The VLW Blog

Still wary after a 2010 bid by Gov. Bob McDonnell to bring the Virginia State Bar bank account into the state general fund budget, bar leaders are talking about renaming the VSB’s “Reserve Fund” as the “Trust Fund” to make it clear it is not taxpayer money.  Budget chair Alan Anderson advised bar leaders they [...]

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The initial word from the Senate Finance Committee staff is that House and Senate budget conferees have agreed to appropriate $3.72 million to fill judicial vacancies, to leave the Virginia State Bar budget intact and to fund the state’s drug courts. Details of the budget were not available this morning as the committee staff worked [...]

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The Virginia State Bar now offers a Web-based form for submitting ethics questions to the VSB Ethics Counsel’s office. Clicking a bright blue button on this page opens the form where attorneys can identify themselves and type in a question for the VSB gurus. The ethics inquiries land in a new e-mail inbox at the [...]

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The results are in from the elections for Virginia State Bar Council. In the contested elections: I. Lionel Hancock III defeated incumbent Mary G. Commander by three votes, 178 to 175, in Norfolk. Incumbents W. David Harless, John T. Sharer and Hugh T. Antrim were reelected in Richmond and O. Randolph Rollins and Doris Henderson [...]

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Wait! There are more! Candidates for federal judgeships, that is. Michael R. Shebelskie, a partner in the litigation and intellectual practice in the Richmond office of Hunton & Williams, is interested in the district court seat inRichmond. Sharon Y. Eubanks, now senior counsel in the Washington office of Holland & Knight after 22 years as [...]

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Lawyers may continue to use the Fastcase legal research through the Virginia State Bar for another year. The VSB has exercised its option to extend its contract for the Fastcase legal research service for one more year, effective Feb. 10, according to VSB deputy director Mary Yancey Spencer. The contract price for basic service is [...]

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The Virginia State Bar Council resoundingly rejected today a proposal for mandatory legal malpractice insurance by a 60-11 vote. Almost 92 percent of 17,393 state lawyers who represent clients drawn from the public already have such insurance, and only one lawyer without insurance reported this year that he had an unsatisfied malpractice judgment against him. [...]

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The Virginia State Bar, the Virginia Bar Association and the Virginia Trial Lawyers Association have endorsed candidates for the State Corporation Commission vacancy created by the retirement of Commissioner Theodore V. Morrison Jr. The VSB’s judicial nominations committee told Gov. Timothy M. Kaine that it found four candidates to be highly qualified: – Philip R. [...]

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A search committee has recommended that Senior Assistant Bar Counsel Edward L. Davis head the disciplinary system of Virginia State Bar. Davis, 55, would succeed George W. Chabalewski, who is stepping down July 19 after two years in the job. Davis has been an assistant bar counsel for more than 14 years and had worked [...]

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Five new members of Virginia State Bar Council prevailed in contested mail ballot elections in the 2nd, 4th, 13th, 14th and 18th circuits. In addition, George W. Shanks moved from an ex officio position as head of the Senior Lawyers Conference to the elected representative of the 26th Circuit in a three-way race there. A [...]

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