This past weekend I was invited to Nashville, TN, to help the ABA Litigation Section’s CADS group (of which I co-chair the antitrust subcommittee) develop a plan for the upcoming year. The plan focuses on providing benefits to our Section of Litigation members who join CADS.
We have an ambitious plan! CADS co-chairs Jeff Gardner (Phoenix) and Katie Honecker (also of Phoenix) guided the group through a month-by-month development of what our CADS committee will “deliver” to its membership. First and foremost, of course, in the National Institute on Class Actions in Chicago this October (see separate post below). Also, a program that I developed for a regional meeing that I co-chaired in San Francisco last June at the University of San Francisco School of Law, “Judicial Quasi-Class Actions,” has been selected by the Section of Litigation to be presented this coming April at the Section’s annual meeting in New Orleans. We are also planning to sponsor not one but two regional meetings (likely one in San Francisco and one on the East Coast). I volunteered to help the co-chairs of next year’s S.F. regional develop the program content.
Moreover, CADS will continue to publish hot-topic updates on class action law in our online newsletters, available on the excellent CADS’ website. Next spring I will record and publish via the ABA website a “Sound Advice” session on the “top ten class action decisions.”
The Nashville leader’s meeting was great. The ABA provided insightful CLE programs to attendees–including a great one this morning on appreciating the generational differences between “boomers” (such as yours truly), “gen. X” and “gen. Y” (aka, “millennials”), and the challenges and opportunities these differences present to lawyers generally, and to the ABA as an organization.
It was not all work and no play, however. The CADS group joined hundreds of other Section of Litigation leaders Saturday night for a reception and music at the Ryman Theater–home of the Grand Ole’ Opry. Pretty cool, I must say. Our CADS group kept the Nashville vibe going afterwards, and wound up at The Station Club, which was one of the host venues for the American Music Festival going on in Nashville this weekend. We heard a band from Raleigh, NC, called Chatham County Line. Absolutely fantastic bluegrass! Their new CD made the 8-hour drive back to Ann Arbor go much more pleasantly…. Check them out: Chatham County Line. Highly recommended.
