Home Electronically In Touch Newsletter 2006 Issues September 2006

September 2006

Dear YLS Member:

I am pleased to present to you the September issue of Electronically In Touch. In this issue, you will find:
• The Big Event: the YLS Fall Meeting, October 20-22, 2006 in Albany
• Update from the Elder Law Section
• Standing Out in the Crowd—a monthly column- Enthusiasm
• Confronting Uncertainty in Law School and Practice- Commentary
• Outstanding Young Lawyer Award- Accepting Nominations for 2007
• Mark your calendar and save the dates! Details below.

First, I would like to thank the young lawyers who submitted content for this issue. You perform a valuable and important service by keeping our young lawyer and law student members informed of current topics and recent developments in the law, and by providing career and professional development advice that is useful, practical, and enjoyable to read.

Second, I would like to emphasize cooperation and interaction with the substantive law sections. As members of the NYSBA, we are part of an extraordinarily talented group of lawyers that represent a valuable resource of intellect and experience. As part of our effort to develop and improve our professional skills, I would like to encourage all YLS members to not only offer their own experiences and knowledge, but also attempt to incorporate knowledge accumulated by NYSBA’s many distinguished members.

In Touch is open to many different formats to present the cooperative efforts of our YLS contributors. Perhaps you would like to co-author a piece in a conversational format, describing a particular area of law. Maybe you are particularly impressed with an attorney’s knowledge of an area of law and would to write a summary of an interview with that attorney. Or perhaps you know a judge or district attorney or U.S. Attorney, etc. and your interaction with that person has or could produce something of interest to your collogues.

As always, I encourage you to submit any idea you may have including, a summary of a recent decision, statute, legal issue, or book review, or a procedural change in practice, etc. If you are interested in sharing your ideas, advice, tips, and/or content submissions, please send them to us at yls@nysba.org or to Seth at seth@sethazria.com for inclusion in the newsletter. Electronically In-Touch is a monthly publication. The deadline for submissions is the 10th of the month, for inclusion in that month’s issue but your submissions and ideas are welcome anytime for later publication.

We hope that you enjoy the September issue and look forward to staying In Touch...

Seth M. Azria
Editor

YLS Fall Meeting, October 20-22, 2006

Please join us for our Fall meeting in Albany, October 20-22, 2006. With continuing legal education programs covering a diverse array of practice areas and career development topics and opportunities for networking and socializing with peers, colleagues, families, and friends, it is our hope that the weekend will attract one of the largest gatherings of newly-admitted, young lawyers, and law students to a meeting of the Section.

The weekend will open late Friday afternoon with an ethics presentation, followed by a welcome reception and dinner for those members arriving early. The meeting will continue on Saturday with a day-long program of continuing legal education, including three (3) general sessions and thirteen (13) concurrent sessions. We will be offering programs on ethics, civil/criminal trial practice and trial advocacy, evidence, criminal law, business and corporate law, real property, land use planning and zoning, municipal law, environmental law, family and matrimonial law, intellectual property, international law, estate practice, alternative dispute resolution, and career and professional development.

Social events are being planned for members, families, friends, and guest, including a welcome reception and dinner on Friday evening, a Saturday morning tour of historic Albany and a special Saturday evening private tour, reception, and dinner at the New York State Museum. The weekend will conclude on Sunday with committee business meetings.

There is something for everyone! We hope to see you, your families, and guests in the Fall! Stay tuned for meeting materials.

Update and Invitation from the Elder Law Section
by Crystal A. Doolity, Esq., YLS Elder Law Section Liaison

ELS Summer Meeting
I attended the Elder Law Section’s Summer Meeting in Portsmouth, New Hampshire at the beginning of August. It was a wonderful opportunity to participate in the Executive Committee meeting and hear the new initiatives the Section Chair, Ellen G. Makofsky, the 25 committees, liaisons and district delegates are working to implement and what progress has been made with programs in existence.

The Elder Law Section is eager to recruit new members – particularly new attorneys admitted in the last three to four years. One effort being developed by the Membership Committee Chair, Martin B. Petroff, is the Ambassador Program. Distinguished from a mentor, the ambassador’s role would be to encourage a new Section member to become involved in activities and events. The ELS is currently seeking participation from its members and I will be in touch with YLS once they are ready to match members between the two Sections.

While the Section covered a wide variety of practical information for members, of particular focus at this meeting were reports by the Guardianship and Medicaid Committee Chairs. A proposal has been made by the Section to expedite the termination of an Article 81 guardianship upon death of the Incapacitated Person. There were many discussions about how the practice of elder law is changing, given that this meeting immediately followed the implementation of 06 OMM/ADM - 5, the New York State guidelines to the Federal Deficit Reduction Act 2005, which significantly changed the Medicaid eligibility standards. Also mentioned was the passage of Burial Rights – new legislation found in Public Health Law Section 4201 allowing designation of an agent to dispose of one’s remains, as well as a designation form and a hierarchy of eligible agents, including a domestic partner, if none was named.

