ABA-IP Law Section's Law Student Liaison Blog: Leadership Conference

Welcome!

Hello fellow law students,

I am a third year law student at Southwestern Law School, and I am excited and honored to serve as the 2010-2011 Law Student Division Liaison to the ABA Section of Intellectual Property Law. In my role as Student Liaison, I attend and participate in ABA-IPL events and meetings, representing the interests of the 9,000+ ABA-IPL law student members, and report back on issues that are important to us.

ABA-IPL seeks to engage law students and enrich their careers by offering a broad spectrum of events programming, membership benefits, and publications. There are dozens of ways to get involved as a student, and I encourage you to seek out the opportunities available to you. One of the easiest ways to get involved immediately is to join a committee in your area of legal interest. Just click on the “Committees” button on the left side of the screen, then choose your Division of interest, and select the committee that most interests you. Also, make sure to join our LinkedIn and Facebook groups to stay current on ABA-IPL news.

This blog is to introduce you to the Section, and to keep you updated on all the exciting events and programs that the Section has to offer. Thanks for visiting!

Wednesday, February 2, 2011

Leadership Conference

As the law student liaison to the ABA-IPL and board member of two boards, I was invited to attend the Annual Leadership Conference in Palm Beach, Florida.

Hotel where the Leadership Conference was held

It was a great conference, with a lot of brainstorming, developing, networking and a healthy amount of relaxing/enjoying the company of my colleagues. The location was beautiful!

The Young Lawyers & Law Students Board was my first meeting for the week, and Pam Banner Kruptka, our Board Chair, presented the idea that the Section should have more video content available. The young lawyers and law students all echoed Pam's idea, and now David Postolski and Matt Asbell are working towards a video project. [edit 8/2011: The Section Council approved their video project, so stay tuned for exciting new content next year!]

As always, I pushed for more social media, and by the end of the day, I had a full-fledged idea to host a handful of law students at the Spring Conference to tweet about the event. I presented this idea at the Membership Board meeting and explained how it would benefit the Section by raising awareness about the ABA-IPL's conference and get more people talking about it.

By the end of the Leadership Conference, the Student Reporters Program was born. I look forward to choosing several law students to serve as "reporters" and live-tweet the IPL Spring Annual Conference in April. If you are interested in this opportunity, contact me at krystle.thompson (at) gmail.com. or at http://www.twitter.com/krystlethomp. No prior Twitter experience required! Trust me, you'll catch on quick.

One of the great social events held at the Conference was the evening reception at the Mar-A-Lago Club, which is Donald Trump's private social club in Palm Beach. There was even a sighting of Donald Trump and his son. Check out more pictures below.