Electronically In Touch

We are pleased to submit the October 2019 issue of Electronically In Touch. In this issue, you will find informative articles regarding copyrights in the estate, recovery of counsel fees in New Jersey, eDiscovery guidance for young lawyers, millennials and bar associations, member spotlights, book review and an update on the upcoming Young Lawyer Section events. This issue also includes a message from the Young Lawyers Section's chair, Lauren E. Sharkey.

Electronically In Touch is a member driven publication. We welcome submissions from members on any relevant topic, including practice tips, substantive legal articles, case updates, work/life balance, and information regarding upcoming meetings and events. Please submit articles to Julie T. Houth at jhouth@gmail.com or Mansi Parikh at mansiparikh.1711@gmail.com.

Julie T. Houth and Mansi Parikh are the co-editors of Electronically In Touch. Julie received her J.D. from Thomas Jefferson School of Law and her LL.M in taxation from the University of San Diego School of Law. She is currently a staff attorney for Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd LLP, a law firm with more than 200 lawyers across the nation specializing in complex litigation representing plaintiffs in securities fraud, antitrust, corporate mergers and acquisitions, consumer and insurance fraud, multi-district litigation, and whistleblower protection cases. Julie is based at the firm's headquarters in San Diego, California. She is also involved with the American Bar Association's events and holds various leadership roles within several divisions. Mansi is a Senior Counsel at Catalent Pharma Solutions, LLC, where she supports the Biologics and Oral Drug Delivery business units. She is admitted to practice law in New York and New Jersey.

By Lauren E. Sharkey

In an effort to cater to the busy schedules of young lawyers and meet our goal of accessibility, the Young Lawyers Section ("YLS") Executive Committee held our Summer Meeting via telephone conference call on June 26, 2019. We welcomed new members to the Executive Committee and reviewed events and activities of the YLS for the year to come.

Since the Summer Meeting, we co-sponsored the Torts, Insurance and Compensation Law ("TICL") Section's Summer Meeting in August, which was held in Williamsburg, VA. In keeping with our mission to create more access to programing for young lawyers, we offered $500 scholarships to young lawyers to defer the cost of attendance. The 3rd and 4th District Representatives sponsored a networking event at a local brewery in Schenectady, NY for approximately 50 attendees. Additionally, the YLS Task Force on Law Student Debt helped finalized a 216 page (!) report addressing that addressed the removal of the mental health questions from the why the bar admission application. should do away with the mental health question. This report will be presented to the NYSBA House of Delegates in November 2019.

Looking forward, YLS will be co-sponsoring a CLE with the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Law Section on November 1, 2019 in New York City, entitled "An Introduction to FDA and FTC: Insider and Outside Counsel Highlights." Cost of attendance for YLS members is can attend this event for FREE. Also, our Diversity Committee Chair, Nandy Millette, is planning a diversity and inclusion discussion in the law panel and networking event in NYC in November (more details to come, so be on the look-out for that).

Last but not the least, we are headed to Washington, D.C. for the U.S. Supreme Court Admission's Program in November. Josephine Bahn is planning our Annual Meeting Half Day Program entitled "Social Media Ethics: How the New Civility Standards Impact Lawyers", and planning for the 11th Annual Trial Academy at Cornell Law is also underway.

Our Executive Committee still has a few available positions. Anyone interested should reach out to me at Lsharkey@cswlawfirm.com.

By Elizabeth T. Russell

"Transferring your copyrights to this living trust will activate the copyright termination right."

Estate planning professionals who have never uttered these words may inadvertently have thwarted their clients' objectives.

The copyright termination right (17 USC §203) is little known among lawyers who don't practice copyright law, yet it can alter the course of estate and marital property plans. Simply put, the termination right permits authors to terminate lifetime grants of any right under copyright law, and reclaim ownership of the rights so transferred.

We're talking about any lifetime grant. It could be a grant of copyright from the author to a publisher. It could be a grant from the author personally to the author's corporation. (The term "author," by the way, refers to anyone who creates copyrightable works.) It could be a nonexclusive license to use the work for a limited purpose.

It could also be the transaction that happens every day, in estate planning offices everywhere: the transfer of a client's assets to a living trust. The copyright termination right springs into existence, the moment that a lifetime grant is made. Later, if the termination right is properly exercised, all copyright rights under the grant reverts back to the author or the author's statutory heirs. The result: copyrights that transfer into trust during the author's life, might not stay there.

