On October 13 at 8:00 a.m., A to Z Law partner Kendall A. VanConas will present “Legal Preparation for Aging and Incapacity:  The Fundamentals of Estate Planning.”  Designed as an introduction to estate planning, the seminar will cover trusts, wills, powers of attorney for asset management, and advance health care directives.  Ms. VanConas will discuss how the different ways of holding title to property can affect an estate plan, and will also give an update about current changes in the estate tax laws.

Ms. VanConas received her bachelor’s degree from the University of California, Los Angeles, her law degree from Southwestern University School of Law in Los Angeles, and her master’s degree in taxation from Golden Gate University.  She is active with the Ventura County Bar Association, serving as President in 2010, and probate and estate planning section chair from 2007-2009.  She is also a member of the Trusts & Estates Section of the California State Bar, and a Certified Specialist in Estate Planning, Trust and Probate Law by the State Bar of California, Board of Legal Specialization.

In November, Melissa Sayer will present  ”Think Twice Before You Act-Responsibilities of Owners and Officers in Small Businesses and Non-Profits,”  where she will discuss how the current economic environment has drastically increased claims for breach of fiduciary duty among business owners.  More information on that seminar will follow.

The seminars are conducted at the Santa Paula Chamber of Commerce, 200 N. Tenth Street in Santa Paula.  For more information, or to RSVP, call 525-5561 or 689-2229.

There are few of us over the age of 8 that actually take the summer off. Apparently, the world has realized what I have known for years – it’s really hard to relax! This seems to have become especially true for students. If high school students aren’t working a summer job, they are looking for things to fulfill their community service credits for school, or things that will enhance their college applications. Undergraduate and graduate students are also interested in gaining work experience in preparation for graduation, and in today’s economic climate you can pick up some remarkable talent for virtually nothing.

After completing my first two years of college at U.C. Irvine, I decided to transfer and complete my undergraduate work at UCLA. At the time, UCI was still largely a commuter school, and even though I loved my two years there, and made some of my closest lifelong friends, the school simply couldn’t compete with the lure of Westwood. Plus, I had decided to go to UCI – at least in part – because I thought I wanted to go into some kind of computer science career. What was I thinking? My ‘D’ in calculus my freshman year pretty much knocked that idea out of my head. Plus, computers were fun and all, but they were clearly just a flash in the pan, and not something one should make a career out of.

Along with everything else that UCLA had to offer, they had a vibrant summer internship program. When I transferred, I changed my major to political science, and applied through the program for an internship in Washington, D.C. The D.C. students were placed in different internship programs with government agencies all over the city, and I was placed in the Voting Section of the Civil Rights Division at the Department of Justice. I recall there being about ten of us from different schools around the country in the Voting Section, and we spent our summer at the DOJ, helping
to enforce the Voting Rights Act. We would call districts around the country where people had complained about problems voting, or where there was a demonstrated history of challenges, gather information and pass it on to those in the Section who supervised us for the summer. In some cases, we would follow up to find out if earlier problems had been corrected.

At the time, I was naïve enough to think that things I had only read about in my history books were a thing of the past. Yet there I was, a 21-year-old UCLA student from Southern California, talking on the phone with people in Mississippi or Georgia about their challenges trying to vote. I’ve never missed voting in an election since that summer.

Early on in the summer, the Civil Rights Division held a reception for all the summer interns. Along with the undergraduate students, there were also graduate students working in different places, and the reception hosted all of us. We had heard rumors that John F. Kennedy, Jr., a student at NYU School of Law at the time, was interning at the DOJ over the summer, but it was never confirmed, and we certainly never expected that he would show up at the reception to mingle, nibble on cubed cheese and crackers, and make idle chitchat.

I was talking to a small group of girls, all of whom were interning in the section with me. Shortly into the reception, we felt the whole dynamic in the feeling of the room change. Even though I hadn’t seen him, I knew he was there. He was one of those people who exuded such confidence and presence, he changed the feeling in the room the moment he walked into it. You could feel it. I guess you’d say he had personal magnetism, and here he was, headed right for our small group.

“Hi, I’m John.” And he shook my hand.

No, you’re not “John.” You’re John F. Kennedy, Jr.!! Texting wasn’t around in 1987, but it was a definite OMG moment. I introduced myself and he spent a few minutes talking to us before he politely excused himself and moved on. Idle chitchat.

Some weeks later I was on my lunch hour at the Old Post Office building, an historic D.C. building that had been turned into a venue for shopping, restaurants and entertainment. After doing my shopping, I was walking through the food court with my lunch and a book, and as I was scanning the room for an empty table, I passed by John. He was sitting alone at a table, simply eating his lunch. I think it was Chinese. I’m sure I had that stupid look on my face that he probably saw a million times a day when recognition hit people.

“Oh, hi Kendall.”

Seriously, this guy is unbelievable. He remembered my name? And was polite enough to say hello, not put his head down to avoid having to talk to people?

I said hello and we chatted for a minute about our summer work. No, he didn’t ask me to sit down and have lunch with him, thank God, and I never ran into him again after that. But I’ll never forget my internship in D.C. that summer.

