Wednesday, November 17, 2010
Page 3
McFarlane Elected to Lead Canadian American Bar Group
By a MetNews Staff Writer
Attorney David McFarlane, a member of Snell & Wilmer’s Los Angeles office, has been elected the 2011 president of the Canadian American Bar Association, the firm said yesterday.
The group, founded last year, is an association of U.S. lawyers with strong ties to Canada. All of its members are Canadian citizens, permanent residents of Canada, or graduates of a Canadian university or law school.
“CABA reflects a connection unique in the world—the close union of two nations with shared legal, cultural and economic histories,” McFarlane said in a statement. “While CABA’s history has been brief, our organization has grown quickly in membership, made its first annual award and held a law student essay competition, among other things. I am very excited to help the organization grow as their president.”
McFarlane joined Snell & Wilmer’s Los Angeles office in September and focuses his practice in employee benefits, executive compensation and human resources law. He has worked in those areas—in both the United States and Canada—for more than two decades, assisting national and international clients with employee benefits and executive compensation issues in corporate transactions, plan administration, regulatory compliance and bankruptcy.
He holds experience dealing with the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, the Department of Labor and the Internal Revenue Service in connection with pension and benefit plan issues, including those involving multi-employer plans and union negotiations. He also advises compensation committees, boards of directors and human resources departments on plan administration issues.
McFarlane was a partner at Osler Hoskin & Harcourt in Toronto from 1990 to 1998, when he joined Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom in Los Angeles. Before that, he served as a judicial clerk to a justice on the Federal Court of Canada, a former national court which in 2003 was split into a superior court of national jurisdiction and an appellate court.
He attended McMaster University in Hamilton, Ont., and McGill University in Montreal, and graduated from the University of Windsor Law School before becoming an attorney in Ontario in 1988. McFarlane joined the State Bar of California in 1999.
He succeeds Marko Zoretic, an Irvine attorney who attended McMaster University and Osgoode Hall Law School at York University in Toronto.
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