ACC / Northeast Chapter – Chapter’s ‘Mini-MBA’ program wins CLE honor

Six months into 2007, our chapter has been active and busy! Following is a brief update on our programs and initiatives.
We have offered a host of exceptional programs for our members this spring, covering everything from intellectual property and outside counsel management, to employment mistakes, mergers and acquisitions, e-discovery, internal investigations, and data privacy and security.
Our Law Student Ethics Awards dinner in April was the signature event of the season, with six local judges joining members of the in-house community, deans from the participating law schools, and members of our sponsoring law firms.
Additionally, we learned that our chapter won the Best CLE Program Competition from ACC National with last November’s program “What You Didn’t Learn in Law School: Business Skills for Lawyers.” An excerpt from this program will be presented at ACC’s 2007 Annual Meeting.
This summer, we offered our first ever July program, and we really “thought out of the box” with this one. The game of Jeopardy! was played by a panel of in-house lawyers, complete with big screen graphics, sound effects, and questions covering ethics, compensation, and other legal issues. We chose six panelists for the game known for their humor and ability to think fast on their feet, so this was certainly a special evening!
Our all-day conference in November will once again cover “Business Skills for Lawyers” (also known as our “mini MBA”) and will be held at the Boston University School of Executive Leadership.
This has been an intensely popular program in the past, with many requests that we continue to offer it. Since so many of our members have learned the basics at previous programs, we will kick up the level of the sessions this year and gear the program towards a more knowledgeable audience. Watch the chapter’s website for details.
Best wishes to all Northeast members for a healthy and productive summer.

William O’Brien, corporate counsel at Hewlett-Packard, is president of the Northeast Chapter of the Association of Corporate Counsel.