Message from the Chairs

Welcome to another year with the Expert Witness Committee. We have several exciting projects coming up and are diligently working on our committee’s three-year annual plan, which should provide many of you with some great opportunities to get involved. The three-year planning process is new and has caused us to really dig in and identify some special projects for which we will undoubtedly need your help!

I want to welcome Jeffrey Beaver as our new cochair. Jeffrey has been an active member in the ABA, having been a cochair of the Condemnation, Zoning, and Land Use Litigation Committee for the last three years, and before that, a Programs subcommittee cochair. He has worked actively coordinating cosponsorships with other Section committees, such as Environmental Litigation and Energy Litigation. Art Justice has moved over to cochair the Health Law Litigation Committee. We wish Art well, although fortunately for us, he is not leaving our group, just moving to another leadership position in the Section. Art has played an important role in this committee and has been one of the primary persons responsible for driving our new book project. Thanks, Art!

We are presently working on finalizing our new subcommittee chairs for the upcoming year and will make an announcement concerning them shortly. If you have an interest in serving as a cochair of any of our subcommittees (programming, membership, website, publications, emerging issues) please let us know as soon as possible. We plan to appoint new subcommittee chairs by October 12, 2009.

Speaking of our book project, we are making excellent progress and believe the book is on track to be published sometime next spring. Please keep an eye out for upcoming email communications and notices on our website concerning the book’s status. A special thanks go to our editors, Wendy Couture and Allyson Haynes, for all of their hard work on this project. They already have spent hundreds of hours on the project. They should be commended.

It is never too late to start planning for the Section Annual Conference, which this year will be held on April 21–23, 2010, in New York. The conference will follow a format similar to the highly successful one utilized last year and will include a variety of high quality CLE programs. You will not want to miss this meeting, so please put it on your calendar now and plan to join Jeffrey and me in New York next spring. The meeting will include time for our committee to gather. We want to meet every one of you!

Send us your ideas, articles, and case updates. We need material for the website!

Joan Archer
Expert Witness Committee Co–chair