Bush sought automatically prohibiting Internet service providers from telling customers when the government asks for private information about them.

Sotomayor has ruled in only a handful of foreign policy and national security cases that turned in part on constitutional limits to the powers enjoyed by the president, including the government's ability to respond to the threats, fears and vulnerabilities laid bare by the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorism attacks.

In those rulings, as well as a speech she gave in 2003 at the Indiana University law school, she appeared to be more willing to consider robust use of presidential authority than was Justice David Souter, the man she would replace.

Souter, who retired last week, was among the justices most skeptical of the powers asserted by the Bush administration following Sept. 11.

While Sotomayor has leaned heavily on earlier court decisions to support her rulings — as appeals court judges must — she soon could face potentially groundbreaking cases on national security if President Barack Obama asserts executive authority to continue detaining suspected terrorists.

Obama's far-reaching steps to deal with the economy also could provoke legal challenges that could make their way to the high court. The justices recently rejected a bid to stop Chrysler LLC's sale of most of its assets to Italian automaker Fiat.

Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor earned a "well-qualified" rating from the American Bar Association on Tuesday as she prepared for Senate hearings next week.

The ABA committee that reviewed her qualifications came out with that unanimous rating of the federal appeals court judge and released it in a letter to White House lawyer Greg Craig.

The Senate Judiciary Committee is set to begin hearings Monday on President Barack Obama's choice to replace retired Justice David Souter.

Sotomayor has been rated twice before by the ABA — as a trial judge and appellate judge.

As a U.S. District Court nominee, she was deemed "qualified" by a substantial majority of the committee and "well qualified" by a minority. The last time the ABA reviewed Sotomayor's qualifications — when she was up for the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals — a majority rated her "well qualified," but that was not unanimous.

For more than 50 years, the ABA has evaluated the credentials of nominees for the federal bench, though the nation's largest lawyers' group has no official role in the process. Supreme Court nominees get the most scrutiny.

"The American Bar Association's unanimous, well-qualified rating of Judge Sotomayor is further evidence of the outstanding experience she will bring to the Supreme Court," said Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., who heads the Senate Judiciary Committee.

"The ABA's rating — an evaluation of integrity, professional competence, and judicial temperament — should eliminate the doubts of naysayers who have questioned Judge Sotomayor's disposition on the bench."

ABA ratings are "well-qualified," "qualified" and "not qualified." The committee's members interview hundreds of colleagues — confidentially — and scours pages of a nominee's writings before coming up with the rating.

"The ABA Standing Committee on the Federal Judiciary has completed its evaluation of the Honorable Sonia Sotomayor and is of the unanimous opinion that Judge Sotomayor is 'well-qualified' for appointment as an associate justice to the United States Supreme Court," said Kim J. Askew, the committee's head.

Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito also got unanimous a "well-qualified" rating from the ABA before their Senate hearings.

White House lawyer Harriet Miers, nominated to the high court by President George W. Bush, withdrew before the ABA released its rating.

The ABA had a rocky relationship with Bush. In 2001, Bush ended the ABA's preferential role in checking prospective judicial nominees and decided the administration would not give the group advance word on names under consideration.

Conservatives had been bitter ever since the ABA's mixed review of the qualifications of failed Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork in the Reagan administration.

In March, the Obama administration asked the ABA to resume its historical role in evaluating judicial nominees.