Fall 2009 Newsletter

Welcome to the Fall 2009 edition of our newsletter.

Our web site has gone through some remarkable changes. Frieda has a new blog entry at least once a week and you can now follow her on Twitter. New photos have been added to our web site, as well as new articles. Cooper-Gordon continues to provide up-to-the-minute news in a number of forums with regard to our law practice in the areas of probate, trusts, conservatorships and family law. The biggest news for family law litigants is that many judicial officers have been reassigned out of family law and their replacemants are untrained and inexperienced in the specialized and complex area of family law. There will be more reassignments after the first of the year, which is just dreadful for all litigants and a reason to consider consensual dispute resolution (a new term replacing "alternative dispute resolution) when a family situation arises requiring court assistance.

Katherine Su, our senior associate, is doing her civic duty serving on a jury this week. She recently returned from a week of scuba diving in Cozumel. Christine Donald, our legal assistant, recently went to Italy, where she had a great time visiting many historical sites for the first time. She intended to bike ride through the countryside with friends, but customs held up parts to their bikes which they had shipped, so they were unable to do that.

Over the Christmas Holidays, our associate Drorit Bick Raiter is planning an extended trip to Israel with her husband in celebration of her first wedding anniversary. In October, Avery and Frieda had a wonderful few days off in the desert, as they like to do once or twice a year. You have never seen such a beautiful desert as Anzo Borrego State Park. Check it out on line. http://www.anzoborregostatepark.com/.

The Fall has been extremely busy, especially since the firm has accomplished a major overhaul of its computer resources. Now we are able to have proper security and on-site storage and back-up for all of our files, including our emails and larger discovery files. We are able to create all of our own forms easily and quickly and can link all of our emails, telephone memos, contacts, billing, pleadings and correspondence for each matter and each client in our office. We have a state of the art calendaring system and can access our files and emails remotely from anywhere in the world. We are very excited about the freedom to be in touch with our clients and others involved in our cases.

Frieda spent the entire weekend of November 13, 2009 with seven other well-seasoned certified family law specialists reviewing and preparing written comments to the California Judicial Council assigned with the daunting and extensive task of improving the court system for family law litigants and the attorneys who represent them. If you would like to review the Report which is out for comment, please look at the website. Public comment on the draft recommendations is vitally important and will help to improve the final work product of the Task Force. Written comments from interested and affected stakeholders are welcome and encouraged. Comments are due on December 4, 2009, by 5:00 p.m. The draft recommendations address 21 different topics, including the right to present live testimony at hearings; expanding legal representation; case flow management; contested child custody; children's voices; minor's counsel; domestic violence; enhancing mechanisms to handle perjury; judicial branch education; and leadership, accountability, and resources. To obtain the draft recommendations, go to: http://www.courtinfo.ca.gov/jc/tflists/elkins.htm.

Avery was selected to participate on a panel of presenters including Judge Mitchell Beckloff, who sits on the bench in Probate Court in Los Angeles, and attorney Diana Richmond, a certified family law specialist from San Francisco, California on the topic of Titles, Transfers and Transmutations: When Spouses Change the Character of Assets and Obligation targeted to advanced family law practitioners, judicial officers and estate planners. This Seminar is presented by the California Association of Certified Family Law Specialists, of which Avery has been a member for more than twenty years. It will take place the weekend of March 26, 2010 in Indian Wells, California at the Hyatt Grand Champions Resort Hotel.

The special topic for this newsletter is social networking. These days there are many ways to reach potential clients and market particular skills and expertise. Mass emails, Facebook, Twitter and blogs are some of these avenues. They can be of great service. However, they can also be a trap for the unwary. In particular, lawyers have to be watchful and avoid the potential for breaching client confidentiality at all times. Thus, we cannot discuss particular cases where the parties might be at all potentially recognizable, even if their names are not mentioned, unless they give written permission. We also have to be very careful not to give legal advice, or to possibly create an attorney-client relationship, even in a vague or general fashion.

Facebook is a good way to catch up with people we do not see or hear from very often. While it may be a way to tell people what you are doing as a lawyer, it is confusing to mix up the business side with the personal side. Some attorneys have two Facebook pages, one for business and one for personal. Cooper-Gordon has a blog as well as a Twitter account, both of which can be accessed from our website.

Twitter has been around a much shorter time than Facebook. In general, lawyers are not fast to adopt new technology. It is not clear how effective Twitter is as a connecting tool compared to other social networks, which are not as restrictive and more like blogs. People have to know you are there in order to follow you - but this could be said for any social network.  All of the lawyers at Cooper-Gordon LLP are members of LinkedIn, another professional on-line network. Frieda also belongs to JD Supra, a sub-group of LinkedIn members for lawyers only.

For Frieda, these networks have proven to be great referral sources and an opportunity to publish her many articles in a world-wide forum. Although our associates are already on multiple social networks, our partners have had more difficulty finding the time and learning how to do the same. However, we are doing our best to keep up with the latest technology in this regard. We look forward to increasing our connectivity in the future.