Summer is upon us. The long, lazy days of warm sun and cool ocean breezes. Plenty of time to relax, enjoy life and take it easy. Yeah, right.

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.

Thanks to a technical error, the teaser in the President’s Message of May’s Citations – designed to get you to support VLSP – failed to print.  But not to fear!  The title of my message was “The New Phonebook’s Here, The New Phonebook’s Here!!”  A donation to VLSP will be made in the name of the first reader to tell me the classic comedy from which this line came.  Post your answer in the comment section below!

As I sit down to write this column, I have just finished reviewing the new VCBA website. This has been a work in progress for many months, and there are probably dozens of metaphors I could use to describe the feeling I have about the launch of the new site. But I’ll spare you. As happy as I am about the new site, it simply doesn’t compare with the birth of my children, or the three-day brisket we barbeque for the Fourth of July. But it is a great new website, and I expect it to be up and running by May 15th.

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.

A to Z is a proud sponsor of the 14th Annual Wine Tasting/Silent Auction sponsored by the Ventura County Paralegal Association, Inc. (VCPA) This year’s event will be held at the elegant Four Points Sheraton in Ventura on Thursday, May 6th, 2010 from 6:00 – 8:00 p.m.

Along with wine tasting and hors d’oeuvres, each ticket purchased includes a commemorative wine glass and entry in the grand prize drawing. The silent auction features many unique items and valuable services from local vendors.

A portion of the proceeds from the event will benefit VCPA’s Scholarship Program, and the Volunteer Lawyers Services Program, Inc. (VLSP), which provides legal services to the poor and under-served in Ventura County. VCPA, Inc. has been a valued donor to VLSP, and over the last 5 years has donated more than $3,000 in proceeds from this annual event.

Maria Godinez, a Certified Paralegal in the Probate and Estate Planning Department at A to Z, has been a member of VCPA for 8 years, and a member of its steering committee for 6 years. She currently serves as editor of the newsletter.

For more information and how to obtain tickets for this event, visit www.vcparalegal.org or contact Vivian Christiansen at vcpa.winetasting@gmail.com. We hope to see you there!

That was the upshot of a particularly memorable conversation I had with my eldest daughter when she was about 6 or 7 years old. The conversation has come to my mind several times recently, thanks to our poor – although allegedly improving – economy. The conversation Julia and I had went something like this.

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.

“Well, what does the bar really do, anyway?” As the 2010 President of the Ventura County Bar Association, this is a question I frequently get asked, and I know that many of my predecessors did, as well. Early on a recent Saturday morning, that question was answered loudly, as I had the privilege of leading 41 men and women in the 20th Annual Ventura County Bar Association Bar Leaders Conference.

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.

The Oxnard Plain Users Group, commonly referred to as OPUG, has set a meeting for its third workshop on December 8th at 1:30 p.m. The workshop will be held at the Camarillo Library, 4104 Las Posas Road, Camarillo. John Mathews will serve as the facilitator for OPUG.

OPUG was established by the United Water Conservation District, the Fox Canyon Groundwater Management Agency, and the Pleasant Valley County Water District to address groundwater issues on the Oxnard Plain, and to discuss possibilities of developing new water sources.

At the last OPUG meeting, stakeholders discussed alternatives and options for addressing the groundwater overdraft issues facing the Oxnard Plain. The stakeholders considered 12 potential options, including expanded utilization of recycled water, construction of groundwater injection wells, and expansion of additional surface water delivery facilities into the southeast Oxnard Plain. Each of the options was presented and discussed among the approximately 70 stakeholders in attendance.

This OPUG meeting will outline potential costs, including capital outlays for each of the 12 options, and the hope is that, after the stakeholders review the cost parameters for each option, the options can be narrowed down to 3 or 4. The group will then spend additional time and effort on the feasibility of each option, including such things as regulatory, environmental and intergovernmental issues, which can be detailed and then presented at a following OPUG meeting.

Watch this spot for more information about future OPUG meetings.

The ongoing budget crisis in California – projected to grow to more than $28 billion by the end of 2009 – has affected virtually every aspect of doing business in the state, and the Ventura County Courts have not escaped the budget axe.

Over the last several months, California courts have instituted historical reforms to address the economic challenges. This summer, the clerk’s office at the Ventura County Superior Court began to close at 4:00 p.m. everyday. The only services available after 4:00 p.m. are now jury services and collections. On top of that, just a few weeks ago, the state took the drastic step of simply closing for an entire day, once a month. Now, every court in the state is closed on the third Wednesday of every month. The closures are scheduled to last until the end of the state’s fiscal year, or in June 2010.

The Chief Justice of the California Supreme Court acknowledged that the furlough days are unprecedented, but deemed necessary as the only “rational option available” to reduce the budget. In addition to the closures, the state has also increased court filing fees across the board as a way of raising revenue.

The closures – although they sound fairly benign – have a real affect on our law practice on a day-to-day basis. There was initial confusion about what affect the furlough day would have on filing deadlines, and these deadlines are now more carefully scrutinized. In the conservatorship area in particular, a court closure day results in delay in gaining protection for a senior who has been the victim of financial or physical abuse, or the filing of a petition to secure public benefits for a disabled person or child who needs public assistance. The same holds true for victims of domestic violence seeking restraining orders, and a wide variety of other persons simply looking to the courts to carry out their most fundamental role – to seek justice.

At A-Z, our attorneys and staff stay informed about all the most recent developments in the court system. If any of these developments affect the handling of a client’s matter, the client can be assured that it will be handled in the most timely fashion. If you want more information about the furlough days, please let one of our attorneys or staff know, and we will be happy to discuss it with you.