The author's act of making the lifetime grant activates the termination right: automatically and irrevocably. Before the grant, the termination right does not exist. As soon as the author makes the grant, however, the termination right springs into existence and it cannot be reversed. The right will still have to be exercised, properly, for termination to occur. But the act of making the grant is the pivotal event that puts everything else in motion. If an estate planner merely lumps all of the client's assets together and facilitates a lifetime transfer to trust, that planner causes the client to activate the termination right and, possibly, create a scenario whereby the copyright assets end up in the hands of unintended beneficiaries.

If the author is not has passed away, the author's "statutory heirs" may exercise the termination right and reclaim the copyright rights for themselves. Copyright law (not state law) specifies who qualifies as a statutory heir for purposes of the termination right (17 USC §203[a][2]). Section 203 trumps state law and it trumps the client's plainly expressed intent. For example: "beloved neighbors" are not section 203 statutory heirs. Even if the client's trust document specifies that a beloved neighbor should ultimately receive the copyright rights, an actual section 203 statutory heir could reclaim those copyright rights by properly exercising the termination right.

Termination right counseling requires the estate planner to either acquire fundamental copyright expertise or to affiliate with a copyright practitioner. The estate planning team must understand what copyright protects and what it does not; how copyrights may be owned and acquired during life; and how they may be transferred. Intake and inventory procedures must account thoroughly for every single work of authorship and for every lifetime grant the author may have made (even if there hasn't been a lifetime transfer to trust, the client's other lifetime transfers must be analyzed). Practitioners must know how to calculate the permissible window of time during which each termination right may be exercised, and they must navigate a complicated process for effecting (or defending against) termination.

The termination right is not an issue for other types of intellectual property. For every client whose estate contains (or might contain) copyright assets, however, the representation must include termination right planning.

Elizabeth T Russell is the author of Copyright Conversations: What Estate Planners Need to Know (Ruly Press 2019). Paper copies of the book are available at https://erklaw.com/author; the eBook version is available at Amazon.com (https://amzn.to/2nffuWo)

By David Arpino

In my short tenure as a young lawyer, I have quickly learned that in the context of litigation, the word "discovery" will soon be replaced by "eDiscovery." In fact, we might already be there. eDiscovery is the disclosure of electronically stored information or "ESI." In the context of litigation, ESI includes (i) word processing documents; (ii) digital photos; (iii) videos; (iv) emails and attachments; (v) texts and instant messages; (vi) mobile devices; (vii) social media; and (viii) any metadata contained in it. (ANNA TAGVORYAN, JOSHUA BRIONES & BROWNING E. MAREAN, E-DISCOVERY IN THE US: OVERVIEW, available at WestlawEdge Practical Law Litigation).

Think about the methods of communication in your daily lives. Do you write a letter, place it in a postage paid envelope, and mail it to the recipient? Probably not. Even those who still write traditional letters will often find themselves scanning the letter and sending it to the recipient as an email attachment. Text messaging has become the dominant method of communication over phone calls or voicemails. There is relevant data everywhere. A case can be won or lost on a single email buried in an avalanche of communications that people and businesses make every day. We have likely reached a point where manual discovery (i.e., printing emails or text messages to disclose in hard paper format) is no longer the preferred method of discovery.

What can we conclude from this discussion? eDiscovery has become the dominant form of disclosure in litigation matters. And eDiscovery touches almost every litigation practice area. For instance, recently in the personal injury field, a New York appellate court held that a defendant may use a third-party vendor to perform "data mining" of a plaintiff's devices, email accounts, and social media accounts for discoverable information. See Vasquez-Santos v. Mathew, 168 A.3d 587, 588 (N.Y. App. Div. 2019). Text messages may be relevant in family court proceedings. District Attorneys, routinely use, among other things, video, GPS data, and cellular data, as evidence to prosecute criminal cases. Also, breach of contract cases or landlord tenant disputes likely have at least hundreds of pages of discoverable ESI.

