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6 Litig. Docket 1 (2000-2001)

handle is hein.journals/litigadoc6 and id is 1 raw text is: A PUBLICATION OF THE SECTION OF LITIGATION * AMERICAN BAR ASSOCIATION e FALL 2000 * VOLUME 6 NUMBER 1 New chair puts focus on membership t's probably a good thing to have a Section chair who likes being a lawyer and likes being around other lawyers. That would be Ron Cohen, the new top dog for Litigation. Not that there's anything wrong with that top dog image, but it could be apt in this case. Though Cohen characterizes his prac- tice in Phoenix as specializing in very com- plex commercial litigation, he has done some pro bono work from time to time. In one of those cases, he represented an inmate on death row who had been convict- ed of murder, a very high-profile case in Arizona. On dog-scent evidence, we were able to get a new trial for him. Wonder if that approach might work in commercial lit- igation? Beyond his practice area, what are Cohen's particulars? He calls his hometown Des Moines, Iowa, and graduated from the University of Minnesota Law School in 1972. But it wasn't until 1990 that he took his connection with the Section beyond reading its publications. That's when he was involved in some cases with Section then-Vice Chair Louise LaMothe, Santa Barbara, Calif. She asked him to chair a Section Annual Meeting in his adopted town of Phoenix. I was so insufficiently grounded in the Section that I asked her to explain what a Section Annual Meeting was. So here we are, 10 years later, and Cohen's the new chair. So what does he want to do? Shortly after I was elected vice chair, we began an effort called 'Shaping Agenda 2000.' We've had a collection of about 40 dif- ferent members of the Section leadership working on various Section initiatives. We've got the support of the Council to sunset nine task forces; we'll only have four left. We'll have 11 one-year special projects focusing on membership benefits and the use of Section talent to reach out to our members and to the public at large. As for specifics, here are two examples of that reaching out: 0 Continuing efforts of previous chairs, such as Greg Joseph, New York City, in pro- King George III at the defense table. viding guidelines to litigators in the rules arena. One of these efforts is a special one- year project on guidelines for settlement ethics, Cohen says. Right now, such guide- lines simply do not exist. 0 And then there's the Rule of Law Project. Again, Cohen: 'We hope to have a manual that will be available to Third World countries and emerging democracies, where they can have a ready guide to rules of civil procedure and evidence - and, in the generic, the rule of law. As should be the case for any Section chair, Cohen is concerned about member- ship. We talk a lot about new members, but it seems to me that retention has to be the centerpiece of our focus. He talks of continuing an idea of his pre- decessor, Tommy Wells, Birmingham, Ala. We're going to have three major trial-tech- nique teleconferences during our year. It will cost our members just $15 to get CLE credit for each of these programs. We're going to take Section money to support this reach-out effort. Speaking of reaching out, that brings us back to where we started. Cohen says one of his central themes will be to foster a renewed sense of pride in lawyering. Some of us get so deeply involved in administra- tion and marketing, in organization and leadership, that it's nice to have a renewed sense of joy just in the fundamentals of advocacy. It's fun to prepare and try cases. So, yes. He really does like the law. And lawyers. Doggone right. iml George, how could you? You gotta give that Litigation Section credit for coming up with imaginative trials they wish they might have seen in an earlier life. A couple years back, it was a case against the folks who built the Titanic. This July, a special opportunity presented itself. The ABA split its Annual Meeting into two locations, New York City and London. In the London part, the Section decided it was time to put a couple of Georges on trial, George Washington and King George III. No, the patriot was not named after the king. Two separate trials were conducted. When it came to the king, he got a hung jury on one count and lost on two others. As for the leader of the revolutionaries, the jury 'voted 4-2 to acquit him of treason; the upstart left after the trial and returned to •Mt. Vernon. I Litigation Section Chair Ron Cohen

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