Three years later found me at the end of my first year in law school at Southwestern University School of Law. My dad had died suddenly in August of the previous year, just as I was beginning orientation week at Southwestern. His death was shocking and unexpected, but I managed to make it through my first year, and actually came out better than expected academically. But I had no interest in staying in Los Angeles for the summer, and wanted to come home and spend some time with my mother. Plus, there was this guy named Andrew that I had met the year before who was living in Santa Barbara, and being in Camarillo would shave an hour off our commute time to see each other.

My mother made some calls to inquire about summer job opportunities for me, and I ended up in an internship at the Ventura County Public Defender’s office, working under the supervision of Duane Dammeyer. I didn’t know if I was interested in a criminal law practice. In fact, at the time, I didn’t know if I was even going to practice law at all once I got out of law school, but this opportunity was something totally new for me, and I was happy for the experience.

That summer, Duane and his colleagues were defending Gregory Scott Smith, a young man accused of the murder of Paul Bailly, an 8-year-old boy who had gone missing from his daycare center in Northridge and been found hours later near Simi Valley. Greg Smith was accused of killing the little boy during a kidnap, and setting his body on fire. The charges would result in the death penalty if he were convicted. The circumstances of Paul’s death were horrific. Again, my naiveté: Can people really do things like this?

I’m assuming that Duane needed all the help he could get for this case, or he just simply was looking for a task that would keep his first year law clerk out of the way. Either way, my very first task in my very first assignment at the office was to sort through the crime scene photos in preparation for the preliminary hearing. It was horrible, as you can imagine. Some of those images have stayed with me to this day.

I moved on to other tasks in other assignments in the Public Defender’s office, but obviously none of them affected me as much as that first assignment. Aside from the impact of the crime and my small task in the defense of the accused, the lawyers defending Greg Smith impressed me. They were committed to making sure their client received the representation to which he was constitutionally entitled, and I learned, in a real world way, to appreciate the impact of the law I had learned during my first year of law school.

20 years have passed since I was at the Public Defender’s office. Duane went on to become Public Defender, and retired earlier this year after 35 years with the office. Greg Smith pled guilty and was sentenced to death. I never practiced criminal law.

Perhaps nobody understands the challenges of maintaining balance better than the working mother. And before you roll your eyes and flip the page, no, this column isn’t going to be a Helen Reddy-I-am-woman-hear-me-roar anthem to the working mother. I can bring home the bacon and fry it up in a pan as good as the next girl, but God knows I couldn’t do it alone. I know there are plenty of sleep- deprived, devoted working fathers out there, and I am blessed to be married to one of the best of them. And I know it’s not just dads either. There are grandparents, aunts and uncles, siblings and lots of loving, kind people who step up every day to care for children.

But the working mother’s journey is different and special, quite simply because we are women. And despite the amazing advances we’ve made in just a generation, traditional, societal precepts still consider the child-rearing duties to fall on the mom. This is the ultimately “either/or” choice for us: Be a mother, but have a career. Every working mother has felt the tug.

So when I hear about women finding a way to keep the work-home balance in check, I’m intrigued. And when I hear about their employer making the right choices to help them keep that balance, I’m impressed.

Maureen Byrne and Tricia Koenig are both Deputy District Attorneys in the Family Protection Unit of the Ventura County District Attorney’s Office, and they are job-share partners. Job- sharing isn’t a new concept, and I have heard about successful job-sharing arrangements before in other professions. Lots of teachers job-share, and so do many other technical, administrative and clerical positions. But I had never before heard of a job-sharing arrangement between lawyers, and I certainly wouldn’t have guessed that it would have been with two prosecutors. (Ed. Note: Laurel McWaters and Julia Snyder also job-share in the District Attorney’s Office).

It wasn’t the practice of law that brought Maureen and Tricia together as job-share partners. It was motherhood. Both were working as prosecutors in the office of then- District Attorney Michael Bradbury, and both were mothers of young twins. They felt a need to work less so they could be at home with their children more. So, like other good lawyers, they did their research, investigated, and came up with a proposal that was approved by the office. That was more than 10 years ago, and Maureen and Tricia have been successful job-share partners ever since. They have paved the way for other women lawyers in the office who also job share and have part time arrangements.

They work exclusively in the Domestic Violence court, and handle a busy calendar that includes arraignments, violations of probation, sentencings and other duties that relate to felony and misdemeanor charges of domestic violence and child abuse. They currently split their week, one working Mondays, Tuesdays and every other Friday, while the other picks up Wednesdays, Thursdays and the alternate Fridays. Their individual hours together constitutes one full-time Deputy District Attorney position, and all elements of their employment are split right down the middle.

