Legal Excellence Week and Spark Series offer attorneys opportunities to learn, connect, reflect

While it is critical for attorneys to stay up to date on legal developments, it is equally important for them to connect with their colleagues and build a sense of community. The MSBA’s 2022 Legal Excellence Week offers Maryland lawyers a chance to accomplish all three — providing unparalleled opportunities to learn, network with colleagues, and further community connections and involvement. 

Legal Excellence Week, which runs from March 14 through March 18, combines the MSBA’s biggest CLE Institutes and Summits into an epic week of learning and connecting. It kicks off with the Advanced Real Property Institute and Immigration Law Update on Monday, March 14th, and continues with the Corporate Counsel Institute and Advanced Estate Planning Institute on​​ Tuesday. Wednesday offers the opportunity to learn about Hot Tips in Family Law and on Thursday, participants can attend the Employment Law Institute or Criminal Law Update. The week ends with the 2022 Solo & Small Firm Summit on Friday. 

Participants can attend a single session or purchase a weekly pass that provides access to up to 40 CLE credits in over 55 hours of substantive learning in addition to interactive sessions. With the COVID pandemic still winding down, Legal Excellence Week is fully virtual this year. Attendees can safely take part in Legal Excellence Week from anywhere via the MSBA Learn App. All of the content from Legal Excellence Week will be accessible for up to 90 days after the event.

Those interested in reaping all of the benefits the MSBA’s 2022 Legal Excellence Week has to offer can register here. Legal Excellence Week 2022 is free for MSBA Passport Members, one of the many benefits of MSBA’s Passport Membership.  

In addition to providing opportunities to learn and connect via Legal Excellence Week, the MSBA hopes to inspire Maryland attorneys to reflect on the state of the profession, how they have wielded their position of influence historically, how they might exercise that privilege responsibly going forward, and, finally, what they think about the legal profession’s role in the future of justice in our state, nation, and world. To facilitate such critical thinking and inspire action among all legal professionals in Maryland, the MSBA is excited to offer the second program of its 125th Anniversary Thought Leadership Initiative’s Spark Series.  The program, The Future of Justice and the Legal Profession: Looking Back and Moving Forward,  will feature a discussion with Vanita Gupta, Associate Attorney General, U.S. Department of Justice, on the theme of Access to Justice. 

Gupta, an experienced leader and litigator who has devoted her entire career to civil rights work, was sworn in as the U.S. Associate Attorney General on April 22, 2021, the first woman of color to serve in the position. She previously served as the President and Chief Executive Officer of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, the nation’s oldest and largest coalition of nonpartisan civil rights organizations in the United States.

Before serving in that capacity, from 2014 to 2017, she worked as Acting Assistant Attorney General and Head of the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division. Appointed by President Barack Obama as the chief civil rights prosecutor for the United States, Gupta oversaw a wide range of criminal and civil enforcement efforts to ensure equal justice and protect equal opportunity for all during one of the most consequential periods for the division.

The Spark Series event featuring Gupta will be live-streamed on Tuesday, March 15 at 6 p.m. Interested parties can register for the event here.