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1983 CLA Hires First Executive Director
The Washington, D.C. area was the home base of the CLA. In
the early years the offices and homes of some of the
Washington lawyers served as the CLA offices. Dan Brooks and
his wife Barbara deserve special notice for their
significant contribution in this regard .
In 1983 Barbara Fieser joined the Association as our
first Executive Director. Shortly thereafter the CLA
rented an executive office across the Potomac in Virginia.
Barbara remained the CLA executive Director until 2005.
1985 Denver Program
In 1985 Steve
Mains working with Professor John Soma hosted a March
program for the CLA in Denver. It is notable as the
first CLA program that dealt exclusively with the problems
of the microcomputers and the mass distribution of computer
software - a sign of the changing times in the IT industry.
John Soma would
join the board of the CLA and serve on it for many years.
1985 First Annual Update
Meeting in Washington
Many CLA members
look forward each year to the annual update meeting of the
CLA. This meeting was first held in May 1985 in Arlington
Virginia under the chairmanship of Dan Cooper. This meeting
also saw the creation of an international special interest
group under the chairmanship of another Canadian, Ian Kyer.
The International SIG started the publication that year of
the International Update Newsletter.
1985 A Membership Snapshot
John Fieser, a
geographer and statistician and the husband of Barbara
Fieser, the CLA Executive Director, periodically provided
the Association with a graphical representation of its
membership. Here is what CLA membership looked like in 1985.
(coming soon.)
1986 A Canadian Becomes
President
In 1986 Dan Cooper
a Canadian from Toronto became the first non-American to be
President of the CLA. Dan had long been an active
participant in CLA events. In 1978 and again in 1983 he had
chaired conferences of the CLA in Toronto. In 1985 he had
chaired the first annual update meeting in Washington and
had been the prime mover behind the creation of special
interest groups (or “birds of a feather” meetings as he
called them).
1987 First Woman to be
President
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After 16
years, the CLA had its woman President in 1987
when Susan Nycum from California assumed the office.
Susan served for two years during which time the CLA
held its first European meeting in Amsterdam. Only
fittingly the planning for that meeting began in
Cambridge England at an IBA meeting attended by Susan,
Dan Cooper the CLA’s previous President, Dinant
Oosterbaan, one of the CLA’s first European members and
Ian Kyer, then chair of the CLA’s International
committee.
Since 1987
the CLA has had many women serve as President. They
include Karen Casser, Dianna Mackenzie, Esther Nunes and
Amy Lynne Williams. In 2003, Esther from Sao Paulo,
Brazil had the distinction of being the first
non-American to become President. That honor ought to
have fallen on Vanessa Marsland several years before.
Vanessa from London England served for many years on the
board and was in line to become President. She, however,
was unable to assume office for personal reasons. |
1988 First European Meeting
of the CLA
On June 1 - 3,
1988 the CLA held a conference in Europe for the first time.
This Amsterdam program was the result of discussions that
had been held between Dan Cooper and Ian Kyer from Toronto
and Dinant Oosterbaan from Amsterdam. Dinant had visited
Toronto in the fall of 1986 to speak at the first meeting of
the Canadian members of the CLA, organized by Ian Kyer.
Dan Cooper, one of
the CLA executives and a fellow Torontonian, also spoke at
the conference. The three became friends and began to talk
about taking the CLA to Europe. In the summer of 1987 they
met again at an International Bar Association conference in
Cambridge England. That became a planning session for the
CLA Amsterdam program to be held in 1988. All three chaired
the Amsterdam meeting. The conference in Amsterdam also
acted as the first meeting of the International Federation
of Computer Law Associations or IFCLA. CLA co-sponsored
other European conferences with IFCLA in Munich in 1990,
Stockholm in 1992, Bath, England in 1994 and in Brussels in
1996.
1988 Software
Distributorship Contracts Forms Collection
The CLA has long
been a publisher as well as a source of excellent
conferences. Dan Brooks and others worked to publish much of
the conference materials in the 1970s. Meetings were
transcribed, either by a court reporter or on videotape, and
made available in written or video format to members or
others. In 1988 Paul S. Hoffman editor the first of a series
of forms collections. From 1993 to 1996 the CLA would
publish a series of annual essay collections. Other volumes
were done on selected topics - international treaties by
Bill Tanenbaum, pamphlets on state taxes by Paul Hoffman and
a glossary by Bob Bigelow . 1996 saw the publication of the
first of the "Current Issues Publications Series"---The
Internet and Business: A Lawyer's Guide to the Emerging
Legal Issues , edited by Joseph Ruh, Jr .
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