Technology Gives Lawyers an Advantage

As young lawyers, we have grown up with technology. Most of us have had a cell phone since we were teenagers. We do not know of a world where the internet did not exist. We know how to convert a word document to a PDF and we *should* know how to encrypt an email. We are comfortable with technology. This gives us an inherent advantage when managing ESI in the litigation context. If you represent a personal injury client, you can explain, and possibly even demonstrate, the steps the client needs to take to preserve social media data. Do you know what a .pst file in Outlook is? Maybe not, but with the help of Google, you can get up to speed after reading a few articles or blog posts. This is an inherit advantage we have over the lawyer who is unable or refuses to learn and adopt new technologies.

A Real Case in Practice

By way of background, I work in a small family-owned general practice law firm, which is often involved in litigation. Recently, I was assigned a litigation matter to be handled independently. For the sake of privacy, the names of the parties and the dispute between them are fictitious. In any event, the facts are still based on a real litigation.

Patty Plaintiff provided website design and content services to Danny Defendant. Patty agreed to build a custom website and provide blog content for Danny in exchange for the agreed sum of $30,000. The parties had a great relationship for around six months. The parties often communicated through emails and text messages. Over the six-month period, the parties communicated almost daily; often many times per day. When the project was nearing its completion, Danny was unhappy with the website design and refused to pay Patty for the website. Patty, upset that she was not being paid, refused to work on the project any further. As I am sure you can guess, this dispute ended up in state court. I represented Patty Plaintiff in a breach of contract action against Danny Defendant. My adversary was a solo practitioner with 30 years of experience.

The Court held a preliminary conference, and a discovery schedule was set. It was time to make a production of documents in response to a demand from Danny's lawyer. At the time, Danny's lawyer likely did not realize what he had gotten himself into. His document demand was broad and included ESI. That said, even with 30 years of experience, he had not litigated a case with significant ESI before.

Next, I consulted with Patty and asked a couple of questions. Did she have a document retention policy? Surprisingly she did. But her policy was to retain every email indefinitely because she was frightened to lose an important business record or communication. As a lawyer, this is an eDiscovery nightmare. Patty's email account contained 42,000 emails in her inbox alone. That did not include documents in her "sent" folder or any attachments. If Patty had consulted an attorney regarding implemented an ESI retention policy, a competent lawyer would have counseled Patty on developing an appropriate policy, but that is outside the scope of this submission.

I asked Patty if she knew how to download her .pst file in Outlook. (Note: a .pst file is an Outlook Data File that contains your messages and other Outlook items and is saved on your computer). Patty, like most clients, had never heard of a .pst file before. With Patty's permission, I retained a third-party eDiscovery vendor that could extract the data from Patty's email account.

With that third-party vendor's assistance, I started reviewing documents. Patty's email account contained 42,483 "files" and 101,070 "pages" of data. Based on the size of this review, I called Danny's attorney to discuss the method for production of documents. In cases with a bunch of ESI, it is a good practice to draft a stipulation with the other side to discuss case management obstacles including issues related to ESI. But here, there was an imbalance of knowledge and experience between the attorneys over eDiscovery. Danny's lawyer was inexperienced when it came to things like keyword searches, tagging documents, and metadata.

I reminded my adversary that I too demanded relevant emails and other ESI in possession by the defendants. My impression from our conversation was that Danny's lawyer was not prepared to make a production of ESI because of a lack of experience with eDiscovery and technology.

A few weeks later, after wrapping up my review of the ESI, I served the first set of documents to Danny's lawyer. I served the production through a cloud provider that contained a zip drive of over 3,000 documents, images, videos, emails, attachments, and photographs responsive to his demand. Not surprisingly, I received a phone call a short time later offering to settle the litigation. I can only speculate, but I presume that the inexperience of opposing counsel with eDiscovery played a significant role in receiving a generous settlement offer early in the litigation process.

In Closing

The moral of the story here is that as young lawyers, we can use technology to achieve superior results for our clients. We are already wired with the tools necessary to tackle eDiscovery and ESI because we have never known a world where technology has not touched our lives daily.

David Arpino is an associate at the family owned law firm Arnold A. Arpino & Associates, P.C. in Hauppauge, NY. David Focuses his practice on managing simple to moderately complex litigation across a wide range of practice areas including commercial disputes, commercial collections, and misdemeanor criminal defense.

