Business Law
Message from Christopher Hughes, Chair of the Business Law Section

I hope that you are all having a stellar New Year, 2025. This is an opportunity for all of us, both as members of the CLA and as leaders within our Section, to pause and reflect, welcome new possibilities, and resolve to constantly seek ways to improve.
Our Section recently concluded the Winter Leadership Conference, which took place in sunny Sacramento from November 15-17, 2024. Attendees worked tirelessly to showcase and share the countless ways to enhance our Section and provide exquisite and unique services to our members. Your BLS officers presented on numerous topics including ways to collaborate and support our 15 standing committees, the techniques for proposing and advocating for legislative and regulatory changes, how to put on successful and engaging CLE programs, the various opportunities to author articles, and how, as a leader, to recruit new members as well as reenergize and revitalize your existing teams. We also had the opportunity to learn from professionals who taught us effective prompt engineering to get the best out of generative AI LLMs and useful strategies for social media posts to ensure our posts are engaging, dynamic, and viewed by the largest possible audience. CLA leaders Terrance Evans, Betty Williams, and Chris Nguyen shared their visions for the CLA and reiterated their unending support for the BLS and its efforts this year. We are truly grateful for all who participated and made the conference such a success. And, at the end, we had a chance to meet up with the Intellectual Property section and enjoy watching a Sacramento Kings victory. Personally, I found the entire weekend to be an invaluable experience.
Going into the new year, we intend to join the CLA in its massive recruitment campaign. We strongly believe that every attorney in California can benefit from being a member and we intend to spread that message to as many attorneys as possible. As a Section, we will continue to build upon the goodwill and legacy of CLA as the premiere association for all California lawyers. We could not be more excited for what the future holds!
To that end, IT IS TIME TO RENEW!
While it is never too late to renew your BLS membership, now is the perfect opportunity. If you are registered through an entity, agency, or law firm, please reach out to your finance/accounting department and ask them to pay your dues via State Bar agency billing.
Additionally, the BLS continues to actively recruit our leaders of tomorrow. We seek to associate professionally with those individuals and institutions exhibiting a strong commitment to leadership, protection of the public, and the advancement of our legal profession. We urge you to seek out and encourage such individuals to become active members and seek appointment to one of our fifteen (15) Standing Committees. The application for appointment is electronically accessible here.
LEGISLATIVE DAY
Finally, we are very much looking forward to the upcoming CLA Legislative Day, scheduled to take place on April 9, 2025. Former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of California Tani Cantil-Sakauye will be the keynote speaker. Please make sure to save the date and register as soon as registration becomes available. As a precursor, on February 12, 2025, from 12:00 p.m. – 1:30 p.m., there will be a CLA-wide webinar on the legislative process. They will cover all steps, from an idea through enactment, with a specific focus on services the CLA legislative team can provide to members at each step, including guidance regarding internal and external practical and political considerations. The speakers will be Michele Brown, CLA’s lobbyists at Weideman Group, and Saul Bercovitch the CLA’s Chief Governmental Affairs Officer.