Mark Bajalia and Karen Millard
Mark your calendar. On Aug. 23, The Jacksonville Bar Association and Florida Coastal School of Law will co-sponsor the 2011 Professionalism Symposium. The Symposium will be held at the Jacksonville Public Library and will take place from 1-5 p.m. with a catered reception to immediately follow.
Once every two years, The JBA hosts a Symposium to provide judges, seasoned attorneys, new practitioners and law students a forum to come together to discuss and learn about how members of the legal community can improve ethical and professional conduct.
The 2007 and the 2009 programs were very successful with more than 400 attendees, including more than 60 judges from the federal and state courts and we expect an equally impressive turnout for this year’s Symposium.
We have already received numerous responses from federal and state judges indicating their commitment to and presence at the Symposium and registration forms are starting to flow in.
We are pleased that U.S. District Judge Timothy J. Corrigan of the Middle District of Florida will be the keynote speaker. Also, back by popular demand, Jack Marshall, Esq. of ProEthics Ltd., will speak and deliver a presentation entitled “Ethics Safari: Surviving the Legal Jungle.”
The Ethics Safari presentation is a new, challenging and entertaining interactive seminar that will explore recent developments in legal ethics as well as new tools for anticipating and dealing with ethical dilemmas in today’s modern arena.
Engaging hypotheticals, most based on recent cases and lawyer experiences, will become the catalyst for wide-ranging group discussion and debate.
In addition, there will be an opportunity for attendees to participate in one of four interactive breakout sessions. The separate sessions include a family, criminal, civil, and interactive session with Jack Marshall.
Participants will also be able to attend a judicial panel in which members of the state and federal bench will share their observations from the bench.
Florida Coastal School of Law is co-sponsoring the event. In the 2009-10 academic year, Florida Coastal School of Law implemented a program in which its law students are required to complete continuing education requirements as a condition to graduation that is very similar to the requirement that attorneys must satisfy to maintain their license to practice law in the state of Florida.
The law students must complete at least six hours of continuing education while in law school. One of the reasons the law school introduced this requirement was to educate the students about the ethical rules that govern lawyers’ actions and also to teach students how what they are learning in the classroom will be applied in the practice of law.
The Symposium will be an excellent opportunity for the law students to meet members of the local bench and bar and to learn about many of the ethical issues facing lawyers practicing in the Northeast Florida area.
This is a wonderful opportunity to interact with members of the Bench and Bar while learning about the latest ethics issues.
You can obtain a registration form from The JBA’s website — www.jaxbar.org.