Federal Judiciary

Litigation Section Council - spring meeting in Corpus Christi

By Michael Smith

One of the organizations I've privileged to be on the governing board for is the Litigation Section of the State Bar of Texas, which is the largest of the State Bar's sections, and represents litigation practitioners across the state.  I've been on the Council for six years, and am going into the officer rotation in June when we change officers.  The section's Council had its spring retreat in Corpus Christi last weekend.  While I missed part of it because of the Causes of Action seminar in Dallas, I did make dinner on the aircraft carrier USS Lexington Friday night , and the Saturday meetings.  As the Lexington is one of the aircraft carriers I wrote a book on a few years back (Essex Class Carriers in action, Squadron-Signal Publications, 1996), I was very excited to get to spend the evening on the ship.  We had dinner on the fantail, took a group photo on the stage on the hangar deck , and then toured several parts of the ship, including the navigation bridge and pilot house  (yeah, that's me, talking too much as usual).  There were new exhibits on Pearl Harbor in the forecastle that weren't there the last time I was on the ship a year ago, and it was great to see. We also were excited to have lunch Saturday at legendary Corpus foodie site Snapka's hosted by Council member Kathy Snapka.
The Council is continuing to work on numerous programs of interest to litigation practitioners in Texas, including publication of the The Advocate quarterly and News for the Bar newsletters (which are outstanding, by the way), participation on statewide task forces looking into issues such as the current Court Administration committee, leadership on the occasional crisis (it helped get lawyers for the West Texas proceedings), the annual Litigation Update and annual meeting seminars.  We are also looking into other issues of interest to lawyers, including the costs of discovery.  As always, if anyone can think of an issue that the section ought to look into, just let me know.

Full post as published by Eastern District of Texas Federal Court Practice on April 25, 2008 (boomark / email).