New Officers Elected By @AZStateBar Board at 2013 #azbarcon

State Bar of Arizona Board officers 2013-2014: L to R: Lisa Loo, Richard T. Platt, Whitney Cunningham, Bryan Chambers, Alex Vakula

At its regular annual meeting at the State Bar Convention this afternoon, the State Bar of Arizona Board of Governors confirmed its slate of officers for the coming year. The new roster includes the newest officer, Secretary/Treasurer Alex Vakula, elected today: 

• President: Whitney Cunningham
• President-Elect: Richard T. Platt
• First Vice President: Bryan B. Chambers
• Second Vice President: Lisa Loo
• Secretary/Treasurer: Alex Vakula

Following board bylaws, the new slate of officers assume their positions at the close of the annual meeting.

State Bar of Arizona Board of Governors 2013-14

Follow more news via this Convention Daily and on Twitter, hashtag #azbarcon

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Coverage of 2013 @AZStateBar Convention #azbarcon Kicks Off

Arizona Biltmore Resort and Spa, site of the annual State Bar of Arizona Convention, June 19-21, 2013.

This is annual Convention week at the State Bar of Arizona. As always, a dizzying array of educational seminars (and fun activities) are packed into the three-day event held in Phoenix at the Arizona Biltmore Resort & Spa.

More detail about the Convention is here.

Over the years, Arizona Attorney Magazine staff have covered the heck out of the annual event, and this year will be the same. In a later post, I’ll detail some of the tools I lug about to do just that.

As in the past, we will not print a once-a-day hard-copy “Convention Daily.” Instead, we will cover Convention news closer to real time. We will use multiple channels to communicate what’s going on. But the surest way to be sure you see everything is to follow us on Twitter. My name in Twitter is @azatty. You can view all the evolving content here (or at https://twitter.com/azatty, to be specific). I will be tagging everything with the hashtag #azbarcon – so be sure to search for that.

Want to participate? Send me brief stories or story suggestions. Or if you have convention photos, we’d be glad to share them with readers.

And don’t forget to tweet from convention. Use the hashtag #azbarcon.

Questions or suggestions? Reach the Editor, Tim Eigo, on-site at the Biltmore, at 602-908-6991.

And always feel free to stroll up and say hello. I’ll be hiking all over the Biltmore to cover the goings-on. Or you may catch me at the Arizona Attorney table in the Exhibitor area. If you miss me there, leave your card or a note.

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Lawyer Blog Network Grows, Reveals Law Practice Issues

Learning what lawyers are up to is an avocation (and vocation) that occupies much of my time. And for that task, I can think of few other time investments as valuable as reading their blogs.

Sure, stopping by their offices and events is great, but that offers only a limited view inside law practice. But an aggregation of blog posts is revealing. It shows the multitude of challenges, pleasures and worries that lawyer brains are heir to.

Maybe because I’m a writer, I tend to believe that writing (when it’s substantive) reflects thinking. Therefore, if you want to know what folks are thinking, get reading.

That’s part of what drove the creation of our Arizona Attorney Magazine Blog Network a year or so ago. Let’s aggregate all of this brain power, and all of this writing, in one spot. Link them together, let the attorneys get some more traffic, and let readers enjoy the convenience of one-stop thinking.

In case you were wondering, here’s how it works.

On the bottom of the magazine News Center (launched alongside the Blog Network) you may have spotted a few blogs. That is our ever-changing roster of blogs I opt to highlight. They likely have new and interesting content. That changing list includes about five or six blogs. (And only one at a time can include the lawyer headshot.) See what I mean?

More value awaits. If you click that button that reads “View All Blog Network Members,” then you can do just that.

Once you’re there, you can scan the 50-ish attorneys currently in our network.

(Want to be added? Send me your URL and an author headshot. I’ll review it to be sure it should be in a lawyer network; if so, I’ll post it tout de suite. If you add your blog to the network, your blog remains your blog wherever it’s sited. We merely link to it, driving more readers—and SEO traffic—your way.)

Currently, you’ll see that our lead item points you to the blog of attorney Kim Brown. Her blog demonstrates perfectly the kind of valuable content you might get from reading lawyer blogs. Her lead item right now is asking the question of how similar a law firm partnership is to a typical marriage. She addresses the issue with humor but also with some serious takeaways that lawyers must consider when they review a partnership opportunity.

I hope you want to be part of the conversation. We always welcome new writers. And even if you’d merely view the thinking of Arizona attorneys, be sure to link to the page or sign up for the RSS feed. We’ll keep on blogging.

And I leave you with a hilarious blogging cartoon, shared with me by the great communicators at Association Media & Publishing.

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Fennemore Craig Moves to New Offices in Biltmore Area

Telescope in the new Fennemore Craig lawyer lounge. What’s next for the profession?

We’re all wondering what direction the legal profession is heading. Is its foundation sound, or are there cracks that threaten the entire structure?