The next ELS meeting will be October 19-21, 2006 at The Westchester Renaissance Hotel in White Plains, NY. Please contact me at cdoolity@cswlawfirm.com with any questions about the topics discussed at the summer meeting or how to get more involved with the Sections.

Standing Out in the Crowd—a monthly column
By Christina H. Bost Seaton, Esq.*

Enthusiasm

At my undergraduate institution—call it “Old Ivy”—the vast majority of applicants are interviewed by alumni volunteers as part of their college application process. The past few years I have interviewed about three or four students during the early admissions period and about six to eight students during the regular decision period. I also participate in my firm’s recruiting, which means that each fall, I conduct a half-day of on-campus screening interviews, followed by several call-back interviews each week.

This weekend, Old Ivy hosted a one-day training session for interested volunteer interviewers. After five years of conducting alumni interviews for Old Ivy and two years of conducting interviews at the firm, I didn’t really think that I had too much to learn, but I decided to go anyway as an excuse for a short vacation. That day, while listening to one of the presentations, several lines of thought that I had been trying to put my finger on all summer finally gelled together in one cohesive whole.

The final speaker that afternoon was Old Ivy’s new Dean of Freshmen, and he had been asked to speak about what made a successful Old Ivy student. While he spoke for nearly an hour, there was one dominant message in his presentation—a successful Old Ivy student is enthusiastic. A successful Old Ivy student shows up on campus brimming with intellectual curiosity, thrilled to learn about dozens of new subjects. She doesn’t choose her classes in order to lay the ground work for a stellar transcript for law school applications. Instead, she is willing to take risks, and embrace all available opportunities, even if it means not having the perfect transcript.

This message was echoed earlier in the day, at another portion of the training, where the volunteers participated in a mock admissions committee. We reviewed redacted Old Ivy applications from a previous admissions cycle, getting a taste of what it’s like to be admissions officers. Applications that actually get to the point of committee review have already passed the initial screening of grades and scores. All the applications that we discussed were excellent, and it was very difficult to decide who would be getting the thin letter in their mailbox.

At the end of the session, we asked the officers what factors they used when making these difficult admissions decisions. The admissions officers said that they looked for students with energy, who would be excited about their Old Ivy educations, and who would really make use of all the assets available to them during their time at Old Ivy. In a word, they looked for enthusiasm.

This lesson made a lot of sense to me. When I am conducting interviews for the firm, I make it a habit not to look at the interviewee’s transcript until after the interview. Afterwards, very often I find that the interviewees that I have rated the highest are students who have had a B- thrown into the mix of their academic transcript. I suppose that’s because those students don’t take it for granted that they can go and work at any firm they want; instead, they tend to have put some effort into locating firms that are actually a good fit. They not only seem excited to have an interview, but they seem excited about having an interview with you.

Even during the summer associate program itself, the students who do the best work and develop the best reputations for themselves are those students who enthusiastically embrace their experience at the firm. They ask unsolicited questions about your practice throughout the summer just because they’re interested in finding out more about your job. They solicit feedback and show a real desire to improve their work product. They show up at events with a smile on their face, and make it their task to personally get to know everyone participating in the summer program.

Enthusiastic associates are more fun to mentor because they actually seem interested in what you’re saying. Enthusiastic associates often produce better work product because they care about doing the best job they can every assignment. Enthusiastic associates are successful associates—they grow into better lawyers because they’re excited about learning.

Take a page from Old Ivy’s playbook—be enthusiastic about all the aspects of your work, and you too can be a success.

Confronting Uncertainty in Law School and Practice
By Seth M. Azria**

Ubiquitous uncertainty often accompanies any attempt to excel in a new environment; for me, law school, with its mystique, was definitely one of those environments. As a law student, it was difficult for me to pin down whether I was doing the right thing. A poor initial performance would have been fatal to my law school goals, so I turned to others for advice on how to rid myself of the debilitating anxiety that stemmed from my uncertainty. The advice that I received from 2Ls, 3Ls and many books covered the spectrum and was often contradictory or inconsistent. I figured that some formulation of the offered advice must be correct. The top students all did something, something real, something that would be true and effective for me just as it was for them. But what was it? I suspected that a right way existed and awaited discovery amidst the noise of all the advice.

My quest for a specific mental process tailored to my new environment required that I both accept the idea that most students who wanted good grades could achieve them and specifically reject any explanation based on unknowable or unattainable factors, like innate intelligence. It appeared to me, that while large differences in mental capacity may be apparent at birth; subtle differences in an unquantifiable thing called “smart” would require an impossible measurement, e.g. what is the difference between “B” smart, and “A” smart, in law school? Casting further doubt on the explanatory value of innate intelligence was the failure of certain people to excel, even though I considered them smart or certain authorities considered them smarter than I. Because I needed to know what the difference was between good, better and best, I was forced to press on. After discarding the practical explanatory value of innate intelligence, the next possible candidate naturally followed. If differing results realized by two smart people could not be explained by internal factors in any meaningful way, perhaps the difference was external and therefore observable.

