Section will sharpen its international focus

The mission of the Section of Business Law is to serve the public, the legal profession and the section’s 60,000 members by furthering the development and improvement of business law and by providing cutting-edge professional development for practitioners from every field of business law, whether private practitioners, in-house counsel, academics, judges or government lawyers. Through its more than 70 committees, the section offers opportunities for hands-on engagement in a variety of programs, projects and publications that are designed to further the development of business law and the practice of business lawyers worldwide. These range from the drafting of model documents (for example, the Model Asset Purchase Agreement), to collaboration with the United Nations Commission on International Trade on trade law harmonization initiatives, to high-profile national and global institutes and programs focusing on current legal issues of relevance to business lawyers, to high-level interaction with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and other regulatory bodies through thoughtful commentary on proposed rules and regulations.

In January 2008, the section’s leadership engaged in a strategic planning exercise, the third in a series of such exercises conducted by the section since 1994. A cross-section of members and section leaders examined the changing nature of business law and the manner in which these changes affect our members and our mission. The section has developed a strategic plan that identifies a series of initiatives that will become priorities in the coming years. Recognizing that the practice is becoming increasingly global in scope, the section will continue its efforts to sharpen its focus on global business law. In recent years the section has attracted a significant number of non-U.S. lawyers to its meetings, and a number of non-U.S. lawyers who are associate members of the American Bar Association now rank among the section’s leaders. Virtually all of the section’s substantive committees have a subcommittee that has a global or transnational focus.