NJCCA President's Message

by Valerie Camara

To the Membership,

On November 20th, I was elected President of New Jersey Corporate Counsel Association (NJCCA).  I have been a member of the Association of Corporate Counsel (ACC) and NJCCA for more than 12 year and served on the board and in leadership roles for a number of years.  With that history, I would like to acknowledge that I have some pretty big shoes to fill and I only hope that I can manage the organization as well as my predecessors have.

A heartfelt thanks goes out to Lee Braem for his leadership over the last two years as our President.  Additionally, I would like to thank Art Saiewitz (Past-President) and several board members (Heidi Allen, Richard Manella and Jon Olson) for their contributions to NJCCA and wish them well.

I look forward to working with the 2008-9 board and committee leaders to continue to provide our members with continuing legal education (CLE) tailored to the in-house bar and networking opportunities.  Our committee leaders look to develop CLE programs of interest to the generalist and to the specialist.  They also look to develop innovative ways to engage our members by conducting webinars and telephone conference calls that allow us to discuss a recent case or new regulation and how that will impact on our practice.  Our committee leaders try to insure that our programs have a mix of in-house and outside counsel speakers and that we share best practices for tackling the issues the case or regulations present.

The organization also serves as the voice of the in-house bar and when the board determines that our advocacy is needed to provide our views of an issue, we will do so.  An example of this is the work we have done with respect to the proposal for mandatory continuing legal education.  ACC and NJCCA board member, Philip Crowley (currently, Treasurer) was our spokesperson at a hearing held in the spring at which he provided our position with respect to the implementation of a CLE program.  Yes, it appears that mandatory CLE will be coming to NJ, the final report from the Ad Hoc Committee on CLE has been to the Supreme Court and the rules are likely to be approved in 2009 and the committee's proposal is for them to go into effect in 2010.

The board met last week to hold its annual retreat to begin our planning for 2009.  We are hopeful that 2009 will be as successful as this year has been but we will likely have to work at.  The board is planning to conduct a member survey in the first half of 2009 and I would urge you to take a few minutes to complete the survey.  The board uses these results to insure that we are on track to meet the needs of our members.  I also hope to develop an active committee to support the ACC Value Challenge initiative that was launched this fall.  Look for more about this early next year and if this initiative is something that is of interest to you and your company, you are more than welcome to join.

The board is planning to continue publish our member directory and monthly newsletters and to host a spring cocktail reception, golf outing, all-day seminar and our annual dinner meeting.  Please look for details on these events as they unfold.

I look forward to working with the board and all of our members to provide the types of programs that will best serve our members.  With this in mind, please feel free to provide me, or for that matter, any of our board or committee leaders with your suggestions.

I would like to take this opportunity to wish all of our members and sponsors a happy and healthy holiday season!

Valerie Camara
NJCCA President