President's Message By: Kristi Smith

"Nothing is a waste of time if you use the experience wisely."

It is amazing how quickly my year as President of the Atlanta Chapter has gone by and that this is my last President's Message. It has been a wonderful year! I would like to take this opportunity to thank you for the opportunity to serve as your Chapter President. It has been a pleasure to lead the Chapter in a new and exciting direction. The experience provided many opportunities for personal growth and achievement and I wouldn't trade a minute of it. I would also like to thank the 2005-2006 Board of Directors for their hard work and dedication. Their enthusiasm and commitment to making our Chapter one of the best made my job that much easier. Also, I'd like to give a special thank you to all committee chairs, committee members and section chairs. Together these volunteers helped put together engaging educational sessions, enjoyable social and networking events, and beneficial community service projects. We have come a long way in one short year with many goals set and achieved.

Our Director of Membership, Joan Gingrich, along with her committee helped achieve one of the goals set for the Chapter by continuing with an extremely successful membership campaign. Our recruitment and retention ratios have increased steadily but most importantly the participation of our members in various events has increased. New members have been welcomed into our Chapter through personal contact from our Membership Director and her committee and are encouraged to become active in the Chapter. The evidence of this is clear in the increased attendance at monthly Chapter meetings and section meetings, especially the very popular Small Firm Section. I personally want to thank Joan and her committee for their commitment and dedication to this very important part of the future success of our Chapter. We will welcome Joan back for a second term as Director of Membership.

Our Electronic Newsletter team, guided by our editor and Director of eNewsletter, Brian Gedeon, has continued the tradition of producing quality material for publication in our Chapter newsletter. They have done a fine job in upholding the standards in place for keeping our members up-to-date on burning legal management issues and Chapter activities. Our quarterly electronic newsletter is circulated to hundreds of AALA members, vendors and leaders in the local legal community. Thank you to Brian and his committee for keeping us all "in the know".

Our Vendor Relations committee led for the second year by Jeff Hamrick, worked tirelessly to put together what turned out to be an even more successful than the year before Business Partners' Lunch and Exhibit Hall. With over 70 vendors represented in the Exhibit Hall and over 160 members and guests attending this event, it is clear that working closely with our business partners is a very important part of our daily lives as legal managers. Our Chapter plays an important role in helping members and vendors form and maintain these business relationships. Another very important role of the Vendor Relations committee is to nurture long-time vendor support of our Chapter and to welcome new vendors as they lend financial support of our Chapter. Jeff and his team have continued strengthening the lines of communication between our Chapter and our vendor partners making this year the most successful vendor sponsorship campaign to date. Jeff has done so well with his position as Director of Vendor Relations the last two years that he is moving in to the position of Vice-President/President Elect for the upcoming year. Congratulations and thank you for your hard work and dedication, Jeff!

Our Webmaster and Director of Electronic Communications, Michael Stephens, has served this Chapter for yet another year continuously updating our website, maintaining our extremely popular member email list serve and searching for new ways to communicate electronically with our members to help our Chapter run efficiently and smoothly. Michael also served on the Board as immediate Past President. I can't thank Michael enough for his support and encouragement to me personally. He has always given his honest opinion on issues and continues to provide sound advice to myself and the Board many times acting as the "devil's advocate" making sure that we consider all sides to important issues that arise for discussion. I can't imagine what my year as President would have been like without Michael always urging me on and giving me the support I needed when I needed it. Thankfully, Michael will continue on for another year as our Webmaster and Director of Electronic Communications.

I would also like to thank Cathy North a thousand times over for stepping in to the role as Chapter Secretary when we were in need of someone to fill this position shortly after the board year had already begun. Cathy graciously took over the duties of Secretary taking minutes at monthly Board meetings, locating and securing locations for our monthly Chapter lunches, maintaining the Chapter calendar, and processing quarterly flyers to members, just to name a few of her many duties. Thank you Cathy for handling things so nicely for us and returning my call when we were in need of a new Secretary in such short order. You're the greatest!

Another very important position on the Board which sometimes goes unnoticed by the membership as a whole is the Chapter Treasurer. As the person in charge of making sure that we are all good stewards of the money entrusted to us to by our members and our vendor sponsors, the Treasurer is an integral part of making sure our Chapter is performing with integrity and within our financial limits. Reinhard Breckner has served in the capacity of Chapter Treasurer for two years. His dedication, wisdom and quick wit which kept us all on our toes will certainly be missed by the Board. Thank you, Reinhard, for all of your hard work.

