From the New Chair

I am pleased to be serving the membership as Committee chair for 2002-2003. I am joined in the leadership by eight talented and dedicated vice-chairs. Their names, and focus areas, are included later in this newsletter for your reference. We look forward to hearing from you about new areas of interest and topics for discussion, panels, or presentations. In addition, we hope that some of you will join us as newsletter article contributors.

You may notice that the Committee is no longer named Corporate Counsel. In October 2002, the Section’s leadership approved our proposed name change to In-House Counsel. This does not mean those of you not presently in-house cannot continue your Committee membership. However, we felt the In-House Counsel name was more representative of the majority of Committee members, and would help us better focus the Committee’s future growth.

The Committee will focus on several key issues throughout 2002-2003, including emerging environmental issues and trends, corporate environmental leadership and stewardship, environmental enforcement developments, maximizing relationships with outside counsel, law department structure and communication, and environmental reporting and record keeping. We hope to hear from you on these and other issues related to your practice.

The Committee has been actively sponsoring panels at recent Section meetings. Peter described our work at Keystone 2002 and the 10th Section Fall Meeting, above. We go into 2003 supporting a plenary session at Keystone 2003 focusing on corporate CEOs and how environmental decisions are incorporated into various company plans and decisions. A breakout session panel will focus on key developments in globalization. Keystone 2003 has one of the most robust agendas ever for in-house counsel, and we hope to see you at this wonderful conference in a spectacular location.

We also are trying to reach out to our Committee members, in a more direct and personal fashion. In this regard, you should have received recently a letter from one of our vice- chairs or from me, soliciting your input, and ideas, and reviewing how to access the Committee list serve. As you know, list serves are a powerful tool for bouncing questions off one another. Right now, our Committee list serve is rather underutilized. Please see Jim Arnold’s article below to find out how to maximize the list serve to your advantage.

Finally, as Raissa Kirk’s article below describes, we have kicked off an exciting public service project with a group called Earth Force. We hope you can become a part of this new outreach opportunity.

Again, we thank you for your interest, we encourage your involvement, and we look forward to your input. We hope you enjoy this issue of the newsletter!