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Chair: Barbara Gislason
Membership
It was clear from the beginning that to gain credibility within TIPS, the Committee needed to bring new membership to the ABA and not simply recruit from other TIPS committees. The most important membership opportunity occurred in November 2004 at the Animal Legal Defense Fund (ALDF) Harvard National Conference. ALDF Executive Director Joyce Tischler introduced Barbara Gislason and gave her the opportunity to engage the attendees. In no small part due to ALDF’s cooperation in publicizing the existence of the Animal Law Committee, committee membership was at 193 by the 2005 ABA Annual Meeting.
Publications
Within a month of the formation of the Committee, Professor Rebecca Huss had summarized all the developments in Animal Law for the past year for the TIPS flagship publication The Tort Trial & Insurance Law Journal. Professor David Favre and Gislason became the principal contributors to a special issue of TortSource devoted to Animal Law. In 2005, Gislason wrote “The Animal Law Committee: A New Commitment for TIPS and the ABA” for The Brief.
Gislason became the ALC newsletter Editor-in-Chief and recruited Angela Caputo Griswold and Rebecca Silverstein as Associate Editors. Contributors to the newsletter included Julie Fershtman and Adam Karp. Other authors who contributed to the Spring 2005 newsletter included Delcianna Winders, Michael Fayad, Debra McGuire Mercer, Song Wei, Rebecca Silverstein, Marilynne Roberts, and Richard Cupp.
Continuing Legal Education (CLE)
At the first ABA Annual Meeting following the creation of the ALC, Gislason chaired a CLE program entitled “It’s a Dog’s Life: What Does Tort and Insurance Law Have to Say About It?”. Speakers included Gislason, keynote speaker Dr. Temple Grandin, and presenters David Favre, Marshall Tanick, The Honorable Benjamin Zvenia, John Kerr, Paul Waldau, Keith Parr, Christopher Green, Julie Fershtman, John Buckley, Adam Karp and Katy Bloomquist. Sandy McCandless, TIPS Chair, moderated. Special recognition was given to ABA Executive Director Robert Stein, outgoing TIPS Chair Jim Carroll and TIPS members Jill Berkeley, Janet Davis, and The Honorable Cara Lee Neville.
Awards
The Committee was recognized with its first TIPS “Most Innovative Committee” award.