That’s kind of a heavy concept for Change of Venue Friday. So instead, I will simply share the direction that law firm Fennemore Craig is heading.

Northeast.

Fennemore Craig Managing Partner Tim Berg addresses a pcked room at the new-office reception, June 11, 2013.

Sorry. I couldn’t resist.

On Tuesday, I attended the firm’s new office reception. Or, more accurately, their new building reception, as they now occupy all the floors (save some first-floor space) in their new digs across from the Biltmore Fashion Park.

Their location is now 2394 East Camelback Road, Phoenix (Suite 600).

The event, hosted by managing partner Tim Berg, was nicely done. The spaces are bright and modern, and the walls are lined with the firm’s collection of striking art. Though I always liked their old offices on Central Avenue (in the building that once housed Phoenix’s Playboy Club), this looks like quite a nice building.

The firm’s executive director, Kathy Hancock, gave me a tour of the spaces. She demonstrated how the building’s shape dictated that offices now come in quite a variety of shapes. Some lawyers, I’d guess, might take a tape measure to the square footage to assess “parity,” but the diversity of spaces is kind of refreshing.

Kathy also pointed out how the firm had reduced its huge trove of print law books. And those that remain have been divided and shared throughout the building. No more will the firm have a single large library. Instead, the volumes are housed near the relevant lawyers and practice areas, aiding ready access.

She also showed me the building’s less-traveled spaces, which houses the multiplicity of back-end tasks that keep a law firm moving. That space includes kitchens, including catering spaces, storage, and a staff lunch room that is large, sunny, well stocked and adjacent to a large outdoor deck.

In contrast, the lawyer lounge is quite a bit ritzier (click the photos below to enlarge). No surprise there. But the surprise came when I compared the sizes of the spaces. Seating and lighting may be more mod in the lawyer space, but that lounge is pretty diminutive in size—apropos in a profession where attorneys are encouraged to stretch their legs for a bit, but not get carried away and forget the work awaiting them in their office.

Fennemore Craig lawyer lounge

One charming feature of the lawyer lounge is a beautiful telescope on a tripod. It reminded me that all law firms must be seeking tools to gaze forward and predict the future of this profession. The telescopic view I gained from that lounge was merely a close-up of Macy’s department store—and Camelback Mountain beyond. The next few years will show which firms have raised their gaze even higher. Success in a changing marketplace will require it.

For some contrast, I share below one vintage photo of Fennemore Craig lawyers. Even if they had possessed the Hubble Telescope, I doubt they could have envisioned the profession as it is today.

Fennemore Craig lawyers, closer to their beginnings 127 years ago.

I will leave you with one gulp-inducing fact Kathy shared with me: In the process of moving the 127-year-old firm, their leadership took a hard look at paper materials, deciding what had to be saved and what could be discarded. Ultimately, Kathy says, the firm threw out 15 tons of paper in various forms.

15 tons.

As I type, I am surrounded by my own stacks, as I’m sure you are. I must admit I have never taken a scale to them, but I blanch at the thought of the extra weight associated with my work.

Look around. How heavy are you?

Have a great weekend.

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Justice Timmer of @azcourts Delivers Great Writing Advice to Attorneys

Justice Ann Scott Timmer speaks at the luncheon of the North Phoenix Bar Association, June 12, 2013.

“Understand your audience” is a lesson that is often ignored by speakers, who may address attendees with all the particularity of a spam email. But when the lesson is taken to heart, great things can happen.

That was the case yesterday, when Arizona Justice Ann Scott Timmer addressed the North Phoenix Bar Association. Spammers—and bad public speakers—take note.

Justice Timmer’s topic was writing, and she titled it “Convince Me: Writing To Persuade.”

Supreme Court Justices are on-the-ball kind of folks, so I knew the event would be fine, just fine. But as much as I enjoy writing (and talking about it), I have sat through speeches on writing that were drafted for everyone rather than for the particular audience. Such talks are peppered with truisms that we’ve all heard since middle school, containing few if any lessons you can take to heart.

As the NPBA folks took their seats, I scanned the menu for the luncheon at the Marriott at Desert Ridge. Was the Tahitian Vanilla New York Cheesecake really going to be that good, or was it mundane and geographically confused (as speakers can be). Perhaps I could skip it and get back to the office sooner?

Justice Timmer opened with that most basic of suggestions, with which I began this post: Know your audience. The cheesecake began to look like it would be omitted from my lunch.

But then Justice Timmer continued. She took all of those writing do’s and dont’s that we already know, and extrapolated them into lessons vital for practicing lawyers to understand.

Clarity is all. (We know.) And your motion’s clarity may be improved by an appendix. (Hmmm.) But how should the appendix be structured? (Pens out.) What kind of appendix is most helpful to the judicial officer—you know, the decider? (Scribbling furiously.)

Justice Timmer offered not an agglomeration of good but tired writing pointers, but valuable takeaways for lawyers to understand.

