President’s Message
Welcome to the Young Lawyers Conference website! Here you can find information on the YLC and its programs, including the latest news, calls for volunteers, upcoming events, and archived copies of our newsletter.
The YLC is all about service: service to its members, the bar, and the communities of the Commonwealth of Virginia. As such, it embodies one of my favorite quotations: “Service is planting a tree under whose shade you’ll never sit.” Year after year, the YLC plants trees under whose shade we’ll never sit. The YLC is proud of and intends to continue its legacy of service this year
To serve our members, we have programs like the Admissions & Orientation Ceremony, the First Day in Practice Seminar, and the Professional Development Conference. We also distribute our award-winning newsletter, the Docket Call, on a quarterly basis. To serve the bar, we host the celebration bench-bar dinner and sponsor programs at the Virginia State Bar Annual Meeting. To serve our communities, we organize the Oliver Hill/Samuel Tucker Pre-Law Institute, host several minority pre-law conferences, offer emergency legal services during natural disasters, and provide wills to first-responders through our Wills for Heroes program.
This year, we will launch a new initiative aimed at cancer survivorship and the law. As many of you know, these issues are near and dear to my own heart. The statistics are staggering and humbling: 1 in 4 people will be diagnosed with cancer at some point during life. More often than not, cancer survivors struggle not only with treatment decisions but also legal problems that arise because of their diagnosis. The legal problems may include employment, health insurance, medicare, real estate or landlord/tenant, bankruptcy, advance medical directives, just to name a few. So we will be developing a handbook to help cancer survivors navigate the variety of nagging legal issues they face as they fight their disease. We will also be sponsoring a CLE to train lawyers on the legal issues faced by cancer survivors. We hope that those lawyers, in turn, will help their family members, friends, neighbors, and strangers who are fighting cancer and need legal assistance.
These are only the highlights of what is ahead. We have many other programs, projects, and initiatives, all of which are designed to serve our members, the bar, and our communities. We are always looking for new volunteers and leaders. Please contact me at (202) 344-8033 or if you would like to become involved. The YLC needs help to carry out its legacy of service. We welcome your participation and hope that you will join us.
The YLC will plant new trees this year and will help those trees that we have already planted grow so that others may some day benefit from the shade.
Lesley Pate Marlin
President 2009-2010