VSB backs off lobbying on judges, its reserve

Bill seeks bar membership for law profs, court won’t block

By Peter Vieth
Published: January 12, 2012
Tags: Ethics, General Assembly, Supreme Court of Virginia News, Virginia Bar Association, Virginia State Bar

Some Virginia law professors would be eligible to practice law even though they have not passed the bar exam under a bill introduced at the General Assembly. The proposal has been advanced by Washington & Lee University law Prof. A. Benjamin Spencer with the backing of the Virginia State Bar Council and several statewide bar [...]

VBA steps up lobbying efforts in 2012

By Peter Vieth
Published: January 11, 2012
Tags: Bar Associations, General Assembly, Virginia Bar Association

ROANOKE—After hiring a new lobbying firm, the Virginia Bar Association hopes to have a stronger impact on bills of interest to lawyers in this year’s General Assembly session. “We have ramped up our lobbying effort,” VBA president Lucia Anna Trigiani told members of the Roanoke Bar Association Tuesday. The change was calculated and set in [...]

VBA marks Veteran Legal Services Month

By Paul Fletcher
Published: November 14, 2011
Tags: Bar Associations, Virginia Bar Association

It’s Veteran Legal Services Month, and the Virginia Bar Association is once again at work recruiting pro bono volunteers to help veterans with legal issues and raising money for projects that help them. Volunteer response was strong last November, during the bar group’s first push for help for veterans. But pro bono lawyers are still [...]

Little consensus on response to decline in jury trials

By Peter Vieth
Published: July 27, 2011
Tags: Judge Catherine Hammond, Justice Donald W. Lemons, Virginia Bar Association

HOT SPRINGS–Lawyers and judges lament the decline in the number of jury trials, but find little common ground on what to do about the trend – or whether anything needs to be done at all. “If you lose the jury trial, the system dies,” said Virginia Supreme Court Justice Donald W. Lemons, expressing a sentiment [...]

Fairfax bar executive McGhee heads to VBA

By Alan Cooper
Published: May 5, 2011
Tags: Virginia Bar Association

Yvonne C. McGhee, the executive director of the Fairfax Bar Association since 2000, has been chosen as the new executive director of the Virginia Bar Association. VBA President Pia Trigiani said McGhee “possesses a unique and impressive background,” that combines legal experience and association management with a record of success in membership expansion, program development, [...]

Effort to reinstate mandatory IOLTA dies in House committee

By Alan Cooper
Published: February 28, 2011
Tags: General Assembly, IOLTA, Virginia Bar Association, Virginia State Bar

The effort in the 2011 General Assembly to revive mandatory IOLTA is dead for the time being. Proponents of reinstating mandatory IOLTA as a tool to raise money for legal aid failed to clear the first hurdle – lifting the ban on the concept the Assembly imposed in 1995. The fight over IOLTA strained relations [...]

Trigiani: VBA is about making connections

By Alan Cooper
Published: February 4, 2011
Tags: Virginia Bar Association

When Lucia Anna Trigiani entered the University of Richmond law school in 1980, she expected to return to Big Stone Gap and be a trial lawyer. But she took a summer job at the end of her first year of law school with the Virginia Real Estate Commission reviewing applications for the registration of condominiums. [...]

Senator to VSB: So where would you say we get the money?

By Peter Vieth
Published: January 26, 2011
Tags: General Assembly, Gov. Bob McDonnell, Supreme Court of Virginia News, Virginia Bar Association, Virginia State Bar, Virginia Trial Lawyers Association

The Virginia State Bar may have difficulty hanging on to its $5 million reserve fund. But there still may be hope for thawing the freeze on new judges in Virginia. Leaders from a number of the commonwealth’s bar groups trooped to Capitol Hill on Jan. 25, appearing before the House Appropriations Committee for an early-morning [...]

Increase in GDC jurisdiction, IOLTA bill advance

By Alan Cooper
Published: January 21, 2011
Tags: General Assembly, General District Courts, IOLTA, Supreme Court of Virginia News, Virginia Bar Association, Virginia State Bar, Virginia Trial Lawyers Association

A proposal to raise the jurisdictional limit for civil cases from $15,000 to $25,000 cleared the civil subcommittee of the Senate Courts of Justice Committee yesterday. Senate Bill 774, patroned by A. Donald McEachin, D-Richmond, had the support of the Virginia Trial Lawyers Association, the Virginia Bar Association, the Virginia Bankers Association and such high-volume [...]