Obviously, the biggest benefit that both women gain from their job-share arrangement is more time at home with their families. They are acutely aware of how fast time goes by, and appreciate the additional time they have with their growing children. That’s no surprise to hear, and as any working parent can tell you, we have all had moments when we want to be at home more than we want to be in the office. But it was a surprise to hear that the children of these working mothers also appreciate the additional time mom has at home. Maureen and Tricia have each had experiences over the years when they could have returned to a full-time position. But when faced with that prospect, they both told me that their children (two 13-year-olds and an 11 year old for Maureen and two 15-year-olds for Tricia) were against the idea, and wanted mom to keep the part-time work. Very impressive, particularly for middle school aged children, who will typically go to great lengths to avoid being seen with their parents, let alone express a desire to spend time with them.

But the benefits of their job-sharing arrangement go beyond the obvious. Less work means less stress. Less stress leads to less burnout and more longevity in the position. This is particularly true for Maureen and Tricia, who are assigned to a hectic courtroom, in which they regularly see the worst of humanity. Burnout is a real issue for many lawyers, particularly among district attorneys and public defenders in these kinds of assignments. After being away from the courtroom for several days, Maureen and Tricia can approach it feeling renewed and refreshed, and both told me that it has kept them in the position longer than they naturally would have, had they been doing it full-time.

They both have a very high level of job satisfaction, more than a lot of attorneys I know who have been practicing as long. Their part-time schedule forces them to be efficient with their days, and they are both very appreciative of the support they have received for their arrangement over the years. Their position – which renews every two years under a written contract they have with the office – has been supported over the years not only by Mr. Bradbury’s successor, Gregory Totten, but also by their managers and supervisors over the years. They both are also grateful for the support they get from Judge Colleen Toy White, the presiding judge in Department 37. Judge White is “very, very supportive” of the job-sharing arrangement that Maureen and Tricia have. As a single mother, Judge White knows the challenges they face. She recalls the difficulties presented with juggling work and home – even getting out of the door in the morning can be a challenge, let alone tackling a demanding job. In her court, Judge White will schedule hearings for each individual on days she knows will be a “Tricia” day, or a “Maureen” day, and is willing to lend support to help them succeed in their arrangement. But such assistance has never really been necessary, and it only makes sense, Judge White says, to support an arrangement that will help keep two bright, talented prosecutors in the District Attorney’s Office.

Judge White told me that she definitely believes that the part-time schedule has allowed Maureen and Tricia to keep their passion for the job. From the standpoint of the District Attorney’s Office and the court, Judge White says that Maureen and Tricia each give far more than their 50 percent to the job. She sees their job efficiency and believes that their success is due in large part to their part-time positions. She was also quick to mention that they are both excellent lawyers, which certainly has helped them make the case for continuing their job-sharing arrangement.

But, like any balance in life, the good comes with some bad, and both women recognize that there are definite drawbacks to the arrangement. Less work comes with less pay, and not everybody would be able to make the arrangement work for them financially. Both Maureen and Tricia are married – both to lawyers, in fact. A dual income household can get by with the arrangement, but a single parent household would have a much harder time making it work. And along with the reduced pay comes less retirement contribution. Tricia shared with me that she has been with the District Attorney’s Office 24 years, but only has 15 years accrued toward retirement. As their children get older, both women expect to return to full-time work anyway, but as they approach retirement increased hours will be a must in order to accrue the 20 years of service required for full retirement credit.

There are career drawbacks as well. Both women believe the job-sharing arrangement can work well in many different areas of the law, particularly for government lawyers. But it is very difficult to make it work well in a trial assignment, so the calendar assignment in Department 37 was a deliberate choice. Both women say they would love to be doing trials, and that the lack of trial work has impeded their career advancement. But it’s a trade-off that was well worth it, and both said that it was one they would make again.

I support Maureen and Tricia for making their choice, and I salute the County of Ventura for supporting this flexible work schedule. I give many thanks to Maureen Byrne and Tricia Koenig for sharing a little bit of their life with me, and to Judge Colleen Toy White for talking to me about this article.

President’s Post-Script: Thanks to a technical error, my teaser in last month’s column – designed to get you to support VLSP – failed to print. But not to fear! Participate in the fun by going to vcba.org and clicking “President’s Trivia.”

Before we began the design of the new site, the IT committee and the VCBA staff spent time reviewing the current site. We talked to users to find out their likes and dislikes, and we also talked to people who work in IT to get a professional point of view on changes we had in mind. That process yielded a long list of complaints – an exercise not unlike the one I endure when my family reviews what I make for dinner, or when I have to buy a new bathing suit. In any event, it turned out to be the best way to go about designing the new site, and a lot of the constructive criticism yielded some great improvements. Here’s a bit of what you will find when you visit.

The home page and the overall look and feel of the new site are quite different from the old one. The new site has a polished look, and the links to find information are intuitive. The previous home page was criticized for being too cluttered, and for having too much information posted in a somewhat scattered fashion. The new home page is cleaner, and I think you will find it easier to find what you are looking for.

The new website was built using new technology – “behind the scenes” stuff that makes it easier to keep the page updated and current. So today, for example, as I write this, the Law Day 5K is given prominence. But once May is over, we quickly and easily can – and will – start to publicize the next big event. As visitors see regular changes to the home page, they should visit more often.

