The NLJ's ABA Annual Meeting Blog

Hanging on to the senior bar

Sure, the ABA needs to attract younger lawyers to keep the organization healthy, but what about keeping more senior attorneys around? That was one of the questions that members put to ABA candidates for 2011 leadership posts at a Sunday ABA forum.

Frost Brown Todd attorney William ‘Bill’ Robinson III, who is the ABA’s presumptive president for 2011, told the group that the association has to get “creative” in tailoring membership to the older lawyers.

The association “needs to be more creative in recognizing, when it comes to membership dues and services, that one size does not fit all,” he said in an interview. “It may mean pricing ABA dues at different levels for different segments of our profession.”

Robinson, who is based in Florence, Ky., singled out solo practitioners, government lawyers, and attorneys from large law firms, in addition to senior lawyers, as some that might need a new category of pricing. That doesn’t mean that the organization isn’t also racing to shore up membership among younger lawyers, few of whom were in attendance at the forum.

“There is a concern about membership at all levels,” Robinson said. “These are tough economic times. There are different challenges as the demographics vary.”

Questioners also asked whether the organization was considering any restrictions on the dissemination of ABA member email addresses to other organizations or changes to the ABA judicial review process. “No,” was the upshot of the responses.

Before Robinson takes the ABA president post, Carolyn Lamm, a partner with White & Case in Washington, becomes the next ABA president on Tuesday and Stephen Zack, of Boies, Schiller & Flexner in Miami, steps into the role next year.

Five women honored at ABA luncheon

There were a whole lot of tears at the ABA’s largest ticketed event, the Margaret Brent Awards Luncheon, which honors the legal achievements of five women annually.

“It’s so inspirational,” said Judith Kaye, a former chief judge of the New York Court of Appeals and now of counsel at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom in New York. “Everyone leaves feeling uplifted.”

This year’s winners included Judge Arnette Hubbard of Cook County Circuit Court in Chicago, Judge Vanessa Ruiz of the D.C. Court of Appeals, attorney Loretta Tuell of the Washington firm Anderson Tuell, Linda Addison, the New York partner-in-charge at Fulbright & Jaworski, and Helaine Barnett, president of the Legal Services Corp.

The women’s career and personal profiles were sketched in a thick glossy program and on individual videos broadcast during the lunch followed by their speeches. Law firms and legal organizations, including Squire Sanders, Baker & McKenzie, and the Minority Corporate Counsel Association, purchased tables for the event.

Kaye and friends with whom she attended the event, including Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson partner Ann Lesk of New York, said that one of the remarkable things about this year’s winners was that they are all mothers, disproving the notion that women have to choose between career and family. The level of achievement in the group demonstrated how far women have come in the profession in the last 20 years, Lesk said.

Have they come far enough? “No,” Lesk and Kaye snapped.

“Yes, women have advanced, but not to an acceptable degree, by a long shot,” Kaye said.

SEC enforcement division speeding up investigations?

Robert Burson, a senior associate regulatory director for the Securities and Exchange Commission in Chicago, told lawyers gathered for a discussion of “Investigations in a Time of Financial Meltdown” that the enforcement division is trying to rev things up following recent criticism of long settlement periods.

“We expect that to speed up,” Burson said.

The division is aiming for “quicker calls” and “quicker turn-around times,” Burson said during the panel.

Following the discussion, Burson said in an interview that those efforts are “aspirational” at this point. His comments echo sentiments expressed publicly by the agency’s leadership, he said.

He declined to get specific about any new agency goals for completing investigations in a particular timeframe, deferring instead to general comments delivered last month by SEC Chairman Mary Schapiro before the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs.

Avoiding India

Litigation in India? Don’t do it! That was the advice of Pallavi Shroff, a partner with Amarchand & Mangaldas & Suresh A. Shroff & Co. in New Delhi.

She was speaking with five other panelists on an ABA discussion of “Doing Buinesss in India: New Economy, Emerging Opportunities.”

“The court system tends to be a little slow,” said Shroff, a partner who handles commercial litigation and competition matters.

Talat Ansari, an attorney with Kelley Drye & Warren in New York who was also on the panel, echoed that suggestion. Indian hearsay has it that the country had the world’s longest litigation at a record 250 years, he said.

“It’s better to have a dispute resolution clause in your contracts,” Ansari said.

And by the way, U.S. lawyers credentials aren’t likely to be recognized in Indian courts anytime soon, Shroff said. Current regulations, changes pending in parliament and the lack of reciprocity are likely to keep U.S. lawyers on the sidelines for a while, she said.