Commercial & Business Litigation
The Commercial & Business Litigation Committee (CBL) focuses on issues facing litigators with broad commercial practices, including substantive areas such as bankruptcy, creditor rights, professional liability, and trade secret law, and procedural matters such as e-discovery, ethics, ADR, and international litigation.
Thank you for visiting the Commercial & Business Litigation Committee homepage. We hope you will bookmark this webpage as your source for timely news, legal updates, and Committee activities. The Committee continues to be one of the largest and most active in the Litigation Section because of the exceptional content, programs, marketing, and networking opportunities we provide to business and commercial litigators.
Our Committee publishes an electronic newsletter every quarter. Each newsletter addresses a particular theme relevant to commercial and business litigation, with articles by leading lawyers, judges, and academics. Articles contain information, analysis, and strategies for both new and seasoned practitioners and are prepared in an easy-to-read magazine style.
The subject of our Fall 2023 newsletter is Ethics and Professionalism.
If you are interested in contributing an article for a future issue of our newsletter, please contact our newsletter editor-in-chief, Joseph C. Merschman.
Information and registration links on upcoming programs, including Roundtables, CLE seminars and webinars, and Section meetings can generally be found on the the Section's events page. Check back here for upcoming programs sponsored by the CBL committee.
Another valuable resource for our members is our website. Please check out the content available on our other Committee webpages, including articles, Practice Points (PPs), programs and materials, and information about our subcommittees and how to participate in the Committee. If you are interested in submitting content to our website, please reach out to our website editor-in-chief, Charles W. Stotter.
Our website publishes content from 100 words to 2,500 words in length, and we are always looking for timely and relevant submissions. We are more interested in topical, accessible, and useful news and analysis, written in a magazine style, as opposed to longer academic works. In fact, PPs should be no longer than 750 words and should be targeted to practical tips (drawing on our members’ vast business litigation experience) or a timely development in the law—perhaps a new case or regulation or a look ahead to an issue on the horizon. PP pieces are an excellent—and non-labor-intensive—way to market your expertise to all ABA members and non-ABA members who visit our webpage.
The primary reason for CBL’s extensive network and great success is the hard work of the talented lawyers that chair our subcommittees. These subcommittees cover a broad range of substantive and procedural areas and are very active in providing the content for CLE programs, our webpage, and our newsletter. Each year, we ask that each subcommittee submit at least two PP pieces (whether procured from firm colleagues or others, or self-written) and attend either the SAC or ABA Annual meeting. We also ask that each subcommittee report periodically on our monthly Committee calls and strive to submit at least one CLE program proposal for SAC or the ABA Annual Meeting. In addition, each subcommittee is expected to present a Roundtable, regional CLE or other program, and develop a Sound Advice recording during the bar year.
We invite you to review our list of subcommittees on this page, and the roster of Committee leaders and subcommittee chairs linked below. We encourage you to contact any of the subcommittee chairs to learn how you can participate in their great work. If you are interested in serving as a subcommittee co-chair, please contact one of the Committee chairs (see below).
A tremendous benefit that CBL offers is the opportunity to network with other attorneys who are members of the Committee, the Litigation Section, or the larger ABA. We hold a monthly conference call to discuss ideas and goings-on within the Committee. We also hold two business meetings per year—one at SAC and one at the ABA Annual Meeting—and organize a Committee dinner at each of these annual meetings. As a CBL member, you will receive one or two emails each month outlining Committee activities, the conference call, and upcoming programming and networking events. If you are looking to meet business attorneys from across the nation, then CBL provides an excellent platform to achieve this goal.
We also have a CBL Geographical Roster of our Committee leadership, which you can find at the hyperlink. Please use this as a resource for referrals and questions…and even free lunches or access to conference rooms (no promises, of course) when you happen to be traveling!
If you are interested in more information about how to become an active member of CBL, please contact our membership engagement cochair Paula M. Bagger.
First, as alluded to above, see our Committee’s summary of the many ways you can be involved in Committee activities, and the opportunities for you to actively contribute, by clicking here.
Second, our Committee typically has a Zoom call on the third Wednesday of every month at 3 p.m. ET. To receive the link for that call and get other notices from us, please be sure to (1) sign up for our Committee; and (2) register to receive email notifications. To sign up for our Committee, go to the Members page of the CBL Committee Community Home page in the Litigation Communities tab on the ABA website, and fill in your name, firm/company, and email address. Thereafter, you can opt at the top of that page, at the Settings link, to receive notices via email or simply login periodically to check the "Latest Discussion Posts" section on that page (or directly at this link, Litigation – Commercial & Business Litigation Committee) to see if new notices have been posted. We look forward to hearing from you!
We thank you for your interest in the Commercial & Business Litigation Committee and welcome your involvement in both the Committee and the ABA. The Section of Litigation is the leading voice for trial lawyers in this country, and we are proud to be a part of it. Please contact us with any ideas or suggestions you may have for how the Committee can best serve you and the legal community.
2024–2025 co-chairs, Commercial & Business Litigation Committee
Our active subcommittees include: