Presidents' Letters to FellowsPRESIDENTS' LETTER TO FELLOWS February 12, 2024 Dear Fellows, Greetings and best wishes for 2024 on behalf of the College. We look forward to seeing you and engaging with you in 2024. Here are some of the events we hope to share with you. First and foremost, our Annual Meeting and Dinner will be held FRIDAY, APRIL 5, in Orlando, Florida at the Spring ABA Business Law Section meeting at the Hyatt Regency Orlando. Our Dinner, Annual Meeting, New Fellows Induction, and the Awards Ceremony this year will be on Friday night April 5. The Friday night reception will start at 7 pm and the Dinner and events will begin at 7:30 pm. The invite has been sent with a link to reserve your spot. As you are booking your flight and hotel reservations, remember this change—Friday, not Saturday. The Regents meeting will also be held Friday afternoon at the hotel at 4pm ET. A link with the agenda for the Regents meeting will be sent in advance. Also many of our Fellows are panelists and speakers on the CLE panels held by the ABA Com Fin Committee and the many subcommittees on Thursday and Friday. Hope you plan to join us for these activities in Orlando. Second, we have a Fellows Briefing scheduled for Feb. 20 at 4pm ET on 2022 UCC Amendment Enactment Update and Choice-of-Law Issues by Wiliam H. Henning, Executive Professor of Law, Texas A&M University School of Law, Juliet Moringiello, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Professor of Law, Widener University Commonwealth Law School, Edwin E. Smith, Partner, Morgan, Lewis & Brockius LLP and Steven O. Weise, Partner, Proskauer Rose LLP. Please register via the Zoom link that has already been shared. Third, we have a Joint program set with NAWL on March 28 at 4 pm ET on ESG/Sustainability Lending. This is our third joint program with NAWL and each one has had over 300 attendees. A link for registration for this Zoom program will be sent in the next few weeks. Fourth, we will also have a Fellows Briefing on the CTA by Marshall Grodner and Jerry Grossman in late April with a zoom registration link coming soon. Fifth, we continue to distribute The Transactional Lawyer. We have also now archived the past issues on our website under the Practice Resources Tab on the homepage so you can access them. We as a College are not responsible for the content and opinions expressed in The Transactional Lawyer but we are distributing and providing access to the issues for our Fellows. Review the disclaimer at the end of each issue. Finally, so you can plan ahead, the Fall Dinner and Advanced Seminar will be held September 12-14, 2024 at the Marriott Marquis San Diego Marina in San Diego, California at the Fall ABA Business Law Section meeting. More details to follow. As a reminder, 2024 annual dues invoices have been sent and are now due. A link has been sent to each of you for paying the dues by charge card. If you prefer to pay by check, please send to Wendy Sech, ACCFL Executive Director, 20960 S. Frankfort Square Road, Suite B, Frankfort, IL 60423. Thank you for supporting our College through your dues and participation. Hope to see you soon at our events. Regards, April 5, 2023 Fellows, Greetings! As we approach the end of my term as President of the College, I want to share some of our many accomplishments over the last twelve months and to give a shout-out to several of our Fellows who contributed to these achievements. First, attached you will find a Summary of our six (6) Fellows briefings held over the last several months and our in-person Fall Advanced Seminar held in Washington, D.C last September. Each of our presenters for those programs are listed in the Summary and we again extend our great thanks for their generous gift of time and talent. Myself excepted, I think we had the very best panelists for these topics as we could have possibly recruited. Each of our various Committees and their leadership made great contributions. All members of these Committees, too numerous to mention in this letter, rose to the task and did a tremendous job. You should all have a look at our recently updated Web Site for a list of those many Fellows who delivered great results on our various committees over the past year. Each of our committee chairs identified below will be introducing during our Annual Meeting their committee members and, as fitting, the individuals nominated by their committee as Fellows, Regents or awardees. Reade Ryan, current chair, along with three past chairs and three other Fellows, constituting our Fellows Nominating Committee, identified and presented for nomination to our Board of Regents an outstanding class of fourteen (14) candidates, each of whom were unanimously and enthusiastically elected by our Regents on February 8. You should expect to meet many of our new Fellows at the induction ceremony during our Annual Meeting. Arleen Nand, chair, and two other Regents serving on our Regents Nominating Committee identified a great class of six (6) Fellows to be introduced as candidates for election to a four (4) year term as Regents at our Annual Meeting. Marshall Grodner and four other of our most immediate past presidents served as our Officers Nominating Committee. Their nominees to serve on the Executive Committee for the next twelve months will be voted on by the Regents at their meeting on the afternoon of April 29 at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Seattle. As you may have noticed from our invitation to the Annual Meeting and Dinner, a copy of which is also attached hereto, each of our Award Committees were successful in identifying extremely qualified and impressive candidates to receive awards. This is the first time in several years that each of our three Awards is being presented in the same year. Many of those awardees will be in attendance at our Annual Meeting and Dinner. The Grant Gilmore Award Committee is chaired by Stephen Sepinuck and joined by four (4) other distinguished law professor Fellows. The Harry C. Sigman Special Service Award Committee and the Homer Kripke Achievement Award Committee are chaired by Marshall Grodner, as Immediate Past President, and include our two other most immediate past Presidents, Pam Martinson and Norman Powell. Our Membership Development Committee, chaired by Marilyn Maloney, revived the efforts of that Committee and collaborated with our Fellows Nominating Committee to develop a system for identification of future Fellows candidates. Our