Dear TerraLex colleagues,

In less than two months we will be gathering in Hong Kong for the the 2009 TerraLex Annual General Meeting. As the global economy shows signs of recovery, this meeting will be a good opportunity to meet old friends and new Members and to explore ways we can help each other grow our practices, whether by increased referral flow or by collaboration on practice development initiatives.

If you have not registered for the meeting yet, please do so now by going on the TerraLex website or using this convenient link:

AGM Registration

As well as the new Members mentioned in the last issue of this newsletter, you will also have the opportunity in Hong Kong to meet our new Member in Paris, PDGB Avocats (www.pdgb.com), a highly-regarded firm of about 50 lawyers with a substantial international practice, and possibly another new Member that we are hopeful will join us within the next month.

There are two other new faces you will want to greet in Hong Kong. Filling the vacancies left when John Llombart and Stalyn Almanzar left us to continue their educations, our new IT Manager, Josh Morris, and our new Member Services Manager, Maricor Tiongson Ramos, will be in Hong Kong not only to help out with the meeting but also to get to know TerraLex and its Members and to give you the chance to get to know them.

I appreciate your patience as TerraLex has been upgrading our IT infrastructure, including the website and our databases. We are nearing the end of the process for this phase of development, and expect to have most of it completed before year-end. The new systems that are already operative or that are shortly coming on line represent a significant improvement. In order to make use of all of the features of the new technology, however, TerraLex Member lawyer must be registered on the website. Otherwise, important Member-only portions of the site will not be accessible. We therefore ask that you do the following:

1. Have someone forward this issue of Connections to all of the lawyers in your firm, and to your marketing staff as well.
2. Encourage your lawyers and marketing staff to register on the TerraLex website. Instructions are located in this newsletter.
3. Encourage your lawyers who have not already done so to join the TerraLex Practice Groups relevant to their practices.

As usual, this newsletter includes timely articles on a variety of topics, selected and edited by Geoff Revelle, of TerraLex Washington/Oregon/Idaho Member Stoel Rives LLP. Geoff is Chair of the TerraLex Strategic Communications Committee and serves as Editor-in-Chief of Connections. We owe him thanks for his hard work supervising the production of the newsletter.

I look forward to seeing you in Hong Kong.

Charles McCallum, Chairman

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