Happy Hour, School Supply Drive Aug. 14 at Chima

The YLD will hold a Networking Happy Hour and School Supply Drive at Chima Brazilian Steakhouse, 1901 John F. Kennedy Blvd., on Wednesday, Aug. 14 from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m.

The Aug. 14 Happy Hour is sponsored by The Legal Intelligencer, Intelligent Office and LawCash and includes complimentary hors d'oeuvres and food stations. The first 50 people to arrive will receive a drink ticket. Registration is not required.

The YLD is partnering this year with the Pennsylvania Bar Association Minority Bar Community Outreach Committee in a School Supply Drive in order to collect donations for students in economically challenged areas of the city. We need your help! We will be collecting donations at Chima. We are looking for donations of backpacks, notebook paper, pens/pencils/highlighters, notebooks, composition books, rulers, dictionaries, folders, binders, pencil cases and anything else you think might be useful. In addition to the Chima collection, we will also be setting up donation sites at firms throughout the city.

Continuing the Conversation with Women Bar Leaders Aug. 7

Join us for our next Philadelphia Bar Association Chancellor's Leadership Institute program, as we welcome another group of women leaders of several affinity bar associations who will discuss their roles and reflections on the historic number of women currently serving overlapping terms as leaders of minority, ethnic and other bar associations locally, regionally and beyond on Wednesday, Aug. 7.

The speakers are Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas Judge Sandra Mazer Moss, chancellor, Louis D. Brandeis Law Society; Erica Smith-Klocek, president, Asian Pacific American Bar Association of Pennsylvania; and Nancy J. Winkler, president, Philadelphia Trial Lawyers Association.

There is no cost to attend this program. Lunch is available for purchase to those who register in advance. The cost of lunch is $8 for members of the Philadelphia Bar Association and $12 for non-members. The program begins at 12 p.m. in the 11th floor Conference Center at the Philadelphia Bar Association, 1101 Market St. Click here to register.

Registration Now Open for Bench-Bar Conference at Revel

Registration is now open for the 2013 Bench-Bar & Annual Conference at Revel in Atlantic City, N.J. on Friday and Saturday, Oct. 4-5, 2013. Association members who register before Sept. 13 can save $80! Click here to register.

The Bench-Bar & Annual Conference provides attendees with the opportunity to earn continuing legal education credit while networking with colleagues and members of the bench. Hundreds of attorneys and judges are expected to attend.

A new addition to this year's conference will be a Law Practice Management track among the 22 CLE seminars that will be offered. Another highlight of the weekend will be the Friday night reception at Revel's HQ nightclub. Prices for the 2013 edition of the Bench-Bar & Annual Conference are being kept at 2012 levels.

In addition, we are pleased to offer a special REVEL hotel room group rate to our Bench-Bar attendees. A rate of $179 plus tax is available Friday, Oct. 4 and a limited number of rooms are available at $149 plus tax for Thursday, Oct. 3. You must be a registered attendee of the Bench-Bar & Annual Conference in order to reserve a room at the group rate. Once you are registered for the conference you will receive instructions on how to make your room reservation.

Sponsors for the 2013 Bench-Bar & Annual Conference include USI Affinity; The First Judicial District of Pennsylvania; iDiscovery Solutions; Insurance Adjustment Bureau, Inc; Frankly Legal; JAMS, The Resolution Experts; Kaplan, Leaman & Wolfe Court Reporting & Litigation Support; LexisNexis; Love Court Reporting; M. Burr Keim Company; Robson Forensic, Inc.; State Civil Litigation Section; US Claims Inc; and Wilkie Lexus. For sponsorship information, contact Tracey McCloskey at 215-238-6360 or tmccloskey@philabar.org.

Last Days of Big Law July 30 at Constitution Center

Noam Scheiber, senior editor, The New Republic and Jeffrey Rosen, National Constitution Center president and CEO will discuss "The Last Days of Big Law" on Tuesday, July 30 from 6:30 to 8:30 at the National Constitution Center, 525 Arch St.

Noam Scheiber is a senior editor at The New Republic magazine in Washington, D.C., and a Schwartz Fellow at the New America Foundation. He holds a master’s degree in economics from Oxford University, where he studied on a Rhodes Scholarship, and a B.S. in math from Tulane University. Scheiber has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, New York Magazine, and Slate. He has appeared on CNN, CNBC, MSNBC, and NPR. His book "The Escape Artists: How Obama's Team Fumbled the Recovery" was released in 2012 and provides an insider perspective on the Obama administration's economic team and their handling of the economic recovery.

Jeffrey Rosen is the National Constitution Center’s president and CEO, appointed to the position by the Center's Board of Trustees in May 2013. He is a professor at The George Washington University Law School, where he has taught since 1997, and is the legal affairs editor of The New Republic. Rosen is an author and a highly regarded journalist whose essays and commentaries have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic Monthly, on National Public Radio, and in The New Yorker, where he has been a staff writer. The Chicago Tribune named him one of the 10 best magazine journalists in America and a reviewer for the Los Angeles Times called him "the nation's most widely read and influential legal commentator."' He received the 2012 Golden Pen Award from the Legal Writing Institute for his "extraordinary contribution to the cause of better legal writing."