As you navigate through the new site, you will discover how much easier it is to find information you are looking for. Most of what was contained in the old site is still there, but some of the content may have changed location, and some of the less-frequently used information was omitted. We have also tried to make some of the data easier to review. For example, you no longer have to scroll down multiple times to review the lists of our sections, or of our board members – small changes, but ones that make the site easier to use, which will hopefully make it used more often.

So, we’ve put a new spin on some of the same old things. But we’ve also gone beyond that, and when you visit, you will find some entirely brand new features. One of the things that I’m most excited about is our new blog. The VCBA blog is the virtual town crier for our new website. It will become the place where our bar leaders can publicize upcoming events in their sections, or where members can educate others about their practice areas or developments in the law. Some of the content you regularly see in Citations – like the President’s Message – will become blog entries, along with some content that can’t fit into the hard copy of Citations. The blog will be an electronic companion to this publication, not a substitute for it, and will also serve our members who primarily like to get their information electronically. My goal is to get regular blog entries from each of our sections, committees and affiliates, as well as current and former bar leaders.

We also have an ongoing slideshow on the home page, featuring dozens of pictures from our various events. With 35 sections, committees and affiliates, and over 122 different continuing education events in 2009, we are indeed a vibrant bar association, and this is a way to showcase the many events that go on all year long. Like the blog, the slideshow will change, as the activities carry on through the year. And I promise to keep the embarrassing pictures of each of you to a minimum.

Please visit the new site, and keep coming back.

President’s Message Part Two: It’s Nice To Know At Least Somebody Reads This Column
In last month’s President’s Message, I shamelessly wished myself a happy birthday, and invited donations to VLSP in lieu of the swag that I know you would all send my way. It was at the very end of the column, so you had to hang in there for the whole thing to see it. And while I’m certain that each and every one of my faithful readers made it to the end of my column, there was only one of you that took me up on my offer. I give many thanks to Ben Schuck, for making a donation to VLSP of $25 in honor of my birthday. Although he might have thought his donation modest, if each member of VCBA did the same, we could raise over $30,000 for legal services in the county. For those of you who missed my birthday, not to worry. Mother’s Day is here.

I was scheduled to sit as the judge pro-tem in probate a day or two later, and had to stop by the courthouse to drop off my tentative rulings, which were to be prepared and posted prior to my assignment date. Julia was in the car with me and we had just come from my office, my “real job.” This was one in a series of stops and errands, typical for a working mother of young children.

When she asked why we were stopping by the courthouse, I explained to her that it was something I had to take care of for work. “But I thought you worked at your office?” she asked.

“Well, I do, but I also sometimes work here, when the judge asks me to.”

“So, this is your office?”

“No, my office is where we just were, where Nita works.” Nita was our long-time secretary. “I just work here sometimes, when I need to be a judge for a day.”

“Did Grandma work here, too?” Now she’s getting seriously confused. My mom had retired a few years before this, and Julia knew that we had been in practice together.

“No, Grandma never worked here. She worked at my office, which used to be just her office. But when I grew up and went to law school, I decided to work with her at the office. Maybe one day when you grow up, if you decide to go to law school too, you can come to work at the office with me.”

After several moments of processing, Julia replied with a heavy sigh, “Yeah. Or I could just work at the mall.”

The trickle-down effect of the poor economy has touched all of us in some way, and it doesn’t come as news to any of us – practicing lawyers or those who support the practice of law – that we are in the same leaky boat as the rest of the world. Aside from the traditional results, such as layoffs, part-time work, reductions in benefits and the like, the economy has affected the legal field in ways that you don’t often hear about, but that cause one to consider the future of our profession.

The state of New Jersey came up with a novel way of increasing revenue without increasing their payroll. A hiring freeze prevented the New Jersey Attorney General’s office from hiring a replacement when one of their lawyers left. Seeing attorney positions in her office down about 25 percent, and knowing that lots of lawyers were looking for work, the New Jersey Attorney General created a volunteer program. While many of us have found ourselves unintentionally working for free lately, the New Jersey AG’s office has three full-time attorneys who volunteer their time for the debt recovery unit.

The volunteer attorney must commit at least 20 hours a week for three months, but most have stayed on for more beyond that commitment. The typical volunteer lawyer is a recent law school graduate who has not yet landed their first job, thanks to a shrinking pool of available positions. But the experience has paid off for both employer and employee. The volunteers are earning some valuable legal experience doing research, taking depositions, and occasionally sitting as second-chair in court, while the state of New Jersey has increased revenue not only by increasing the collections thanks to the extra help, but also by saving loads of money on salary and benefits.

In keeping with past down economies, certain sectors of crime have recently increased, and some California attorneys have sadly been the perpetrators. The California State Bar reports an increasing number of lawyers who will be disciplined this year for wrongdoing associated in some way with the recession. Clients who in the past might have been timely and diligent in paying their legal fees have turned into slow- or no- payers, making their lawyers more desperate themselves.

