MSBA ADR Section
Annual Report
2016-2017
Section Membership
As of June 12, 2017, the Section has 419 members.
Financial Status
The Section had an account balance of $7,314.34 as of May 31, 2017.
CLEs & Events
The Section hosted 9 CLE programs in fiscal year 2016-17.
Annual Meeting and Election Results
The Section’s Annual Meeting was held on May 9, 2017 and 85 people attended.
The following candidates were elected to serve on the Section’s Governing Council starting July 1, 2017:
Officers:
Chair: Joseph LeBlanc, LeBlanc Law & Mediation
Treasurer: Wendell Bell, Arbitrator Attorney
Secretary: Elise Chambers, Conflict Resolution Center
Immediate Past Chair: Sharon Press, Mitchell Hamline School of Law - Dispute Resolution Institute
Council:
Greg Bistram, Briggs and Morgan; Professional Association
Ben Lowndes, MnDOT
Alice Silkey, Mitchell Hamline School of Law - Emerita Professor of Law
Eva Cheney-Hatcher, Cheney-Hatcher & McKenzie Dispute Resolution Center, PLLC.
Vue Chu, Hmong American Mediation Center, Inc.
Tim Cook, Cook Law & ADR, PLLC
Allen Gibas, American Arbitration Association
Alex Glassmann, Conflict Resolution Center’s Board
Bob Lawson, National Futures Association Dispute Resolution
Andrea Niemi, ADR Ethics Board
Rob Roby, MN Mediation Services, LLC
Law Student Liaison:
Wondwosen Yoseph Dasebo, University of St. Thomas School of Law
Diversity and Inclusion
We appointed a Diversity Representative, Alice Silkey, and a D& I Subcommittee. We set aside time at multiple meetings to develop a Diversity & Inclusion Plan and have made great progress towards finalizing the plan. Even before formally adopting the plan, we held one of our monthly CLE’s off-site (at Mitchell Hamline) to make the session more accessible to a range of people and we created a student liaison position on the Council which has been filled by a student from Saint Thomas Law School. We also added a question on our nomination form for council elections for individuals to indicate how they will contribute to the diversity of the council.
Other Section Accomplishments
• Monthly Tip of the Month Newsletters to the ADR Section
• Contributed and supported the mediation community via financial partnership/sponsorship to Conflict Resolution Minnesota (CRM) – Annual Conference
• Program Co-Sponsorship with Labor & Employment Section (April 2017)
• Conflict Resolution Week Co-Sponsorship and Student Focused Program held at Mitchell Hamline School of Law (received grant from the ABA Section of Dispute Resolution)
Submitted By:
Sharon Press, Section Chair
June 26, 2017