Scholarship Promotion Committee is chaired by Juliet Moringiello and includes an all-star cast of law professors. Our Technology / Website Committee is chaired by Bryon Mulligan. They have successfully updated several of the drop-down categories of our website and revived the Home Page with refreshed photos in a scrolling format. Thanks to each of our Washington, DC and Seattle home based Meeting and Dinner Committees for their assistance in identifying venues for our various events. Among our other initiatives, the College successfully assumed responsibility for the distribution of The Transactional Lawyer newsletter circulated six (6) times a year to each of you and others on our distribution list. We must also recognize the amazing dedication of several of our Fellows in completing the drafting of the 2022 Amendments of the Uniform Commercial Code promulgated by the Uniform Law Commission and the American Law Institute. Many of those same Fellows have since been engaged in a truly astonishing and totally consuming process to secure enactment in each of our states. That process is likely to continue unabated for the next several months. I am pleased to report that each of our Executive Committee and Board of Regents by unanimous consent issued a letter in support of their efforts last month. Pleased to let you know that Kristin Adams will be delivering her final report as Treasurer at our Annual Meeting demonstrating that our financial condition remains strong and the College is thriving. Finally, great thanks for the immeasurable contribution of each of our Executive Committee Members, Cathy Reece, Neal Kling, Kristen Adams, Ken Chin and Marshall Grodner, and to our Executive Director, Wendy Sech, for their invaluable support and assistance throughout my term, particularly over the last four months while I was dealing with a heartbreaking situation at home. A formal notice of and agenda for our Annual Meeting to be held at the Rainier Club in Seattle, Washington on April 29 will be forthcoming in the next few days. That Notice and Agenda will again list the Regents nominees identified by the Regents Nominating Committee. We can all be proud of our collaborative efforts over this last twelve months in realizing goals well aligned with the Mission of the College. I hope our founding Fellows will be pleased. In closing, I want to let you know that this opportunity to serve the College on our Board of Regents and Executive Committee and to engage with such a generous and collegial group of our Fellows over the last several years has been a highlight of my career and will remain among my most treasured memories. I look forward to continuing my involvement in the College and our fellowship well into the future.
Kind regards, Patrick A. “Buzz” Guida, President
JUNE 20, 2021 College Fellows, This President’s Newsletter is the first of what we hope will become a monthly or bi-monthly publication to keep our Fellows informed of upcoming College events, other events of interest, Fellows in the news and general College information: Upcoming College Events We have several events scheduled for the rest of the year as of now, but look forward to further information regarding upcoming Fellows Briefings to be scheduled for the rest of the year. We have the following on our schedule: 1. ACCFL Fellows Class of 2021 Virtual Meet and Greet/Welcome Orientation, July 22, 2021, 4 pm eastern. 2. Fall Advanced (Virtual) Seminar (TBD, but early October 2021). Topic: 2022 Amendments to the UCC. Fellows, Steve Harris and Ed Smith (the UCC Amendment Reporters) have agreed to give an in depth and “advanced” analysis of the proposed 2022 amendments to the UCC dealing with emerging technology. 3. Board of Regents Meeting. We are in the process of scheduling a meeting of the Board of Regents. Stay tuned for an announcement. 4. New Fellows Nominations. We usually begin gathering nominations for the following year’s Fellows Class in November. Please start considering potential nominees now. We will continue to update as the time gets closer. 5. Annual Meeting/Dinner 2022. Assuming the ABA BLS is meeting in person in Atlanta for its Spring Meeting in 2022, we will hold our Annual Meeting and Dinner live and in person on April 2, 2022. Mark your calendar—I hope to see everybody there! Other Events of Interest 1. Working Group on Legal Opinions (WGLO): Additional Discussion of Follow-On Legal Opinions, June 22, 2021, 2-3 pm eastern. You can register here. https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZUsfuurqzMsHtET6bV5ZygXr-aoEUW06pNL. 2. ABA Business Law Basics Webinar: A Primer on Commercial Finance Legal Opinions: The Basics that Opinion Givers and Opinion Recipients Need to Know. Kim Desmarais and Fellow, Sandy Rock will be panelists, and I will moderate. Registration is free for ABA BLS members, and you can register here: https://www.americanbar.org/events-cle/mtg/web/413649453/. This seminar may be a good opportunity for younger transactional lawyers in your firm, and may serve as a refresher for our Fellows. 3. ABA Business Law Section Virtual Section Annual Meeting, September 22-24, 2021. Registration. Registration is free for all ABA BLS members. You can register here: https://web.cvent.com/event/ca7ad530-c927-42be-a4cf-1c77e8ad9577/regProcessStep1. The College will be co-sponsoring the following programs presented by the Commercial Finance Committee: a. Commercial Law Developments 2020-2021 (Panelists: Fellows, Teresa Harmon, Steve Wiese and Stephen Sepinuck) b. The UCC Tackles Emerging Technology: The Proposed 2022 Amendments to the UCC (Panelists: Fellows, Steve Harris and Ed Smith) c. U.S. Offshore Windfarm Energy--The Legal and Maritime Business Developments We will provide you with more information on the ABA BLS VSAM as it become available. Fellows in the News 1. Fellow, Mike Rubin, co-authored an article entitled “Multijurisdictional Practice and Transactional Lawyers: Time for a Rule That Is Honored Rather Than Honored in Its Breach.” published in the Louisiana Law Review. The article can be downloaded here: https://bit.ly/2PJQyoj. We hope you enjoyed this first of what we hope is a continuing newsletter. If you have any information that you would like to be included in upcoming editions, please email me at: [email protected] and Wendy Sech at: [email protected]. Sincerely, R. Marshall Grodner President, American College of Commercial Finance Lawyers
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