State Bar of Texas Blog : State Bar of Texas Blog : News & Features on Lawyers & Attorneys & Legal Professionals in Austin, Dallas, Houston & TX

The State Bar of Texas and the Texas Young Lawyers Association (TYLA) invite local bar associations and young lawyer affiliates to participate in the statewide Law Day contests. Local bar associations, courts, schools, youth groups, and community organizations are encouraged to hold Law Day programs to help people understand how law keeps us free and how our legal system strives to achieve justice. The deadline for all submissions is Monday, April 1, 2013. Get the full details.

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Debbie Armentor, a teacher at Gregory-Portland High School, has been selected to attend the Fourth Annual Teachers’ Law School in Austin on July 12-14.

Armentor is one of 34 teachers statewide whose applications were accepted to attend the three-day legal education program at the Texas Law Center near the State Capitol.

Social studies and government teachers from around Texas sought entry into the Teachers’ Law School. The school brings together more than a dozen of the State’s leading judges and lawyers who give presentations on civil and criminal legal systems at the state and federal level.

The Teachers’ Law School is done in collaboration with the State Bar of Texas and its Law-Related Education Department. “The Teachers’ Law School provides experienced educators a chance to interact with the legal community one-on-one and then translate that experience into effective practices in the classroom,” said Jan Miller, director of the Bar’s Law-Related Education Department.

The Teachers’ Law School was piloted in Austin in 2009 and has become a national model for similar programs across the United States. Faculty includes U.S. Appeals Court Judge Edward Prado, Texas Supreme Court Justice Nathan Hecht, and nationally recognized defense attorney Gerald Goldstein. Past presenters include Texas Supreme Court Chief Justice Wallace Jefferson, U.S. District Judge Sam Sparks and criminal defense attorney Richard “Racehorse” Haynes.

The program is free for the teachers with food, lodging and travel funded through scholarship donations from the American Board of Trial Advocates-Texas and its Texas affiliates.

“Texas is blessed to have talented teachers all across the state,” said Jim Parsons, president of TEX-ABOTA and past president of the State Bar of Texas. “We’re very pleased to be able to show some of them our appreciation for all that they do to help us educate our kids on our judicial system, why it’s the best system around and how they can help make it better.” 

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An ongoing initiative of State Bar President Terry Tottenham has been Practice Tips in Good Times and Bad, a series of career development webcasts premiering the last Thursday of each month on TexasBarCLE.com. Each webcast is free of charge to registered users of the site. (Site registration is also free.)

This month's offering, So You Are Starting Your Own Practice?, will be May 26 from 12:30 to 1:30 pm CDT. (It is not MCLE-accredited.) Seasoned practitioners Claude Ducloux and Xavier Medina, both of Austin, will give their perspectives on a range of issues, from finding suitable office space and storage to managing your finances and new technology. If you're considering hanging out your own shingle, you'll appreciate the insights and advice offered in this FREE overview. Click here to register.

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An ongoing initiative of State Bar President Terry Tottenham is Practice Tips in Good Times and Bad, a series of career development webcasts premiering the last Thursday of each month on TexasBarCLE.com. Each webcast is free of charge to registered users of the site. (Site registration is also free.)

The last such webcast of 2010, Strategies to Weather a Challenging Economy, will be December 30 from 12:30 to 1:30 CST. (It is not MCLE-accredited.) Two experts from Houston, Lawyer-Coach Debra Bruce and Greenberg Traurig Business Director John Meredith, will give their perspectives on diversifying your client base, retooling your practice, providing services at a reasonable rate, cutting costs, and much more. Click here to register.

To learn of upcoming Practice Tips webcasts, visit TexasBarCLE.com each month and click on the Webcasts tab.

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A new State Bar of Texas CLE course premieres this week to focus on an area of growing concern to the legal profession. "Lawyer and Law Firm Disputes: Problems and Prevention" will be held Friday, September 17, in Dallas at the Belo Mansion. The brainchild of Interim Dean Susan Saab Fortney of the Texas Tech University School of Law, the course brings together top experts to discuss intra-firm litigation, loss prevention, risk management, lawyer mobility, de-equitization, and more. The keynote speaker is Professor Robert W. Hillman, author of Hilman on Lawyer Mobility: The Law and Ethics of Partner Withdrawals and Law Firm Breakups. The luncheon speaker will be W. Mark Lanier, recognized by the National Law Journal as one of the nation's Top Ten Trial Lawyers and one of the Most Influential Lawyers in America.

Accredited for 7.25 MCLE hours, including 3.25 hours ethics, the course will be recorded and archived for future viewings at TexasBarCLE.com.

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