I thought that a logical place to start was a measure of the time spent in pursuit of the mastery of the law school curriculum. Indeed, law students are often curious about the amount of time law school requires. I soon recognized the limitations of any temporal explanation. Chief among those problems was that any given amount of time was meaningless without the direction of some type of productive thought process. Any inquiry I made into a quantity of time or indeed any other externally observable phenomenon quickly referred me back to the internal domain and therefore the realm of the less than precise and non-instructive measure of intelligence. Moreover, the simple observation that some students excelled while spending less time than others poked significant holes in any time based theory.

Any combination or delicate balance of innate and external factors seemed fruitless without an understanding of their underlying relationship. The internal and external approaches I had initially identified formed a perfect circle of logic that told me nothing concrete. I was without any principle to rely on to delimit the internal or the external factors. What was it? I thought. Some took notes, some made elaborate outlines, some studied a lot, others a little, some seemed and sounded smart but got “C’s”, other said nothing and apparently did nothing and got “A’s.” Moreover, any combination I could come up with to explain success in law school was immediately contradicted by someone who did it some other way and was in the top of the class. Perhaps trial and error could suffice in the long run, but in the first year of law school one good semester out of two was not good enough.

After some thought, the basic inquiries became clear to me. First, I had to isolate the cause of high grades, simple: good exam answers. “Knowing” the law, or reading all the cases twice, studying twenty hours a day, or being “smart” may, in some combination, be correlated to high grades but writing a good exam answer was the cause of good grades. Next, I had to know how to write a good exam answer. If law school trains lawyers, it would stand to reason that a lawyer could write a good exam answer. Because I regard thinking as the sole means of accomplishment, I concluded that I should think like a lawyer.

For many, that slippery phrase does not carry any meaning and to others it may amount to a truism. In either case, a goal so broad as to think like this or think like that is likely too general to be helpful and many students, and indeed many lawyers, usually believe that to recite the commandment to, “think like a lawyer” is no more than a hazing of the uninitiated. Undaunted by the prevailing skepticism, I concluded that meaning could be attached to the phrase. Fundamentally, it seemed that a lawyer must know some law and how to argue it. Therefore, I identified two essential components of lawyerly thought. The first component of thinking like a lawyer was the identification and mastery of the law. The second component of thinking like a lawyer was the skill of argumentation. I came to regard those two components as distinct; with each demanding an approach carefully tailored to its unique features.

Since entering practice, both as associate and now as a solo practitioner, I have found that the approach that I employed in law school continues to be relevant. Uncertainty, in the face of new clients with new problems persists to a far greater degree than in the cloistered academic setting of law school because effective solutions now touch real lives as opposed to the difference between an A and B. I have found that my careful attention to substantive law school coursework is helpful but its utility is eclipsed by the importance of the method by which I attended to that coursework. That method was characterized by an objective evaluation of the unique aspects of a case within a familiar legal system followed and a relentless pursuit of answers from dependable sources. For me that method yielded the most valuable and enduring lesson of law school; in our legal system, the answers to the uncertain future are contained and will be molded from the certainty of the past and the antidote to uncertainty is the confidence to seek the certainty that must exist. Now, when I face uncertainty brought to me by a client, I am confident that I will be able resolve the matter or, at a minimum, isolate the issue and make an intelligent referral.

Outstanding Young Lawyer Award- Accepting Nominations for 2007

The Young Lawyers Section each year honors a young lawyer who has rendered outstanding service to both the community and legal profession. The Outstanding Young Lawyer Award recognizes an attorney who has actively practiced less than 10 years, or is under 37 years old, and has a distinguished record of commitment to the finest traditions of the Bar through public service and professional activities.

To find out more and for application see www.nysba.org/oyl

Mark Your Calendars and Save the Dates!

Tax Section Young Lawyer Reception
The Tax Section has decided to roll out the red carpet for young lawyers at the beautiful downtown Manhattan, Soho Grand Hotel. The Tax Section is hosting a free reception for young lawyers complete with drinks, appetizers and casual conversation with some of the most influential and accomplished tax lawyers in the world. Any young lawyer that may be interested in tax law is invited to attend, membership in NYSBA, the Tax Section or YLS is not required. This is a great opportunity to meet some very interesting people in a relaxed environment.

If you decide to attend, please RSVP, with your complete contact information, to: careilly@nysba.org, Event Coordinator,
New York State Bar Association.

The Reception will be from 7:00pm to 9:00pm, Thursday November 2.
The Soho Grand is located at 310 West Broadway, near Canal Street.

Albany County Bar Young Lawyer Cocktail Reception
Albany County Bar Association's Young Lawyer's Cocktail Party on October 5, 2006, Yonos downtown Albany at 5:30 PM. Cost for young lawyers is $20. For more information contact: rsimmons@albanycountybar.com

__________

*Christina H. Bost Seaton is a second year associate in the complex litigation and labor & employment practice groups at Troutman Sanders LLP in Manhattan, where she is constantly trying to “play rainmaker.”

** Seth M. Azria is the editor of this publication and a solo practitioner in Syracuse, New York.

This column is not intended to be construed as legal advice that can be relied on or considered authoritative in any particular case nor should the reader infer any such intent from any particular phrase or construction employed by the style used to present the material.

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