President’s Update — The election captured last week’s focus

WSBA President Michele RadosevichA quiet week for me, a momentous week for our country. Without question, the election consumed the national attention last week and left no room for the normal event schedule. Which is just as well since I stayed up too late watching the returns come in.

The sole event I attended was a meeting of the subcommittee chairs of the Civil Legal Needs Work Group to wind up its work and pass its recommendations to other bodies for implementation. Some of the recommendations are well along toward completion. Almost all of the legal forms used in dissolutions have now been translated into plain English, tested, and now await approval by the Supreme Court. The response of attorneys and the public have been overwhelmingly positive. Other recommendations, such as expanding the scope of courthouse facilitators to areas besides family law, clearly have promise, but much work remains to be done.

One recommendation was to simplify litigation to bring down the cost, which is the subject of a work group currently looking at the rising cost of civil litigation. We’ll hear an interim report from this group at this weekend’s Board of Governors’ meeting, so stay tuned. If you’re interested in the agenda and accompanying board materials, you can find them all here.

I hope you had a good Veterans Day holiday in honor of the men and women who have valiantly served and are serving our country today.