By Mansi Parikh

Litigation attorneys are almost always confronted with the question regarding counsel fees from their clients. While the majority of countries in this world embrace the English Rule on counsel fees, the United States has adopted the American Rule. The English Rule stands for the notion that in a litigation, the losing party pays the legal fees of the winning party. However, no such distinction holds under the American Rule. The American Rule states that each party pays their own legal fees, regardless of the outcome of litigation. The United States recognized the American Rule as early as 1796. See Arcambel v. Wiseman, 3 U.S. 306 (1796).

The policy behind adoption of the American Rule in this country is to refrain from penalizing or burdening the losing party with the winning party's counsel fees, because the outcome of litigation is often unpredictable. In addition, "the time, expense, and difficulties of proof inherent in litigating the question of what constitutes reasonable attorney's fees would pose substantial burdens for judicial administration." Fleischmann Distilling Corp. v. Maier Brewing Co., 386 U.S. 714, 718 (1967). However, the American Rule is not without exceptions.

New Jersey court rules and fee-shifting statutes provide several exceptions to the American Rule. There are court-created exceptions to the American Rule in New Jersey. The American Rule finds support in R. 4:42-9, which governs the award of attorney's fees in New Jersey. Although this rule requires each party to bear its own legal costs, it provides eight exceptions, including certain family, probate and mortgage foreclosure actions, and statutory authorizations. Other New Jersey court rules also provide for instances under which a prevailing party can recover counsel fees from a losing party.

Additionally, New Jersey courts have provided exceptions to the American Rule such as successful claims for attorney malpractice, intentional violation of attorney's fiduciary duties to the clients and as escrow agents, as well as intentional violation of executors' or trustees' fiduciary duties under the tort of undue influence. But in a majority of the cases, the Supreme Court of New Jersey has permitted an exception under the American Rule only for violation of fiduciary duties and has cautioned against expansion of the American Rule in the absence of such a fiduciary relationship. See, e.g., Saffer v. Willoughby, 143 N.J. 256 (1996); Packard-Bamberger & Co. v. Collier, 167 N.J. 427 (2001); In re Niles Trust, 176 N.J. 282 (2003); In re Estate of Stockdale, 196 N.J. 275 (2008).

It is important to note that the American Rule is a common law rule, formulated in a different time period and under drastically different circumstances as compared to the current situation involving more complex public policies and legal scenarios. The acerbity of actions such as fraud or undue influence neither amplifies nor dwindles with or without the presence of a fiduciary relationship. The fee-shifting laws may, in turn, result in deterrence of such wrongful acts and may lead to the rightful result of making the victim whole. As the public policy evolves and the complexities grow, loosening the restrictions on applicability of the fee-shifting laws seem to offer more benefits than harms to the public at large.

Mansi Parikh is a Senior Counsel at Catalent Pharma Solutions, LLC and the co-editor of Electronically in Touch. The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in this article belong solely to the author, and not to the author's employer, organization, committee or other group or individual.

By Susan DeSantis

Leona Krasner, a 32-year-old matrimonial lawyer in New York City, said attending a bar association function is a lot like visiting the doctor. You dread going, but you know it's good for you. After hearing that analogy, you're probably thinking that Krasner is one of the millennial lawyers who doesn't belong to a bar association or isn't very active. But you'd be wrong! She chairs the communications committee for the New York State Bar Association's women in law section and she joined the City Bar in September.

Krasner said she came up with innovative ideas for her state bar section but her suggestions were rejected. She thinks bar associations should tackle topics that touch millennials' personal lives such as how to negotiate raises, how to advance in your firm and how to balance work and family. Her ideal bar association event? One she attended several years ago that mixed sushi, drinks and a conversation on ethics.

"All the millennials went to that," she recalls. "People would rather go to a fun event than one that sounds boring."

Dues are too expensive. The events aren't cool. Everyone in the room is twice my age. No one listens to me. I don't feel like I'm part of the clique. These are the complaints of millennial lawyers who are much less likely to show up at bar association events than lawyers in their 50s or older.

"The conversation that I have had most often with my peers has been about money. It always boils down to 'my student loan is due next week and you want me to shell out another $100 for a bar association event. Are you mad?' said Sarah Filcher, 33, staff attorney for the Brooklyn Bar Association Volunteer Lawyers Project and vice president of LeGaL, the LGBT Bar Association of Greater New York. "I think there is this assumption that millennials don't want to join anything," she said. "What people aren't hearing is the other end of that conversation. A bar association feels like a luxury item for a lot of millennial lawyers."

