President's Message

By Robert A. Shives, Sr. Director & Associate General Counsel, Fujitsu America, Inc.

As incoming Chapter President, I would like to thank our immediate past president, James Carroll, and all of our Board and Chapter Leadership, for all of their hard work and dedication to this Chapter's phenomenal success in remaining  a valuable resource for its members!   The Chapter's accomplishments include providing extensive CLE programming across a wide variety of substantive topics (including special programs such as sold-out Contracts Day, Chapter Leadership Institute and Hard to Find CLE Day); offering networking and social events (Night at the Ballpark and Wine Day); and enhancing our online resources.   ACC Headquarters, recognizing our phenomenal achievements and success in supporting our membership, awarded ACC SFBA Chapter of the Year in 2010 – a huge recognition of the Chapter and you, our members!  Finally, we wouldn't be able to accomplish any of this without the support and dedication of our Sponsors, providing cutting edge substantive programming and resources in attractive venues -- a huge thank you to all!

Our Chapter Leadership, MCLE programming, and social, networking events  are what makes this Chapter such a valuable resource for our members.   As such, my Quarterly Newsletters will highlight various Chapter Leadership and activities, so you can better get to know your Leadership;  who we are; and what the Chapter offers.  

Contracts Day:
As I mentioned, in 2010 (November 12th) we provided our first ever and phenomenally successful Contracts Day: Deal or No Deal, at the Hyatt Regency Santa Clara. This program exceeded our wildest expectations.  We originally planned on attendance for 200, but after overwhelming response moved to a much larger room and had 400 registrations, with actual attendance exceeding 450!

An advanced course geared towards in-house lawyers (since all of us do some contract work) and certain in-house non-lawyer professionals consisted of four 1.5 hour sessions and a 1 hour luncheon panel. The wide variety of topics included tips and strategies in negotiating software licenses and professional services agreements, negotiating risk related provisions, handling termination, and preventing “supposedly” boilerplate provisions from biting you.

We started with breakfast and ended with a cocktail reception and lots of great take-aways for all involved.  Look for our 2nd annual this fall--we hope to make this even more memorable!  Many thanks to our excellent committee (Chaired by Bill Becker and comprised of Spencer Chen, Cathy Bump and Jeremy Kashian), our sponsors, and, of course, DeeDee Ford.

Lilia Rose and the Pro Bono Committee:

This will be Lilia’s 4th year Chairing ACC-SFBA’s Pro Bono Committee.  When Lilia started she took a Committee which hadn’t had enough focus and dedication to get off the ground to the phenomenal success it is today!  She became aware of the services provided by the Corporate Pro Bono Organization (which organization is a joint project of the Association of Corporate Counsel and the Pro Bono Institute) when she attended ACC’s annual meeting three years ago.   Bringing together ACC Chapters, local nonprofit organizations and sponsoring law firms, CPBO provides local onsite pro bono clinics throughout the United States known as “Clinics in a Box,” which are a collection of best practices providing a template enabling local ACC Chapters and participating law firms to replicate onsite pro bono clinics successfully.

Lilia wanted to build and enhance this model in the SFBA Chapter, and needing help and a sponsoring law firm, she contacted Julie Park, the pro bono coordinator at Fenwick & West, who she’d met at one of our Chapter’s earlier pro bono clinics (offered under the leadership of Bruce Ives at HP).   Julie, also an avid pro bono supporter, brought Fenwick on board to sponsor the committee, including provision of venues, training (and training materials) and meals for all of our pro bono clinics.  Our first Clinic in a Box was held back in June of 2009 and attracted 55 volunteers and 23 clients; according to Eve Runyon, Project Director for CPBO, this was one of the most successful Clinics in a Box facilitated by CPBO. We had 3 clinics in 2010 and intend to have one per quarter in 2011.  We hope you will participate in at least one clinic this year.

Lilia also chairs our Diversity and Inclusion Committee, which hosted two successfully well attended networking events last year.  Her plans for 2011 include collaborating with CMCP and MCCA to organize a panel on best practices to help the minority lawyers advance in their careers and to find a way to incorporate a Street Law program into our upcoming offerings.
In addition to her phenomenal volunteer work in support of our Chapter, Lilia holds down a professional career, as Senior Corporate Counsel at NetApp (one of Fortune’s 100 Best Companies), with responsibilities including corporate and commercial legal counsel in support of NetApp’s Global Sourcing Services team, providing legal support on privacy issues found in NetApp’s procurement contracts (she is IAPP certified). She has an undergraduate degree in Accounting from Bernard Baruch College, City University of NY, and obtained her JD from New York Law School.  She is admitted to practice in both NY and CA.  

In addition to providing resources and programming designed to help members further and grow within their careers, one of Paige Raleigh’s missions for the CDC is to provide resources to help our in-transition members develop skills, networks, and to provide personal promotional materials to maximize their career opportunities. One such resource is a Success Team, which is a key to maintaining the productive implementation of a job search campaign. Active participation in a Success Team diminishes or eliminates many of the barriers to a productive search. Members of the team are less likely to suffer from declining productivity.

Paige, along with co-chair Michael Shpizner (Vice President and General Counsel at Fujitsu America, Inc.), hosted a Success Team Program during the last quarter of 2010. The program consisted of facilitated Success Teams, through which participants came together face-to-face on a regular basis to discuss their job search campaigns, update their job search activities, make new networking connections, prepare self-marketing documents, practice interviewing techniques, share ideas/events, and generally hold one another accountable for their actions in the job search process in a supportive atmosphere. As an added bonus, the meetings were facilitated by a professional career management coach and included substantive training and discussions on strategic topics. The program consisted of six in-person Success Team meetings lasting two hours each, held every week or on alternating weeks and ran from mid-October through mid-December. The Success Team facilitator was Christine Young, SPHR. In addition to her practice as a private career coach, Christine works with Right Management, a talent and career management firm (outplacement services), since 2001. You can read more about Christine here: www.CCYConsulting.com. We created a Yahoo Group for online communication among team members.
There were only 20 spots on this team, and the program sold out with a waiting list! The average evaluation score from all participants was 4.5 out of a possible 5.0 and included overwhelmingly positive responses about how helpful and great the program was.

Based on this success we encouraged the Success Team members to continue meeting after conclusion of the formal program, splitting the team into three geographical areas, which spin-off teams are now forming, meeting, and open to join in various locations around the Bay Area for current ACC in-transition members.

The meetings will be self-run by the Success Team members. The locations are: North Bay/San Francisco; South Bay/Peninsula; and the East Bay. Please contact Paige Raleigh, at p.raleigh@comcast.net, if you are interested in joining one of these Success Teams and would like details.

Paige’s 10+ years of experience span software, semiconductor, hardware, and services-related companies, including NEC, ADP, and S3. Her expertise is in drafting and negotiating commercial and corporate contracts. Paige is a member of our Chapter Leadership serving as Co-Chair of the Career Development Committee. In this role, Paige has been developing and hosting sold-out MCLE programs for our members for six years.