Towards the end of the year, the Board made the decision to hire a Chapter Manager. This decision will undoubtedly be one of those Board decisions which will be looked back upon as a turning point for pushing our Chapter up yet another level. The full purpose of hiring a Chapter Manager is to allow Board members to focus more of their attention on providing the best services to our members. Brainstorming new ideas, investigating the necessity and implementation of these new ideas, and ultimately putting new ideas in action take valuable time from Board members who are already pushed for time from their regular 9AM-5PM (dare I say 8AM-7PM?) jobs. By allowing a Chapter Manager to manage the day-to-day communications and responsibilities of servicing our members, the Board can focus more on finding new ways to bring educational opportunities and topics to our members. By hiring Jennifer Brinkley as our Chapter Manager, we have done more than just hire a "Chapter manager". Jennifer has served on the board previously as Director of Membership. She understands the goals of the Chapter and continues to provide input and suggestions on making our Chapter better than ever. Hiring Jennifer was, in my opinion, the best decision made by this Board. Welcome back, Jennifer!

I would be remiss if I did not say thank you to our Community Relations Chair, Kerri Gurty and our Social Committee Chair, Cathy McCollister. Without the two of you, our Chapter would have missed out on opportunities to serve the community, network with each other and be able to get to know one another better. I tip my hat to both of you for coordinating these events with much success.

Last but not least, I would like to acknowledge the incredible efforts of your Vice-President and Education Committee Chair, Carole Morris. This year we have had some of the best educational sessions and speakers that I can remember. In addition to lining up our monthly Chapter lunch speakers, Carole was in charge of coordinating meetings with and schedules for speakers for our monthly, bi-monthly and quarterly section meetings. One of the goals set forth by this Board was to increase awareness of and educational opportunities for our members to pursue the Certified Legal Management (CLM)* designation. Carole has taken this goal and run with it making half of the monthly Chapter lunch speaker sessions CLM ^SM certified. It has been a joy working with Carole on the Board for the last couple of years. She is one of the most hard-working and dedicated members of our Board and will continue to strive for excellence as your new Chapter President. Thank you, Carole, for your enthusiasm, support and commitment to ALA. I wish you much success in your upcoming presidency.

As you know, our Education Committee is made up of our Section Chairs and chaired by the Vice-President. I applaud the work of our section chairs for their efforts in increasing the attendance at their sections this year. Our newest and probably most successful section this year is the CLM ^SM Study Group. James Gillespie, CLM volunteered to put together a study group for those members interested in taking the CLM ^SM examination at the ALA National Conference to be held April 30-May 4, 2006 in Montreal, Canada. This study group was formed to provide speakers who would present the material found in the CLM ^SM study guide in a more "real world" context. The study group sessions are very well attended and will play a significant role in increasing the number of members with CLM ^SM certifications within the Atlanta Chapter. The Small Firm Section, chaired by Dina Wolfe, was very successful with an average of 10-15 attendees at each meeting. The Human Resources Section continues to meet every other month and was chaired by Brandi Coggin. In order to boost attendance, our Finance Section, chaired by Michael Haynes, held a couple of its meetings in conjunction with the Small Firm Section. Nola Vanhoy lead the Knowledge Management Section and David Grow chaired the Technology Section. The Branch Office Section was chaired by Marianne Lawhead and the Corporate/Government Section was lead by Barry Shapiro. These sections are an integral part of providing well rounded educational opportunities for our Chapter members and will continue to be supported by the Board. Thank you all for volunteering to head up these sections.

We have many incredibly talented people in the Atlanta Chapter and I am fortunate to have been able to work with these and many others. I would like to say a special "thank you" to my mentor and friend, Amy Hutchison. Amy was that one person in the Chapter several years ago who took me under her wing and said "Do you want to ride together to next week's AALA Chapter meeting?" She didn't know it back then, but Amy was my mentor then too. No formal designation was made or even discussed, but by virtue of introducing me to the members she knew, and telling me what she knew about ALA and how it could help me in my day-to-day functions as a legal administrator, I found the mentor I needed. Thank you, Amy, for introducing me to what ended up being one of the most challenging and fulfilling achievements in my professional career. It is now one of my goals as I serve on the Board as immediate Past President to continue building and shaping our Chapter's mentoring program.

So this is it for me as President of the Atlanta Chapter. Thank you all for a wonderful year!

*CLM is a service mark of the Association of Legal Administrators.

Editor: Brian Gedeon (BHGedeon@duanemorris.com) (This publication is the property of the Atlanta Association of Legal Administrators. Reproduction or reprint without prior permission is strictly prohibited. Click here to request reprint permission.)

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