Filcher said she wishes more employers paid for bar associations because millennial lawyers, saddled with six-figure student loan debt, have little disposable income. "I just don't think people are talking about how frequently the money is prohibitive for the individual attorney," she said. "It's almost as though you're priced out of professional development." The major social events that bar associations put on are even more difficult to justify on a millennial's budget, she said. "The galas are cost-prohibitive. To ask somebody to come up with at least $300 a ticket for one evening is a huge ask," she said.

Andrew Gruna, 26, who works for the city's Human Resources Administration, finds the events pricey. "If you're not at a firm that's willing to foot the bill, trying to get involved is tough," he said. Gruna did enjoy going to a brewery tour in Brooklyn with the young lawyers' section of the state bar association but it didn't provide the networking opportunity that he had hoped. "It seems to be sort of one or the other. Either come in for a three-hour ethics lecture where you'll fall asleep or grab a drink with other lawyers but we don't talk about what we do for a living," he said.

David Arpino, 32, a criminal defense lawyer in Suffolk County who's working with his dad at a small family-owned firm, said he's glad he doesn't have to pay for bar association events out of pocket. "I imagine if I was paying it myself it might be a little cost-prohibitive." Arpino attended a CLE class in Suffolk County with the goal of advancing in his field and getting his name out there. "I was probably the youngest one in the room by about 15 years," he said.

Shayla Ramos, 27, who graduated from the Maurice A. Dean School of Law at Hofstra University in May, has been trying to encourage her law school classmates to join bar associations but has had little success. They want to spend every available minute studying. "Maybe in law school, they should push you a little more to network," she said. "Honestly, I feel they don't do it enough. Their focus is really you need to pass the bar. You need to be the best in your class."

She wasn't able to get her friends who are now young associates to participate either. "I think as a young lawyer you're so involved in wanting to do your best at your new job you want to dedicate all your time," she said. Ramos thinks that's a mistake. She belongs to five bar associations: the Hispanic National Bar Association, the New York City Bar Association, LeGaL, the LGBT Bar of Greater New York, the Nassau County Bar Association and the Federal Bar Council. "It's really cool that as a student I was really welcome and it definitely opened the door to many opportunities now," she said.

Joseph Greenwood, 32, the vice-chair of membership for the international section of the New York State Bar Association, said that he has gained pivotal practice pointers enabling him to start a boutique international law firm from his New York State Bar Association membership. Despite his enthusiasm, he still thinks bar association functions leave something to be desired.

"The coolness of events is definitely questionable," he said. "To my mind, a lot of events are overthought--in a profession with long hours and demanding workloads, one's wishes for these events are fairly basic--to be able to network in a relaxed environment, with like-minded people of roughly the same age, over a few drinks and some food."

Susan DeSantis is the deputy editor-in-chief of the New York Law Journal.

By Brandon Vogel

What advice would you give a young lawyer just starting her or his career?

When you're in law school, it can be overwhelming trying to choose a specific area to practice in. Then, when you get into practice, you might find out you don't even like the type of law you chose. That's okay. By eliminating what you don't like, you'll be able to figure out what you do like. It might take a few years, but, in the long run, you'll be the happiest. Don't feel like you're stuck settling if you don't like the type of law you're practicing.

If you hadn't become an attorney, what career path would you have pursued and why?

I think I would have started my own business. What I enjoy most about my job right now is working with passionate entrepreneurs, whether I'm helping them form their own cannabis company or collaboratively problem-solving. Knowing I play a role in bringing innovative visions to life is very rewarding.

If you could practice in a different area of the law other than your current area, what would it be?

Renewable energy. I think it's incredibly important to invest in resources such as wind, solar and hydropower to ensure long-term energy sustainability. I've really enjoyed learning about the work my colleagues on Barclay Damon's renewable energy team do in partnering with individuals at the forefront of these kinds of green projects.

What is your dream vacation?

Visit Cape Town, South Africa!

Lawyers should join the New York State Bar Association because . . .

There are tons of resources to help advance your career and your industry knowledge. If you're able to, I recommend joining a committee - it helps you dive into lesser-known types of law you might not have explored otherwise. Being a part of the NYSBA Cannabis Committee [Burgio is its co-chair] from its infancy has been so rewarding. I've also found that the more involved you become, the more connections you can establish within your legal community. If you're active and engaged, you can go from attending NYSBA CLEs to presenting them.

