WHITE SULPHUR SPRINGS – The West Virginia Fellows of the American College of Trial Lawyers recently meet with the dean of the West Virginia University College of Law to discuss how to strengthen ties between the two organizations.
The get-together, which was part of the annual meeting of the Fellows, took place at The Greenbrier resort in White Sulphur Springs.
One of the members, Huntington attorney Marc Williams, told The West Virginia Record the group is interested in helping young lawyers entering the field.
“The organization itself does a lot of service work for the advancement of the profession in terms of educating younger lawyers; trying to instill in younger lawyers the importance of our civil and criminal justice system and; how jury trials are important; how being a trial lawyer is an important calling and; to improve the skill level of younger lawyers,” he said. “So one of the things that we talked about at this meeting was how we can achieve those ends and what our plans might be to try to advance those goals.”
He said WVU Law School Dean Gregory Bowman was very open to working with them.
“One of the projects we would like to work on is building a closer relationship with the law school and seeing how the college can enhance an understanding of the students at the law school for example, of the importance of professionalism; the importance of ethics and; the importance of the civil and criminal justice system and; the importance of trial practice," said Williams, who works for Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough.
The Fellows, which consist of 35 members, including two judicial members, are part of the national American College of Trial Lawyers, an invitation-only organization.
Williams said membership is limited to 1 percent of the total number of lawyers in any given state.
“It is intended to represent the best trial lawyers, those who try cases in court, whether they be civil cases or criminal cases," he said.
He said that while the focus is on training the younger generation the seminars are open to all lawyers.
“Anything we would do from an educational standpoint would be available for any lawyer in West Virginia but, our focus would be directed at trying to identify how we could use the lessons that we have learned over our careers to try to enhance the skills and the understanding of the importance of trial practice to the next generation of trial lawyers," Williams said. “I am a firm believer in that you should never stop learning. So, even those of us who have been in practice for a while could always improve our skills."