The value-added talk continued. It included a discussion of:

• What judges find helpful when counsel appear opposite pro pers. (If their motion is a jumble, judges really don’t mind when the lawyer restates and clarifies it in their own response. Help a judge out.)
• Words to avoid ($100 words when simpler ones will do.)
• Block quotes that undermine a pleading, as the readers’ eyes pass over them seeking the analysis and guidance.
• Lawyer waste-of-space phrases, such as “undoubtedly” or “it goes without saying.” Those, said Justice Timmer, signal the judge that you probably have no authority for your proposition (although a wise member of the NPBA mentioned to me later that lawyers may believe the same of courts when they rest their decision on “the court’s inherent power”—touché).

And so on.

Besides specifics to improve our writing, there were larger lessons. Here are two that I took away from the luncheon:

• The success of a talk may be directly related to how well it does not fit every possible audience. Or, stated less clumsily, the best speech is the one aimed at this audience at this time and in this place. It is not for everyman.
• The goal of the writer—and of the lawyer seeking a judicial result—is to avoid the use of anything that distracts the reader (or judge) from your argument or position. Expecting that a neutral third party (or a busy blog reader) will invest the time to decipher your poorly wrought puzzle is folly. Misunderstanding or worse will be the outcome.

In case you were wondering, I stayed for the cheesecake and finished every bite (it was wonderful, and I tip my hat to the Tahitian New Yorkers, or at least the pastry chef). And for my remaining for that indulgence, I blame Justice Timmer and her adroitly delivered remarks.

Thanks to the North Phoenix Bar Association, and to its president, Pouria Paknejad, for alerting me to the luncheon. I often find that the most robust conversations occur when groups of lawyers gather, and the NPBA proved that once again.

At the luncheon, the bar association also tendered a donation to the Children in Need Foundation. Read more about their work here.

Attorney Pouria Paknejad, right, delivers a check to a representative of the Children in Need Foundation, June 12, 2013.

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Attorneys of @AZStateBar Animal Law Section Visit @BFAS Best Friends Animal Sanctuary

A recent feature story reminds us of the power of vision and drive. In this case, both arose from those who decided it was time for the State Bar to launch an Animal Law Section.

Those early conversations occurred probably a decade ago. And we enjoyed the new group so much, we featured the Section and our story on the cover of our December 2005 Arizona Attorney.

This month, I read that members of the Section decided to take a road trip together.

You read that right: a road trip. How many Sections do you know that hop into cars together and travel for hours toward a common destination? (And when it gets boisterous, does the Executive Council ever have to warn that they will turn this car around right now?).

The shared vision of the Section took them on a journey to Best Friends Animal Sanctuary, in Kanab, Utah. As the Best Friends folks open their story:

“For Amanda Chua, a personal injury attorney, and 21 other Arizona attorneys and their families, a trip to Best Friends took a whole year to plan. The diverse group included real estate attorneys, personal injury lawyers, family law practitioners and civil litigators. Despite their array of specialties, all of the attorneys are members of the State Bar of Arizona, and belong to a special group called the Animal Law Section, which has over 90 members.”

“It was during a membership meeting that the idea of a trip to Best Friends came up. Many of the attorneys in the group serve on the boards of, and/or volunteer with, local rescue organizations or environmental groups. And many of them knew about the Michael Vick dog-fighting case, so they were familiar with the work that Best Friends does. But a few people in that meeting mentioned that they had never visited the Sanctuary. So Amanda, who was the past chair of the Animal Law Section, proposed that they form a committee to plan a group excursion to Kanab, Utah.”

You can read the complete story here.

Attorney Amanda Chua, center, and other members of the State Bar Animal Law Section recently visited the Best Friends Animal Sanctuary in Kanab, Utah.

Well done to all of the Section members who decided to take their legal practice area into “the field” for an exciting excursion.

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Update: Lawyer Cycling, Fundraising for @llsusa a Great Success

L to R: Zwillinger Greek & Knecht PC attorneys Andrew Breavington, Felecia Rotellini and Jamie Burgess after finishing their 100-mile ride on Sunday, June 2, 2013.

Last week, I wrote about a great team of lawyers and supporters who planned to pedal furiously in a 100-mile challenge. The beneficiary of their sweat and fundraising efforts was the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.

Today, I’m pleased to report that I received news about how the event went in the mountains around Lake Tahoe.

Here is what I heard about the remarkable ZBK Riders team (for Zwillinger Greek & Knecht PC), led by attorney Jamie Burgess.

• On Sunday, June 2, everyone on the ZGK Riders team completed the 100-mile ride safely.
• The eight other members of the team have (so far) collectively raised $40,107 for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society; Jamie Burgess raised another $47,295.
• The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society honored Jamie Burgess at the ride as the third-highest fundraising cyclist in the United States this year.
• So among all the team’s riders, they raised $87,402.

The team thanks the many members of the State Bar of Arizona who contributed generously to help fund LLS efforts to develop cures for blood cancers.

Congratulations to everyone involved!

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