IICL News - Announcements

New Curriculum and Fellowship Award for the Academy

The 2009 Academy of American and International Law not only had a new curriculum, but, for the first time, awarded a Fellowship Certificate to participants who successfully passed several tests.

The new curriculum concentrated on topics essential to all international lawyers. It included a three day lecture on Effective Legal Writing, and focused on several core legal issues: Business Organizations, International Business Transactions, Negotiations, Contracts, International Litigation, and International Arbitration.

The revised curriculum was the result of a hard-working Committee led by Vice Chair Lisandro Allende of Brons & Salas in Buenos Aires. Members of the Committee included Maria Teresa Alonso Pardo (Argentina); Veronica Chu (Taiwan); Susan Karamanian (USA); Martin Lepiane (Argentina); Lelen Lim (Philippines); Patricia Menendez Cambo (USA); Giovanni Nanni (Brazil); Maria Oyaga (Colombia); Alexandra Schluck Amend (Germany); Joseph Vicario (USA); Raul Villarreal (Mexico) and William Zhang (China). Our thanks to all members for their involvement and their contributions.

For the first time, we also had several class exams. Students who passed were awarded a Fellowship title from the Institute for International and Comparative Law. This new title was suggested by Vice Chair Rajiv Luthra of New Delhi at the 2008 meeting of the Advisory Board.

Advanced Academy

IICL is considering an Advanced Academy for Alumni, which would also be open to other international lawyers.

We are organizing a committee to explore structure, topics, and duration for an Advanced Academy. The present idea is to meet for 3 to 5 days. Topics could range from business development and the science of social networking, to substantive law topics or legal writing. Please send an email to marksmith@cailaw.org if you have ideas or if you are interested in being involved in this committee.

Advisory Board – Deputy Members

The Advisory Board decided at its 2009 meeting to invite all members to nominate a deputy member to the Advisory Board. The goal is (i) to strengthen the relationship between each member and the IICL, and (ii) to increase the number of active members in our meetings of the Advisory Board.

For those of you who are members, please nominate a deputy to the IICL Advisory Board.  Send your selections to sritzmann@cailaw.org.

New Members

Sponsoring Member: Legance Studio Legale Associato (Italy)
Associate Members: Bae, Kim & Lee, LLC (South Korea); Borenius & Kemppinen, Ltd., (Finland); Deere & Company (USA); Sycip Salazar Hernandez & Gatmaitan (Philippines)
Individual Members: Deitra Bryant (Virginia); Grace Ergbagbe (Maryland); James Harris (Virginia); Mario Lopez (Philippines); Centus Macauley (Sierra Leone); Jimoh Umoru (Nigeria); Margarita Victorino (Philippines)
Academy Alumni Members: Chidinma Obi (Nigeria); Seyilayo Ojo (Nigeria); Debebe Seineh (Ethiopia); Maria Tobia (Uruguay)

Individual Memberships for Academy Alumni

Too many Academy alumni have lost contact with IICL. Although their firms may be IICL members, they are not personally involved as members of the Advisory Board. To enhance Alumni participation, we decided to offer an individual membership to all Alumni.  The annual membership fee is USD 150. Individual members will receive a discount when attending programs of IICL and will serve on the Advisory Board.

to help strengthen the Institute, please encourage alumni to join as individual members.

Great Symposium - 2009

Ms. Moira Huggard Caine of Tozzini Freire, Sao Paulo, Mr. Andrius R. Kontrimas of Fulbright & Jaworski, Houston, and Ms. Patricia Menendez Cambo of Greenberg Traurig, Miami, were Co-Chairs of the 2009 Symposium on “Making International Business Work in Distressed Markets”. They did an outstanding job and we thank them very much for organizing an excellent program with even better speakers.

The presentation made by our Vice Chair Jose Luis Freire is published in this Newsletter.

Symposium 2010 - New Structure

The Advisory Board approved the suggestion of the Executive Board to change the structure of the 2010 Symposium. We want to bring together inhouse counsel and our members, and discuss topics which are particularly important to inhouse lawyers; at the same time we want to give our members the opportunity to participate in the presentations and discussions.

Historically, the IICL Symposia were conferences attended by inhouse lawyers, and U.S. and foreign lawyers, offering the opportunity to learn from each other and to meet new and old friends. We are looking for your suggestions and topics for the 2010 Symposium which will give our corporate members a better benefit, thereby also making our Symposium more attractive for representatives of member firms. We had outstanding programs in recent years; however, the number of participants did not match the quality of the programs. Our next Symposium will be held on June 15-16, 2010.