Burgio is special counsel at Barclay Damon. She lives and works in Buffalo.

By Peter V. Coffey

Escrow Accounts can be troublesome little things - in fact, actually, they are very big things and
if you mess up (and it is not all that hard to do) bad things will happen. As Roy Simon states in his book
Simon's New York Rules of Professional Conduct Annotated "Rule 1.15 is the longest and most strictly
enforced rule in New York's Rules of Professional Conduct. Even the most minor or unintentional
infractions of the detailed provisions of Rule 1.15 are met with swift and often harsh discipline ... ". But I
have the answer (as I am sure you probably guessed). It is a book entitled "Attorney Escrow Accounts
Rules, Regulations and Related Topics" Fourth Edition published by the New York State Bar Association -
cost $60.00 for members, $75.00 for non-members. Turning again to Mr. Simon he states " in addition
the New York State Bar Associat ion publishes a useful book covering the laws and rules governing
attorney escrow accounts, escrow agreements, IOLA accounts and the New York lawyer's Fund for
Client Protection".

The book is broken into four chapters, the first of which is a detailed discussion of handling of
escrow funds by attorneys analyzing every aspect of Rule 1.15 with citations to each. Discussed among
other topics are attorney's fees and whether or not these attorney's fees paid in advance must be put
into an escrow account; what to do when a lawyer dies or is disabled; what to do with the dissolution of
a law firm; missing clients. Also discussed are the required bookkeeping records and the dishonored
check reporting rule. Finally, there is a detailed discussion of attorney's activities with other attorney's
activities with escrow ramifications - estates, financial agent, court appointed receiver, trustee, infant
settlements, bankruptcy trustee, law firm funds, loans, etc.

What may be one of the most useful aspects of the book is its appendix. If you are looking for
the rules and regulations regarding the various accounts-escrow account - IOLA account - lawyer's
Fund for Client Protection, etc. this book has an appendix with every rule and regulation applying to all
aspects of escrow accounts. There is probably no other publication which contains such a handy
compilation of the rules and regulations. The book also sets forth most of the significant New York State
Bar Ethics Opinions regarding escrow accounts. Additionally, it has model escrow agreement forms
which dovetails with the chapter on escrow agreements. Additionally, it also has forms for turning
monies over to the lawyer's Fund for Client Protection. It is my opinion that if you have an escrow
account I strongly suggest having this publication in your office.

Peter V. Coffey is a member of the New York State Bar Association and has served in several capacities: as a member of its House of Delegates; on its Executive Committee as Vice President from the Fourth District; as a member of the Executive Committee of the Real Estate Section of the New York State Bar Association continuously since 1987, and as past-Chair of the Section; as Chair of the Bar Association's Committee to Review Judicial Nominations; as member of the Committee on Standards of Attorney Conduct (COSAC); on its Nominating Committee for many years; on its Committee on Professional Discipline and its Committee on Attorney Professionalism.

Become the voice of newly-admitted and young attorneys in NYSBA. Designed to help make the transition from law school to practice an easier one for newly-admitted attorneys, the Young Lawyers Section connects you with experienced attorneys lending general advice, legal guidance, or expert opinions. Take advantage of educational programs, networking events, and the exclusive Young Lawyers Section Mentor Directory, which is just one of the Section's mentoring initiatives. The Section publishes Electronically In Touch and Perspective. Law students may also join the Section and get a jump start on their careers.

ALREADY A MEMBER OF THIS SECTION? JOIN A COMMITTEE!

Are you interested in volunteering for a Section Committee? Please email Amy Jasiewicz at ajasiewicz@nysba.org and indicate the committees you wish to join. The Young Lawyers Section has the following committees:

• Executive Committee
• Communications Committee
• Community Service and Pro Bono Committee
• Diversity Committee
• Law Student Development Committee
• Long-Range Planning Committee
• Membership Committee
• Mentoring Committee
• Nominating Committee
• Perspective Editorial Board

The Officers of YLS and the Editors of Electronically In Touch wish to make clear that the thoughts and opinions expressed in the articles that follow are those of the respective authors and do not necessarily represent the thoughts and opinions of the authors' employers or clients, the New York State Bar Association, Young Lawyers Section, or its Officers or Executive Committee.