Admission to the program is free. Program attendees are encouraged to register at endofbiglaw.eventbrite.com.

Board Observer Program Seeks Young Lawyers

The Philadelphia Bar Foundation, in partnership with the Young Lawyers Division of the Philadelphia Bar Association and the Delivery of Legal Services Committee of the Philadelphia Bar Association, has developed the Board Observation Program, an initiative that gives young lawyers practicing in Philadelphia the opportunity to learn more about local public interest organizations and to develop leadership skills necessary to serve on the boards of such organizations as well as succeed in their future careers.

Through the program, a young lawyer will be paired with a Philadelphia nonprofit service organization so as to observe that organization's board activities during the one-year program. If you are a young lawyer interested in becoming a Board Observer or if you are a nonprofit organization and would like to express an interest in having an Observer next year, click here.

Join the New Committee on Insurance Practice

The Philadelphia Bar Association has created a new Committee on Insurance Practice for attorneys involved in insurance practice on all sides, such as subrogation, bad faith litigation, and other aspects the practice. The committee was formed with the intention of being as widely inclusive as possible and to partner with other sections and committees of the Association on events and initiatives where appropriate.

"A lot of law firms will be very interested in this, and more attorneys will want to be members of the Philadelphia Bar Association because of this Committee," said Chancellor Kathleen D. Wilkinson.

The Committee on Insurance Practice is chaired by Sean P. O'Donnell of Cozen O'Connor. For more information about the committee or to join, contact O'Donnell at sodonnell@cozen.com.

Volunteers Sought for New Education Law Committee

The Association's new Education Law Committee provides a forum to examine important initiatives affecting education, recent developments in the law and the Bar's role in this area. Our Association has not had an Education Law Committee in many years, and there is no more important time than now to examine the critical issues of access to education, development of our youth, and the intersection of the law at all levels - including pre-K to 12th grade, as well as colleges and universities.

The Committee will also study the expansion of youth courts in Philadelphia and the Bar's role in assisting that effort. City Council has accepted a series of recommendations for setting up youth courts in schools that work in tandem with the juvenile justice system.

Additionally, the Committee will facilitate the Bar's award-winning Advancing Civic Education Program, or ACE, which over the past five years has placed more than 150 volunteer lawyers and judges into 14 public high schools and three elementary schools to provide supplemental civics education, including the fundamental principles of citizenship, democracy and dispute resolution.

The Committee also meets and collaborates with public officials and agencies including the U.S. Department of Education, leveraging the strengths of their offices to help with the Committee's efforts to engage the education bar, and discusses ideas for potential trainings/programs/panels and topics to energize Philadelphia's education attorneys.

If you are interested in learning more about the work of our new Education Law Committee, please contact Committee Co-Chair Joshua Richards of Saul Ewing LLP at jrichards@saul.com, or Co-Chair Mary Gay Scanlon of Ballard Spahr LLP at scanlonm@ballardspahr.com.

Chancellor's Forum - Changing Parameters of Diversity Sept. 10

The Philadelphia Bar Association will present the Chancellor's Forum "The Changing Parameters of Diversity and Inclusion in the Legal Profession" on Tuesday, Sept. 10.

The featured speaker is Sandra S. Yamate, CEO, The Institute for Inclusion in the Legal Profession. She will be joined by Sophia Lee, chief litigation counsel at Sunoco and co-chair of the Philadelphia Diversity Law Group and Philadelphia Bar Association Corporate In-House Counsel Committee and secretary of the Philadelphia Bar Association; Wesley R. Payne IV, partner, White and Williams LLP and co-chair of Philadelphia Diversity Law Group as well as treasurer of the Philadelphia Bar Association and president of the Philadelphia Association of Defense Counsel; and Brennan J. Torregrossa, in-house counsel, Glaxo SmithKline and co-chair of the Philadelphia Bar Association’s Corporate In-House Counsel Committee. The program will be moderated by Chancellor Kathleen D. Wilkinson.

Established in 2009, the Institute for Inclusion in the Legal Profession (IILP) is one of the newer organizations establish-ed to devote its energies and focus its efforts at creating a more diverse and inclusive legal profession. With its motto, "Real change. Now," IILP has been asking hard questions and undertaking research and programming aimed at finding answers to those questions. Yamate will provide an overview of IILP's work, explaining how it supplements and supports the diversity leadership offered by groups like the Philadelphia Bar Association, the Philadelphia Diversity Law Group, and minority and women's bar associations, highlighting some of its research findings, and sharing insights into the most recent and cutting edge diversity and inclusion developments that IILP has been observing within the legal profession.

The event begins at 4 p.m. in the 11th floor Conference Center at the Bar Association, 1101 Market St. Registration is free at philadelphiabar.org.