ELLN Chair’s Newsletter and Join us at the August ACC Employment & Labor Law Teleconference Meeting Tomorrow!

Tomorrow, Wednesday, August 5 is the regular monthly teleconference of the Association of Corporate Counsel’s Employment & Labor Law Network (ELLN), where I am Chair this year.  This post is an open invite to in house counsel who are not already attending our ELLN monthly meetings to join us! My Chair’s Newsletter appears below. 

If you are an in-house counsel, and you are not an ACC member or an ELLN member (or even if you are and you haven’t joined us recently), we would love for you to attend our monthly teleconference and join our active community.

Join ACC here: https://www.acc.com/membership/become-a-member

If you haven’t joined our calls recently, or have never heard of ACC or ELLN, now is a great opportunity to check us out. Each month before our meeting, I will post our agenda here and elsewhere in social media as encouragement to join our merry bunch on the first Wednesday (generally) each month at 3:00 p.m. EST.

Joining the call is as easy as clicking the big red button below and logging in or registering.

Hello ELLN Members!

I trust that this message finds each of you healthy and persevering personally and professionally through these tumultuous times.  Tomorrow (Wednesday, August 5) is the Association of Corporate Counsel Employment and Labor Law Network (ELLN)’s regular monthly teleconference at 3 p.m. EDT.  I will get back to this theme in a moment, but let me say right off the top: if you and yours are struggling in any way—personally, professionally, financially, whatever, please respond to this e-mail confidentially.  The ELLN leadership and I will do anything we can to help provide and connect you with resources to help.

It is August, and the time of the year that the ELLN surveys members for your feedback on what we do as a Network and to invite you to serve as leaders next year!  we are looking to fill the soon-to-be-open NLC Secretary position.  You would be serving with me (incoming Chair) and David Cohen (incoming Vice-Chair).  All former chairs of ACC Networks (or previously Committees – and note that current chairs will be eligible as of the Annual Meeting, making you eligible) of networks are eligible, so please spread the word to your predecessors and their predecessors as well.  NLC Secretary will become NLC Vice-Chair the following year, and then Chair the year after in the event our current structure remains in place.

Please take 5 minutes to answer a few questions by clicking the link below or using the embedded QR code:

https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/JLTMTJ8

Completing the survey is extremely important as we try to schedule programs of interest to you, our members, and to provide useful and needed resources.  In addition to the programs held during the Annual Meeting in October, we identify a current issue each month for our Legal Quick Hit and we present separate webcasts for more in-depth learning.  Also, we produce written materials to provide templates, checklists, and research for in-house employment counsel.  We recognize that the ELLN membership represents a broad range of industries, so your feedback is critical for our efforts to select programs and written materials that appeal to a large part of the membership.  Please take the time to complete the survey by August 18 so that we can serve you better. 

Leadership and Volunteer Opportunities

We always need volunteers.  What you want to do, and how much time you want to commit are entirely up to you, but we have many opportunities available, including:

• Moderate a webcast – requires only an hour of your time and about twenty minutes of preparation.

• Contribute materials to the ACC library – could require no time at all to contribute materials that you already have, or you could volunteer to research a topic or prepare a template or checklist that is in an area of your interest.

• Write an article for the ACC’s magazine, the Docket – have a pet topic that you really want to expound on?  This is your chance.

• Become a co-chair of one of our subcommittees – all our subcommittees have at least two co-chairs, so you’re not on your own here.  The time commitment and scope of responsibilities on our subcommittees varies from a few hours per month to substantial support during peak times of the year.

We are also looking to fill the soon-to-be-open ELLN Secretary position.  You would be serving with Darryl Uffelmann (incoming Chair) and Nikki Odom (incoming Vice-Chair).  All ELLN members are eligible, so please consider serving, even if you have not served as a leader before.  The ELLN Secretary will become Vice-Chair the following year, and then Chair the year after per our current succession plan.

We always want and need more of our members to take a more active role, so if you have the desire, we have the opportunity.  Please let us know via the survey how you want to volunteer, or send an email to ellcglobal@acc.com or send an email directly to me at hassdoug@gmail.com

August Teleconference

At tomorrow’s meeting, Jackson Lewis’s Mary Costigan will be discussing how to control security issues and protect trade secrets as more and more people are working from home and on their own devices during and after the current coronavirus pandemic.

Here is the registration button for tomorrow (ELLN leaders, check your invite for your specific link):

You can also click this URL: https://acc.inreachce.com/Details/Information/8e9e22cf-d702-426c-84a2-3820122dea29

Registration is free and we will get to as many of your questions as possible. Please be sure to continue to visit our ELLN forum/message board at https://community.acc.com/.  Every day we have more great information and discussion.  We would love to hear from you and see you (virtually anyway)!  You can also post completely anonymously anytime.

Finally, as I said at the outset, so many people in our Network, ACC, legal, and broader communities need help at this time.  I want to highlight one area where I call on you to help as you can in the coming weeks: food insecurity.  The U.S. Census Bureau conducts a weekly Household Pulse Survey studying how the COVID-19 pandemic is impacting households across the country.  In the survey published last week that covers the period through July 21, nearly 30 million of 249 million respondents indicated they had “sometimes not enough to eat” or had “often not enough to eat” the previous week.  That is the highest result in the 12 weeks of the survey.  If you are not among the nearly 30 million, please contact your local food bank this week to see what you can do to help.  Most local food banks are under tremendous strain, and anything you can contribute (money, time, expertise) would be appreciated.  A former pro bono client of mine, Feeding America, has an online tool where you can find your local food bank.

As always, thank you for being an ELLN member, for your attendance at tomorrow’s meeting, and for your continued participation (especially at this time).  We appreciate having you with us and welcome your feedback in our survey (and anytime) on how we can make ELLN membership an even better value for you.  Please reach out anytime.

Stay safe and healthy!

Doug Hass
Chair, Association of Corporate Counsel Employment and Labor Law Network