CORPORATE COUNSEL COMMITTEE

Message from the Chair

Welcome to the TIPS Corporate Counsel website! I am Juanita (Nita) Luis and am proud to be your Chair for the August 2005-2006 term. Let's get to know each other. TIPS "Corporate Counsel" embrace a broad range of interests of both in-house and law firm attorneys, from litigators to government affairs to transactional attorneys (like me). Our leadership reflects that diversity. We have over 1,000 members! I am an Associate General Counsel with UnitedHealth Group in Minnesota where I work on a variety of corporate transactions, integrate our many acquisitions, coordinate insurance holding company act filings, and manage corporate governance of our 200 some non-public subsidiaries. I previously was a Group General Counsel at St. Paul Fire and Marine Insurance Company working on property & casualty insurance regulatory issues. Both my law and history degrees are from the University of Minnesota, where I remain very active in the alumni association. My previous TIPS roles have included being a member of the Section's Council and Chair of the Publications Editorial Board, TortSource, and the Communications Coordinating Group. My husband, Rick Luis, is an ALJ for the State of Minnesota. We love international travel and spectator sports. Please join us in San Francisco for great CLE and the Corporate Counsel Lunch on Fri. Oct. 28, 2005, featuring the General Counsel & VP-Business Affairs of the San Francisco 49ers, Ed Goines. Please continue to check the TIPS website for events of interest to Corporate Counsel throughout the year. Two CLE highlights will include: Committee Midwinter Meeting - January 12-15, 2006 in Key Biscayne, FL at the Sonesta Beach Resort (of the Corporate Counsel, Life Insurance, Health & Disability Insurance, Insurance Regulation, Employee Benefits, and Employer-Employee Relations Committees) Fighting Fraud! How Companies Protect Themselves from Fraudulent Claims and Challenge Fraudulently Obtained Policies Litigation Update: What's New in Broker Commission, Annuity, and Life Insurance Litigation Insuring Against Retaliation and Whistleblower Claims Effective Jury Argument Ethical Considerations Regarding Use of Covert Investigative Techniques Discretionary Clauses in Disability Policies: Is California Starting Another Trend? CORPORATE GOVERNANCE INSTITUTE - May 11-13, 2006 in New York City at the Parker Meridien Hotel Combines leading corporate attorneys and in-house counsel with academic research and insurance company D&O liability perspectives Subjects will include corporate metrics as predictors of litigation, information flow to the directors, executive compensation, and a Sarbanes Oxley update Cosponsored by TIPS Corporate Counsel and Professional, Officer & Directors Liability Committees with funding from Chubb, Pricewaterhousecoopers, CLA Piper Rudnick Gray Cary US LLP, and Winstead Sechrest & Minick PC. There is a link from this website to provide you with more details. I am grateful to Ken Roberts, our immediate past-Chair and a partner with Schiff Hardin in Chicago, and his colleagues, Kelly Martin and Amy Pine. Under Ken's leadership, we sponsored "Mediating the Bet the Company Case" CLE with a panel of General Counsels and top plaintiff and defense counsel moderated by highly praised mediator, Eric Green. We also co-sponsored "Whatever Happened to Attorney-Client Privilege and Confidentiality?", "Be the Hero: Advising D&Os for Two Corporate Extremes - The IPO and the Bankruptcy", and "Why Do Insurers Sue Each Other? Inter-Carrier Disputes Theory and Practice" seminars at the Annual Meeting in Chicago. We also had a regional Fall program and Spring seminar on ADR. We held a Committee Mid-year meeting for the first time with several other committees and presented "Hot Topics in Insurance Market Conduct Examinations". I am excited to announce that our Chair-Elect is Paul Gracey, General Counsel of Nicor Inc. Elsewhere on this website, you will find a list of our excellent Corporate Counsel Vice Chairs. We cannot lead this committee without your help. Please give us your ideas: WHAT ARE YOUR SUGGESTIONS FOR CLE TOPICS? Are you, or do you know, a fantastic speaker? Are you interested in organizing a CLE program? We hope to sponsor some Teleconference CLE Programs if you do not have time to travel. Please contribute to our Corporate Counsel newsletters. Please send your articles to our newsletter editor, Kelly Martin at: kmartin@schiffhardin.com. You may want to add Kelly and me to the mailing list for your law firm newsletter to clients and we will contact you if there are articles we want to reprint in our newsletter. Amy Pines has coordinated our 2005 submission to the Annual Survey on Corporate Law for the Tort Trial & Insurance Practice Law Journal. Please contact her with update ideas for 2006 at: apines@schiffhardin.com Please contact Casey Brown, our website coordinator, with your ideas for content and/or design for this website at: cbrown@meyerorlando.com Thank you for being members of TIPS Corporate Counsel Committee! Nita Luis 952-936-1679 nita_b_luis@uhc.com luis@luislegal.com

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Last Modified on Wednesday, October 5, 2005 2:23 PM