A MESSAGE FROM THE ADC PRESIDENT:

Welcome to the Association of Defense Counsel of Northern California and Nevada's newly-updated website. We are excited about our new platform and hope you find it to be user-friendly. Through our website, you can check our calendar of events, apply for or renew your membership, and locate a member attorney by name, city or legal specialty. Members can access our magazine, Defense Comment, and our online membership directory. There's a lot of information and some very useful links here. We hope you'll spend a few minutes and look around.

As the President of the ADC for 2012, I am honored to serve the Association and to work with our committed Board of Directors and professional staff, led by Executive Director Jennifer Blevins.

The ADC, now in its 53rd year of service, is the only organization in Northern California and Nevada standing up for attorneys who make their living defending civil lawsuits. Our members practice in a wide variety of specialties, but are united in their desire for an organized voice to put forth the defense perspective to the State Legislature and the Judicial Council through our advocate Mike Belote of California Defense Counsel, and to the Courts through the work of our Amicus Committee.

We have a long tradition of providing high-quality, timely and affordable educational seminars on a broad range of pertinent legal topics. Our Annual Meeting, held in San Francisco each year in early December at the Westin St. Francis Hotel on Union Square, is a top-notch educational, motivational and fun social event that our members come back to year after year.

Our substantive law committees provide a forum for attorneys within specialized practice areas to network, to share strategies and to get updates on recent developments in the law. Our sub law committees send e-blasts to their members as soon as important new decisions are handed down and put on lunchtime brown bag seminars on topics of interest. Our sub law committees include Construction, Employment, Insurance, Landlord/Tenant, Litigation, Medical Malpractice, Public Entity, Toxic Tort and Transportation. We also have a committee just for Young Lawyers, those in practice five years or less.

The ADC exists to benefit our members, so if you have any ideas how we can better serve you and your practice, please contact me or any member of our Board. We look forward to hearing from you and thank you for your continued support of the ADC!

Best Regards,

John M. Vrieze

2012 ADC President

jvrieze@mitchelllawfirm.com