Monday, June 17, 2002
Page 1
Robin Meadow Elected County Bar President for 2003
John J. Collins, Edith Matthai on LACBA Leadership Track
By a MetNews Staff Writer
Appellate attorney Robin Meadow has been elected the Los Angeles County Bar Association’s president-elect and will head the organization beginning July 2003.
The election of Meadow and an entire slate of County Bar officers—including newcomer Edith Matthai as vice president—was assured last month when no challengers signed up to run against the selections of the association’s nominations committee. Member voting scheduled to conclude this week was canceled as the candidates were deemed elected.
Meadow’s accession to president next year will be automatic. Elections will then determine his successor, but County Bar tradition suggests that he will be followed by incoming Senior Vice President John J. Collins in 2004, then Matthai in 2005.
Meadow, Collins and Matthai will serve as County Bar officers this year beginning July 1 under new President Miriam Krinsky, who is elevated automatically after a year as president-elect.
Meadow, a partner in the Los Angeles firm of Greines, Martin, Stein & Richland, chairs the association’s Appellate Courts committee and has served three stints on the County Bar board, a term as trustee in the 1980s, another beginning in 1995, and as trustee and officer beginning in 1999.
A 1971 graduate of Boalt Hall School of Law, Meadow joined Loeb & Loeb, becoming a partner there and staying on 23 years before joining Greines, Martin in 1994.
Rex Heinke also was with the Greines firm when he served as LACBA president in 2000-2001. Heinke has since moved to Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld.
Collins splits his time between the South Pasadena and Newport Beach offices of his firm, Collins, Collins Muir & Traver.
A member of the state Judicial Council and a former State Bar Board of Governors member and Pasadena Bar Association president, Collins served as a County Bar trustee from 1991 to 1994 and became a board officer in 2000.
He also has been active in the American Board of Trial Advocates on the local, state and national levels. He was the ABOTA California Trial Lawyer of the Year in 1991.
Collins earned his law degree at Loyola University of Los Angeles in 1961, then worked as a deputy county counsel before joining his present firm in 1964. Matthai, a defense lawyer with Robie & Matthai in downtown Los Angeles, was president of the Association of Southern California Defense Counsel last year and has been active in bar affairs. She is a 1975 graduate of Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco.
The elected officers also appoint a slate of appointed officers, and have chosen Bernard Le Sage of Buchalter, Nemer, Fields and Younger and Danette Meyers of the Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office as assistant vice presidents, Barbara Bacon as Barristers assistant vice president, and Charles Michaels as treasurer.
The County Bar trustees on Wednesday also added a seat to their number for a total of 39. The new member will be one of five who represent the association’s sections.
New at-large trustees joining the board are David B. Babbe, Rita Gunasekaran, Jeff Kichaven, Joel W.H. Kleinberg, James C. Martin and Amy M. Pellman.
Cristina E. Perez Gonzalez of the Mexican American Bar Association and Philip H. Lam of the Southern California Chinese Lawyers Association will fill affiliated bar association posts on the Board of Trustees.
The officers and trustees will be sworn in, along with Krinsky, at a dinner on June 26 at the Omni Los Angeles Hotel, 251 S. Olive Street, in downtown Los Angeles. The keynote speaker will be George McGovern, former U.S. senator from South Dakota and current United Nations World Food Programme global ambassador on hunger.
Also to be installed at the dinner are new Barristers President Elizabeth M. Calciano and other Barristers officers.
Copyright 2002, Metropolitan News Company