It is no surprise to learn that there has been an uptick in the traditional culprits that land attorneys before the State Bar Court, such as mishandling of client trust funds. In 2008, the State Bar’s Office of Chief Trial Counsel filed in State Bar Court 369 notices containing more than 650 different disciplinary charges – from the prior year, this represents a 15 percent increase in the number of notices filed, and 21 percent increase in the total number of charges contained in those notices. As of this writing, 2009 figures were not yet available.

But the recession itself spawned its own cottage industry – loan re-modifications. And sadly, there are dishonest attorneys always at the ready to assist. Under investigation are more than 1,200 loan modification cases where consumers have complained that their attorney promised to help and did nothing. In February, a Southern California lawyer gained the distinction of becoming the first California lawyer arrested due to alleged illicit loan modification activities. Christopher Lee Diener was charged with more than 100 felonies, including grand theft by false pretenses, conspiracy to commit grand theft, and perjury. If convicted, he faces up to 70 years in prison. But it’s not just licensed attorneys who find themselves out of work and out of options. In 2008, Harvard Law School launched a tuition waiver program for third-year students who agreed to commit their practice to public interest law for five years after graduation. For the first two years that the program was in operation, the university forgave partial tuition for participating students, and waived the full $40,000 tuition during the final two years. Late last year, Harvard announced that the program was suspended indefinitely to incoming students.

Harvard suffered an almost unfathomable loss in its endowment fund, down to $11 billion in 2009 from a high of $36.9 billion. The $25 billion loss coincided with a larger- than-expected turnout in students looking for public interest jobs, many of whom were no doubt interested in the field because the big law firms have cut back on hiring students, or postponed their start dates.

Self-described legal tabloids AboveTheLaw. com and LawShucks.com have teamed up to keep track of the layoffs since January of last year. According to those sites, since Jan. 1, 2008, more than 14,000 people, lawyers and staff, have been laid off by major law firms. The biggest hits came during the first quarter of last year, when about half of the total layoffs occurred. About 250 were laid off in the first two months of this year.

So what does all this mean? For one thing, Julia’s well-thought out plan for her future employment might not come to pass. She is now 14-years-old, and our average month sees us make multiple trips to the mall. Each time we walk through we see more and more empty storefronts. It sounded so simple, didn’t it? “I could just work at the mall.” I sadly suspect that the retail jobs in the local mall are now being sought after by some of the approximately 15,000 lawyers and staff who have lost their jobs in the last couple of years. Maybe she’ll have to go to law school after all.

I must admit, in the years before I became involved in activities of the bar, I was among those asking that same question. Today, even though I like to think that I know a lot about the bar and all of its affiliated organizations, there are still occasions when I find the activity in the bar to be truly remarkable. When I think about our local association, I consider the mission to be fairly simple: education, fellowship and community service, a so-called “three-legged stool” which would fail to serve its purpose with one leg missing.

So, are those three legs solid? Early on a recent Saturday morning, 41 men and women – board members, sections leaders and others – gathered for the 20th Annual Ventura County Bar Association Bar Leaders Conference, and answered that question very clearly. Here is just a bit of what is going on in your bar association, and how you can get involved.

History: To give you some perspective, the 1st Annual Bar Leaders Conference in 1990 included just five people, only one of whom was a woman: Wendy Lascher, Tom Hinkle, Bart Bleuel, Dennis LaRochelle and Steve Henderson. This year, more than 40 people attended and half were women. In 1990, the VCBA Board of Directors topped out at 11, and we had 15 subsections. Today, we have 23 board members, and 35 distinct affiliated organizations. Both our membership and our annual budget have more than doubled in the last 20 years, but we have managed to not yet double the annual dues from the $75 members paid in 1990.

Sections: Whenever someone asks me what they can do to get involved with bar activities, my answer always includes a suggestion that they take a look at some of the almost three dozen different bar sections, committees and affiliates. Of course, they include sections devoted to continuing education in particular practice areas, such as bankruptcy, dispute resolution, business litigation, probate and estate planning, family law, employment law and intellectual property, to name a few. In 2009 the bar, through its affiliated organizations, offered 122 individual programs, providing 260 hours of continuing legal education. There are also a number of sections that foster support, mentoring and networking for their members, such as the Women Lawyers Association, the Mexican-American Bar

Association, and the East County Bar Association. Membership in any of these sections or their steering committees is welcome, and I encourage you to look into the ones that interest you.

I am grateful for the sections and committees that devote their activities to raising money for the bar. For over 25 years, Joe Strohman has organized the Law Day 5K, and raised thousands of dollars for the bar. Thanks to Don Hurley, the silent auction at the annual dinner routinely raises thousands of dollars for the Volunteer Lawyer Services Program (VLSP) each year. We also have Don to thank for volunteering to chair the newly-formed Bar Fundraising committee of VLSP, Inc., which is planning new fundraising opportunities this year, including a raffle for the Annual Dinner, and family barbeque in the spring or summer. I’m sure Joe would welcome another runner or two this year, and Don will always welcome an offer to help securing auction items.

