Minutes of the Law Division Leadership Council (LC) Conference Call
Topic: Division Activities, First Quarter
Date: Monday, November 18, 2019
Present: Paula Arturo, Admin.; Elizabeth (Liz) Herron-Sweet, Asst. Admin.; Ana Gauz; Monique Longton; Sandro Tomasi
- Call to Order
The meeting was called to order at 12:04 p.m. EST by Paula Arturo.
- Approval of Law Division Annual Meeting Minutes
All present stated they were in agreement with the 2019 annual meeting minutes as prepared and circulated among LC members.
- Items on the Agenda
A. Purpose of the Meeting
The purpose of this meeting is so the entire LC can be aware of all the Division’s activities, to ensure proper consultation of LC before moving forward, and to foster healthy dialogue.
It was agreed that for now the LC will plan to have meetings via videoconference approximately every two months unless and until the LC agrees that a lower frequency is more appropriate.
B. Leadership Resource
LC members were asked if they have any questions about the Divisions Handbook and ATA’s Governing Policies. Sandro Tomasi had questions about Section 4.5.4: Educational Sessions, mainly how LC members other than administrators can go about evaluating conference sessions. Paula will follow up with ATA contacts on this point, and when it comes to evaluating conference session submissions, Paula and Liz will be sure to include all LC members in their review process.
It was noted that changes may be made shortly to these policies; the Division’s Committee, of which Paula is a member, has issued recommendations to the Board for changes to the way in which divisions are set-up.
C. Sub-Committees and Project Heads
Blog: Liz will be in charge. Other LC members can send Liz names and contact information of people who have expressed interest in writing for the blog. Liz can proofread/revise submissions.
Education: Sandro will be in charge of this sub-committee, which covers seminars, webinars and conferences. Creating a proposal submission process for webinars was discussed. It was agreed that the LC will send a survey to division members asking what kind of content they would like to see on the blog and in webinars.
Events: Ana will be in charge. Primary event responsibility for now is the division lunch (or other similar event) at the ATA Annual conference.
Legal Resources: Monique will be in charge (see item “E” below).
Social Media: It is proposed that Arnold be in charge. There are some young division members interested in volunteering their time with social media, but they would need to be supervised by someone from the LC.
Journal: Paula will be in charge (see item “F” below).
It was agreed that if an LC member has questions about managing their projects, he or she can first email the administrators (Paula and Liz) and if they think the matter is applicable to the whole LC, then administrators will loop everyone into the discussion.
Webinar Proposals
The Education Committee (Sandro) will be in charge of recruiting 2 potential webinar facilitators per year, as recommended for each division by the ATA.
E. Monique’s Proposal
Monique proposed providing a “legal toolbox” on the LawD’s website that helps linguists understand legal requirements that apply to them when they do business, primarily with templates of agreements they are required to sign on a regular basis, including GDPR agreements, privacy agreements, cookie policies, and NDAs. Paula said it sounds like something that would need to go through the ATA Board but that if we are not drafting anything ourselves and just linking to existing resources, we may not have to go through the Board. We could also make a Division YouTube group to have “webinars” there. It was agreed that we will include some questions on the topic of privacy in the aforementioned survey to division members as well.
F. Journal Proposal
Paula’s proposed long-term project as administrator is launching a bi-yearly legal translation journal. She believes it will be a great contribution to our profession as a voice for people who do serious research in legal translation. Paula has already received informal support and encouragement from some members of the ATA Board as well as from Kent State University and the Middlebury Institute of International Studies. The main issue now before a formal proposal can be submitted is the financial side. Paula has already reached out to potential publishers. The editors will be academics. We will conduct an open call for all of the positions. The biggest challenge is receiving enough quality papers that can pass the peer-review process.
Paula emphasized that other members of the LC do not need to be involved in this project, as it is a major undertaking, but of course she is happy to have LC members join and looks forward to having everyone’s feedback on the proposal.
Some further information: it needs to be published twice a year and be physically printed so that it can get indexed. There is no minimum number of articles or page numbers, and it can also include non-peer-reviewed material such as book reviews and event reviews. It could be distributed to universities in the US and Europe. Sandro suggested having it be a legal translation and interpretation journal since such a large part of ATA is interpreters and legal interpreting is a major field as well.
G. Website/Blog Revamp
Paula proposed replacing the webmaster, as we are not happy with our current website and the current webmaster is not very responsive to emails. Unfortunately, there is only a $500 per year honorarium in our budget and the webmaster will have to use ATA-approved templates through 2020. Paula has recommendations on a new webmaster and will ask for the LC’s approval to go forward with using one of them.
H. Upcoming:
H.1. Distinguished Speaker (DS): second quarter
Our plan is to propose Ruth and Fernando Cuñado as DS for the division for 2020, but Paula explained that it is certainly not a done deal, as they still need to send their proposal and be approved by the conference organizer. At the moment, we are waiting for a response from the Spanish Division to see if they want to co-sponsor these distinguished speakers.
H.2. Nominating committee: third quarter
A nominating committee will have to be formed. It was noted that it should be independent from the LC.
The meeting was adjourned at 1:29 p.m. EST.
Submitted by
Elizabeth Herron-Sweet, Assistant Administrator
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