Message from the Chair

It is hard to believe winter is here and we are halfway through the 2011-2012 Florida Bar year. Your section has been very active this year. In June a delegation from the section was invited to attend the Missouri Solo and Small Firm Conference (the largest in the country) to help improve your section’s Solo and Small Firm Conference, which is coming up in conjunction with the next Florida Bar Midyear meeting. At the June Bar Convention our Florida Law Update was the best-attended seminar, and we presented the Legal Aid award to Jacksonville Area Legal Aid and awarded the Tradition of Excellence Award to our very own past chair, Margaret Rose “Peggy” Hoyt.

In September the Executive Council went to Tallahassee, toured the Bar headquarters, and got to meet many of the staff who help so much in keeping the section running smoothly with all of our programs and publications. Peggy Hoyt led an excellent faculty in presenting Technology for the Extraordinary Lawyer at the midyear meeting of the Bar at the Hilton Walt Disney World Resort.  This seminar was a big hit with all attendees.

October saw our ever popular Annual Ethics Update at the Tampa Airport with Eugene Shuey as the CLE program chair, with five hours of ethics CLE credit. It was a great help to our members to keep up with all the changes from the Supreme Court and the Board of Governors.

In November your executive council met for its quarterly meeting in St. Augustine. We had a very busy agenda, working to provide the very best future programs to our members and at as economical a cost as possible with this poor economy. Board member and Treasurer Teresa Morgan had to be excused because she was running in the New York Marathon. She did very well and we are very proud of her and her accomplishment. Also, in November U of F Professor Michael Olexa, the chair of our Agriculture Law Committee, presented the Florida Agricultural Law Update in Gainesville at the Florida Farm Bureau and had peanuts for all in attendance. The next day the Gators beat Furman in the Swamp.

Still to come we will have the next quarterly executive council meeting on the afternoon of January 27, 2012 at the Buena Vista Palace, Walt Disney Resort. In addition to the normal agenda items we will continue to work on making our two major upcoming events -- Joint Comparative Law CLE: The London Symposium and our Solo and Small Firm Conference -- the best possible experience for our members and the Bar. If you are in the area, we would love to have you stop by and say hello and share any ideas you may have for the section – just let us know you are coming.

Our Long-Range Planning meeting will be March 16 and 17, 2012 at the Marriott Marquis in Atlanta. We would appreciate any input from our members regarding what you would like to see in the future direction of your section. Please give us your thoughts.

On May 19, 2012, we will begin our joint Comparative Law Symposium in London along with other sections of the Florida Bar and members of the Bar Council (Barristers) and the Law Society (Solicitors) from our host country. We will have our meetings and lunches at the Middle Temple. The Middle Temple Church played a big role in the Da Vinci Code and the Master of the Church will lecture anddebunk that book. Two joint receptions with our English counterparts are scheduled. Side trips are being planned for London and the English countryside. And, for those interested, an add-on trip to Paris via the tunnel is available. I hope you will have an opportunity to attend this symposium.  We can still accept a limited number of additional registrations.

Teresa Morgan and her committee have already begun the planning for the Solo and Small Firm Conference to be held in conjunction with the 2012 Midyear Meeting of the Bar at the Palace Hotel in Lake Buena Vista on September 21-22, 2012. The committee is incorporating much of what was learned at the Missouri Solo and Small Firm Conference back in June -- it will be a great conference.

The GPSSF Section – 40 years strong this year!

-- Frank Maloney
GPSSF Executive Council Chair, 2011-2012