Of course, we’re not all work and no play. Our Annual Dinner Committee, chaired this year by Eric Reed, organizes our annual November gathering to honor the recipient of the Ben E. Nordman Public Service Award, complete with dinner, dancing and a martini luge (you just have to see it to appreciate it). Barristers – open to attorneys 36 years of age or under, or who have been in practice seven years or less – aims to provide an outlet for social and community service activities for new attorneys, which they accomplish in large part with their monthly “Thirsty Third Thursday.” The Jerome H. Berenson Inns of Court offers mentoring, ethics education and improved trial skills by gathering monthly and presenting their “teachable moment” through fun skits and presentations. The Inns of Court has 80 members, and a waiting list each year.

Legal Support Sections: We are particularly fortunate in Ventura County to have a very close affiliation with both the Ventura County Paralegal Association (VCPA) and the Ventura County Legal Professionals

Association (VCLPA). Both organizations provide their members continuing education, host different social events during the year and generously donate the proceeds to VLSP. Be sure to watch for announcements about these events during the year.

Community Service: Ventura County lawyers should take particular pride in how much our members give back to the community. Several of our sections, including MABA and the Ventura County Asian-American Bar Association, award annual scholarships to law students, or those interested in the legal profession. For more than 30 years, the Court Tour Program has provided tours of the courthouse for more than 1,000 students annually. Run entirely by volunteers, the program provides an opportunity for the students to watch proceedings while court is in session, and exposes children to our system of justice. Contact the bar to find out information about becoming a docent for the Court Tour Program.

But no discussion of public service within the VCBA would be complete without mention of our highly regarded and honored VLSP, Inc. Over a span of almost 15 years, hundreds of lawyers have provided pro bono legal services to the low income and underserved population in the county. The backbone of the program is the panel of 13 emeritus attorneys, who screen prospective clients and then refer appropriate matters to counsel in the community. In 2002, our emeritus team of attorneys was awarded the California State Bar President’s Distinguished Pro Bono Service Award, in recognition of their commitment to provide or enable the direct provision of legal services to the poor in our county. As the needs of the community grow, so does the work of VLSP, which is always looking for willing volunteers.

Still not interested? There’s more! Call Wendy Lascher to contribute an article to this publication, or to serve on the editorial board. Volunteer to arbitrate an attorney- client fee dispute through the Client Relations Committee. Call Tony Strauss to participate in the long-range planning for the bar, or call me to find out information about serving on next year’s VCBA Board of Directors.

“Well, what does the bar really do, anyway?” At least next time somebody asks me that question, I’ll have it in writing.

Oh! I almost forgot. I promised you in my first article that my birthday month would have to be duly recognized. Consider it recognized. It’s the 6th and I don’t mind telling you that I’ll be 44. I’d happily accept gifts of cash and jewelry, but will instead ask you to forego the shopping and wrapping, and make a donation to VLSP in honor of the occasion.

VCBA has 35 distinct sections, committees and affiliates, and the work that is done there is the lifeblood of the bar. In addition to the various committees devoted to continuing education in substantive practice areas, the bar has other sections focused on providing support, mentoring and networking for their members, such as the Women Lawyers Association, the Mexican-American Bar Association, and the East County Bar Association. VCBA is fortunate to have activities and people wholly devoted to fundraising, including those that organize the annual Law Day 5K, and our Annual Dinner.

As President of the bar, I’m always gratified to see involvement by our younger and newer attorneys, and the Barristers – open to those attorneys 36 years of age or under, or who have been in practice seven years or less — is one of the busiest sections of our bar. Barristers provides opportunities for networking, mentoring and community involvement, and they always have a lot of fun doing it.

I take particular pride in how much our members give back to the community. At the conference, I learned that several of our sections, including the Mexican-American Bar Association and the Ventura County Asian-American Bar Association, award annual scholarships to law students, or those interested in the legal profession. But no better example of community service exists than in the work done by our highly regarded and honored Volunteer Lawyers Services Program, or VLSP, Inc.

Over a span of almost 15 years, hundreds of lawyers have provided pro-bono legal services to the low income and underserved population in the county. The backbone of the program is the panel of emeritus attorneys, which in 2002 was awarded the California State Bar President’s Distinguished Pro Bono Service Award. The award was presented to our panel in recognition of their commitment to provide or enable the direct provision of legal services to the poor in our county. As the needs of the community grow, so does the work of VLSP, and their service is immeasurable.

This conference was a reminder to me that I am a member of a truly vibrant and dedicated organization, and in which I’m proud to serve.

I didn’t grow up in a house that was particularly cutting-edge when it came to the newest technology. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t that we didn’t enjoy our 8-track tape player and our Pong, it’s just that these things all required a certain level of mechanical ability, and those tasksusually the domain of the man in the housedidn’t fall on the list of my father’s favorite things. Anything with the words “some assembly required” printed on the box was to be avoided at all cost.
I remember when we got our first VCR (for the Barristers, let me explainthat’s an acronym for “video cassette recorder,” a primitive form of technology we used to watch a movie at home, before the DVD was invented). The excitement that was in the air at noon when my dad brought home the box was but a distant memory by 7 or 8 p.m. No hope of watching a movie that night or, for that matter, being able to tell the time by the front of the VCR. “Oh well,” my father sighed in frustration, “it will be right in six months.”

