CHICAGO, July 21, 2006-- The population of Honolulu will jump by nearly 8,000 during the week of Aug. 3 – 8, with the opening of the American Bar Association 129th Annual Meeting.
Nearly 5,000 members have pre-registered for the meeting. Members and invited speakers, along with their spouses and families will be staying in 18 hotels around Honolulu. Some 21,000 room nights have been booked through the ABA’s travel agent, International Travel Service.
The headquarters for the meeting will be the Hawaii Convention Center. Registration will be in the Hawaii Convention Center, Kamehameha III, Ground Floor, and will be open daily beginning at noon on Aug. 2. ABA EXPO, also at the Hawaii Convention Center, will feature more than 100 exhibits by vendors of legal materials, books and services. ABA EXPO will open Aug. 2 at 8 a.m. and close Aug. 7 at noon.
During the Annual Meeting, members will be attending more than 1,200 meetings and events taking place in the Hawaii Convention Center and at various hotels, restaurants, museums, clubs, law firms and other locations. Information on programs, 153 of which will be certified for continuing legal education credit, and the names of 191 speakers will be listed in the 240-plus page Annual Meeting program book to be distributed on site, and available online at http://www.abanet.org/annual/2006/.
On Aug. 7 and 8, Stephen N. Zack of Miami will preside over the meeting of the 549-member House of Delegates, the association’s policy-making body, in the Hawaii Convention Center, Kalakaua Ballroom.
Logistics for the Annual Meeting include shipping several truckloads of materials from the ABA offices in Chicago and Washington, D.C., and from its printing vendors. Equipment to be set up for the ABA staff offices in the Hawaii Convention Center includes 25 Internet connections, seven fax machines and other office equipment and supplies.
The ABA office space will total more than 11,000 square feet, and will be fully equipped with desks, file cabinets and phone service for staff.
To help staff keep in touch, the association is installing 72 telephone lines, seven fax lines, 17 conference phone units in the staff headquarters, 31 mobile phones and 36 credit card reader lines.
Between 30 and 45 percent of the events listed in the program book will be meal functions. Oversupplies of food will be donated to the Hawaii Foodbank, the only non-profit agency in the state of Hawaii that collects, warehouses, and distributes mass quantities of perishable and non-perishable food to 250 member agencies.
During the Annual Meeting a press room for working journalists will be in the Hawaii Convention Center, Third Floor, Room 324. It will be open for on-site media registration at noon on Aug. 3, and daily thereafter at 8 a.m. It will close one hour after the adjournment of the House of Delegates on Aug. 8. Beginning Aug. 3, the Press Room phone number will be 808/792-6622.
Accredited reporters are welcome to cover the conference for free. Contact ABA Division for Media Relations and Communication Services, 312/988-6171 or abanews@staff.abanet.org. Reporters who plan to cover the Annual Meeting must have ABA-issued press credentials. Credentialing guidelines are online at http://www.abanews.org/credentials.html.
With more than 400,000 members, the American Bar Association is the largest voluntary professional membership organization in the world. As the national voice of the legal profession, the ABA works to improve the administration of justice, promotes programs that assist lawyers and judges in their work, accredits law schools, provides continuing legal education, and works to build public understanding around the world of the importance of the rule of law in a democratic society.
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