REGULARS

YOU NEED TO KNOW

The Annual Meeting "Preview," containing a schedule of events and complete listings of all course offerings, is available on the State Bar's web site and by fax retrieval. The web site address is www.calbar.org  and the fax number is 415/561-8838. The Preview contains course descriptions of more than 120 educational programs, as well as information about special events, pre-registration and hotel registration forms.

The Annual Meeting will take place in Monterey from Oct. 1-4. Participants can earn more than 18 hours of MCLE credit. (See special Annual Meeting section, Pages 37-46.)

The National Association for Public Interest Law (NAPIL) has announced that the Open Society Institute is providing a multimillion-dollar matching grant to encourage law firms and corporations to provide under-served communities with greater access to legal representation.

More than 75 law firms and corporations nationwide already have agreed to co-fund public service fellowships.

With the new initiative, NAPIL's Equal Justice fellowship program will fund 70 fellows across the U.S. in 1998-99.

Each two-year fellowship provides salary, loan repayment assistance, training and assistance from NAPIL. For more information, call NAPIL at 202/466-3686.

The Los Angeles firm of Karpman & Associates is providing an emergency ethics faxline as a free service to the profession. The firm is fielding short one-page questions of a hypothetical nature in an effort to help attorneys avoid ethical pitfalls due to the closing of the State Bar's ethics hotline.

It attempts to respond to inquiries within 24 hours.

The fax number is 310/887-3901.

Karpman represents attorneys who face bar discipline. She practices with Joanne Robbins, a former State Bar Court judge.

Volunteers in Parole (VIP), a non-profit program in which attorneys serve as mentors for young parolees, is seeking volunteers. Through one-on-one matches similar to the Big Brother/Big Sister programs, VIP offers a parolee the friendship of a knowledgeable person who has experience in dealing effectively with the community.

Attorneys who volunteer serve as a combination role model, mentor, adviser and friend to parolees between the ages of 16 and 35. In a crisis, the parolee will have someone to turn to for help.

For more information about the program, contact one of the following offices: Los Angeles, 213/250-9707; southern California, 619/220-5356; Central Valley, 209/444-2400, ext. 266; and northern California, 415/561-8217.

Attorneys interested in serving on the board of directors of California Rural Legal Assistance are invited to submit an application to the State Bar.

One two-year term position is open. Deadline for the applications is Sept. 11.

CRLA's 45-member board meets four times a year.

Applicants must be members of the California bar, be knowledgeable about legal services to the poor, and support the purposes of the Legal Services Corporation Act.

Interested attorneys should submit a letter of application and a resume to Judy Garlow, Office of Legal Services, State Bar of California, 555 Franklin St., San Francisco 94102. Information is available by calling 415/561-8249.

Because the State Bar's consumer hotline is shut down, consumers wishing to complain about an attorney must now submit a written complaint.

People who are having a problem with an attorney may still call 1-800/843-9053 and will hear a taped message providing various options.

The annual meeting and conference of the National Associa-tion of Administrative Law Judges will be held in Portland, Ore., from Oct. 10-14.

With a theme of "Tools for the 21st Century," the conference also is geared to involve practitioners who represent clients before federal and state agencies.

For details about the conference, visit the Oregon association's web site at www.efn.org/~oaalj> or call Shirley Gunter at 503/370-6046.

Beginning Sept. 1, the U.S. District Court, Central District, began providing a document imaging service that allows attorneys to quickly receive service of civil and criminal judgments, orders and other documents by facsimile or e-mail instead of regular mail.

Interested attorneys must enroll with the court for the free service.

Enrollment information is available from the clerk's office, 213/894-4445.

Following the recent approval of Rule 298, attorneys can make routine court appearances via telephone in any California court with the judge's approval.

The rule is designed to reduce congestion and delay in court dockets as well as to save time and money for attorneys and their clients.

Appearance by Phone, a service provided by ConferenceCallService, is now available in more than 100 California courts.

They include superior courts in Los Angeles, Ventura County, Simi Valley, Alameda County, Santa Clara County, Lake County and Siskyou County.

Information about the service is available from Michael Volk at 310/545-3373, or toll-free 877/545-3373.