My mother’s mechanical abilities far exce- eded those of my father. My mother and I once spent the better part of an entire weekend assembling a reproduction of a suit of armor that had been given to my parents by a client. It arrived in a box that contained dozens of pieces, large and small, and my mother and I put the entire thing together ourselves. Of course, my dad supervised and, thanks to his frequent observations and suggestions, we didn’t have any parts left over when we finished. Carlos is still with usmy steadfast tin soldier, standing guard in my living room, a living and breathing testament to my technological and mechanical abilities. (OK, he’s not really living, I know that …but he gets presents at Christmas and a costume on Halloween, and since he never rolls his eyes at us or asks for anything, he is often the most-beloved member of our household).

Despite any aversion to technology I might have observed growing up, I was fortunate to have come of age in the Age of Technology. For my generation, the use of technology turned from an option into a requirement, both in school and beyond. As a freshman in college in the early 1980s, it was still big news when someone in my dorm got a computer, and I was thrilled with my first onea Tandy 1000 from Radio Shack that I got for Christmas. It got me through a few years of college, and would probably be worth far more today as a collectible than it ever was as a computer! Today it would be unthinkable to send a child off to college without a laptop, fully equipped with all measure of technology that I couldn’t have envisioned while working away on my Tandy 1000.

So with this questionable upbringing and immersion into technology, it might surprse you to learn that I am making technology the focus of my year as president. I owe thanks to my husband, Andrew, for helping me to not only learn about, but also appre- ciate, the various electronic and computing technologies we have today. Andrew’s tech- nological abilities come naturally to him, and he has used them to make a living for the last 20 years or so. Andrew never met a computer or piece of electronics he didn’t like, or couldn’t figure out how to use. In that respect, I didn’t marry my father, who only half-jokingly referred to the Yellow Pages as his toolbox.

When it has come to televisions, flat screen monitors, DVRs, wireless networ- king and countless other home and business technologies, over the years our family, thanks to Andrew, has become the Joneses in the neighborhood that you have to keep up with. It’s become my duty to balk at first, question the necessity, complain about the cost and wrinkle my nose at the instructions on use, and then a few short days later ponder how we ever lived without it.
My thoughts about what I would like to accomplish during my year as President overlapped with a major IT upgrade in my office. This started me thinking about how some of what I wanted to do at my firm could also be employed by the VCBA and, thanks to the creative energy and technological know-how from my husband, I decided to use an IT upgrade at the VCBA as a way to achieve some of the greater goals the organization hopes to achieve.
The starting point is a new website. The Bar underwent the first major redesign of its website during my first term on the VCBA board, in 2005, during Don Hurley’s presidency. I recall the board and bar leaders receiving an introduction to the redesign process, and looking at other state bar websites around the state. The process was fairly collaborative, and the redesign was developed within the standard of the time. Namely, it became the depository of information about the bar association, and visitors would go there to find out about the barits sections and committees, the upcoming events, local rules and practice, and the people serving as current directors or section leaders.
Most, if not all, of the information deposited onto the 2005 website is still there, along with some regular updates that have kept our calendar current, and the most “recent issue of Citations on the home page [Back issues may also be found on the websiteed.]. The current site is packed with information, much of it useful and relevant, and just about any question one may have about the bar can be found there
The challenge is that wethe “we” who consume this technologyhave become very savvy about how we use it. And when we seek it out, we are using it differently than before. For example, rather than just “surf” the web for fun or general information purposes, people are visiting particular sites for very particular reasons. If someone wants information about the Ventura County Bar Association, the first place they go will be our website, and they will want to know particular things about us. I want to deliver on their expectations, and it can’t be done with the current site which, judging against 2010 technology standards, is a bit of a dinosaurnot as much as my Tandy 1000 would be today, but deserving of an upgrade.
Thanks to the hard work of our IT committee, our fearless leader Steve Henderson, and my talented other half, we are close to unveiling the new site. I think you will find it to be more intuitive, easier to navigate, and generally more representative of the organization as a whole.
I have other goals in mind for the bar when it comes to technology this year, and the new website is just a starting point. In fact, many of us today don’t go to a website at all for our informationwe expect it to come to us, via a blog post, a Facebook update, or a ‘Tweet’ from a friend or colleague. My hope is that people who expect to get their information about the bar through those kinds of social media outlets will be doing so by the end of this year.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. Twitter? Facebook? Blogs? These are words that weren’t even in the vocabulary during my DOS days. I wonder what my Dad would think of all this technology? I’ll go ask Carlos what he thinks.

I didn’t grow up in a house that was particularly cutting-edge when it came to the newest technology. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t that we didn’t enjoy our 8-track tape player and our Pong, it’s just that these things all required a certain level of mechanical ability, and those tasks – usually the domain of the man in the house – didn’t fall on the list of my father’s favorite things. Anything with the words “some assembly required” printed on the box was to be avoided at all cost.

