Volume 14, Issue 3
Summer 2003
Senior Lawyer News
A Message from the Incoming Chair
by Patricia A. Barton
2003-2004 SLC Chair
All members of the Virginia
State Bar who are are in good standing and are 55 years of age or older are
automatically members of the Senior Lawyers Conference. SLC now has nearly
8,500 members. Bar Council voted in Virginia Beach to include SLC's chair
on Bar Council's Executive Committee, bringing the Executive Committee's total
membership to eleven.
This year's Annual Meeting resulted in an amazing election year for women: a woman is Bar President: Jeannie Dahnk of Fredericksburg; I was elected Chair of the SLC; Kathleen M. Uston of Fredericksburg was elected President of the Young Lawyers Conference, and Judith L. Rosenblatt of Virginia Beach was elected Chair of the Conference of Local Bar Associations. Outgoing Bar President Ben DiMuro termed this the "Year of the Woman" in his remarks to several groups at Virginia Beach.
SLC's emphasis for
several years has been promoting professionalism and civility among practitioners.
Our profession has many severe stresses inherent in daily practice—from
negotiating settlements between warring parties, to taking cases to trial
that would have benefitted by being amicably settled. Lack of civility among
attorneys adds unnecessary stress, as well as diminishing our profession's
image with our clients and the public at large.
We have added another goal this year: to facilitate the utilization of senior
lawyers' skills and experience to benefit the profession and the public. To
this end, we are working on a proposed amendment to the rules of the Supreme
Court which would allow attorneys who have retired to provide pro bono legal
services to the indigent as Emeritus Members of the Bar through their local
legal assistance programs. In this current period of financial cuts in funding
for programs serving the poor, we feel this could help fill the need for legal
assistance with experienced attorneys. The attorneys would be covered by the
legal aid group's malpractice insurance.
We are also working on an update of our Senior Citizens Handbook, the most requested publication by the public, in conjunction with the Young Lawyers Conference who have worked along with us in developing and updating the handbook from its inception.
A continuing project for the last several years has been endeavoring to remedy the problem of sole practitioners who become disabled or die without having made any provisions for winding up their practices. The Bar has had to step in on many occasions with receivers or other assistance (such as a computer expert to help obtain access to a computer when no password could be found)—to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars. Elsewhere on this website a special power of attorney can be found which affords a colleague the right to wind up a sole practitioner's practice. It may be downloaded. We are now working on fine tuning this procedure in response to questions that have arisen regarding client confidentiality and protection for the volunteer attorney from malpractice claims which might be brought by the deceased or disabled attorney's clients.
The Board envisions a busy and interesting year ahead!
Patricia A. Barton
SLC Chair
2003-2004