I remember when we got our first VCR (for the Barristers, let me explain – that’s an acronym for “video cassette recorder,” a primitive form of technology we used to watch a movie at home, before the DVD was invented). The excitement that was in the air at noon when my dad brought home the box was but a distant memory by 7 or 8 p.m. No hope of watching a movie that night or, for that matter, being able to tell the time by the front of the VCR. “Oh well,” my father sighed in frustration, “it will be right in six months.”

My mother’s mechanical abilities far exce- eded those of my father. My mother and I once spent the better part of an entire weekend assembling a reproduction of a suit of armor that had been given to my parents by a client. It arrived in a box that contained dozens of pieces, large and small, and my mother and I put the entire thing together ourselves. Of course, my dad supervised and, thanks to his frequent observations and suggestions, we didn’t have any parts left over when we finished. Carlos is still with us – my steadfast tin soldier, standing guard in my living room, a living and breathing testament to my technological and mechanical abilities. (OK, he’s not really living, I know that …but he gets presents at Christmas and a costume on Halloween, and since he never rolls his eyes at us or asks for anything, he is often the most-beloved member of our household).

Despite any aversion to technology I might have observed growing up, I was fortunate to have come of age in the Age of Technology.

For my generation, the use of technology turned from an option into a requirement, both in school and beyond. As a freshman in college in the early 1980s, it was still big news when someone in my dorm got a computer, and I was thrilled with my first one – a Tandy 1000 from Radio Shack that I got for Christmas. It got me through a few years of college, and would probably be worth far more today as a collectible than it ever was as a computer! Today it would be unthinkable to send a child off to college without a laptop, fully equipped with all measure of technology that I couldn’t have envisioned while working away on my Tandy 1000.

So with this questionable upbringing and immersion into technology, it might surpri- se you to learn that I am making technolo- gy the focus of my year as president. I owe thanks to my husband, Andrew, for helping me to not only learn about, but also appre- ciate, the various electronic and computing technologies we have today. Andrew’s tech- nological abilities come naturally to him, and he has used them to make a living for the last 20 years or so. Andrew never met a computer or piece of electronics he didn’t like, or couldn’t figure out how to use. In that respect, I didn’t marry my father, who only half-jokingly referred to the Yellow Pages as his toolbox.

When it has come to televisions, flat screen monitors, DVRs, wireless networ- king and countless other home and business technologies, over the years our family, thanks to Andrew, has become the Joneses in the neighborhood that you have to keep up with. It’s become my duty to balk at first, question the necessity, complain about the cost and wrinkle my nose at the instructions on use, and then a few short days later ponder how we ever lived without it.

My thoughts about what I would like to accomplish during my year as President overlapped with a major IT upgrade in my office. This started me thinking about how some of what I wanted to do at my firm could also be employed by the VCBA and, thanks to the creative energy and technological know-how from my husband, I decided to use an IT upgrade at the VCBA as a way to achieve some of the greater goals the organization hopes to achieve.

The starting point is a new website. The Bar underwent the first major redesign of its website during my first term on the VCBA board, in 2005, during Don Hurley’s presidency. I recall the board and bar leaders receiving an introduction to the redesign process, and looking at other state bar websites around the state. The process was fairly collaborative, and the redesign was developed within the standard of the time. Namely, it became the depository of information about the bar association, and visitors would go there to find out about the bar – its sections and committees, the upcoming events, local rules and practice, and the people serving as current directors or section leaders.

Most, if not all, of the information deposited onto the 2005 website is still there, along with some regular updates that have kept our calendar current, and the most “recent issue of Citations on the home page [Back issues may also be found on the website – ed.]. The current site is packed with information, much of it useful and relevant, and just about any question one may have about the bar can be found there

The challenge is that we – the “we” who consume this technology – have become very savvy about how we use it. And when we seek it out, we are using it differently than before. For example, rather than just “surf” the web for fun or general information purposes, people are visiting particular sites for very particular reasons. If someone wants information about the Ventura County Bar Association, the first place they go will be our website, and they will want to know particular things about us. I want to deliver on their expectations, and it can’t be done with the current site which, judging against 2010 technology standards, is a bit of a dinosaur – not as much as my Tandy 1000 would be today, but deserving of an upgrade.

Thanks to the hard work of our IT committee, our fearless leader Steve Henderson, and my talented other half, we are close to unveiling the new site. I think you will find it to be more intuitive, easier to navigate, and generally more representative of the organization as a whole.

I have other goals in mind for the bar when it comes to technology this year, and the new website is just a starting point. In fact, many of us today don’t go to a website at all for our information – we expect it to come to us, via a blog post, a Facebook update, or a ‘Tweet’ from a friend or colleague. My hope is that people who expect to get their information about the bar through those kinds of social media outlets will be doing so by the end of this year.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Twitter? Facebook? Blogs? These are words that weren’t even in the vocabulary during my DOS days. I wonder what my Dad would think of all this technology? I’ll go ask Carlos what he thinks.