President’s Letter

Dear CALL members,

I am hoping it is finally safe to call it spring!  The sun is shining as I write this and the temperature is in the 50’s.

CALL members have triumphed over the winter weather, maintaining an impressive level of activity.  The February business meeting featured a sobering and fascinating presentation by David Mendelsohn, Managing Partner of the Chicago Office for DLA Piper and a partner in the Financial Services group, on “The Future of Law Firms from a Managing Partner’s Perspective.”  If you weren’t able to attend, don’t miss Clare Willis’s roundup of the meeting in this issue of the CALL Bulletin.

The Continuing Education Committee sponsored a great webinar in late January with Nathan Rosen on how to raise your profile and communicate your value through your LinkedIn profile.  The Mentoring and Leadership Development Committee meetups are a great way to get to know your colleagues better.  The March 11 meetup gave the new AALL Local Arrangements Committee co-chairs, Maribel Nash and Meg Butman, an opportunity to elicit ideas and recruit members to prepare for the AALL 2016 Annual Meeting to be held here in Chicago.

And in the meantime, the CALL Bulletin co-editors and committee members have created this wonderful themed issue on artwork in our libraries.  Librarians from three law firm libraries, three law school libraries and the Cook County Law Library have contributed articles.  Art in our workplaces enhances our workday, contributes to our workplace culture and lowers stress, giving us a window to another world – a lot like a good research database interface!  These articles by Kara Dunn, Kaitlin Gaffney, Jean Wenger, Sally Holterhoff and Debra Denslaw, and Emily Barney show us the positive effects that art can bring.

Also in this issue is an article by Sam Wertime on Microsoft Lync.  I am personally looking forward to reading this because I had to look up what Microsoft Lync is when I saw the article title.  It’s so helpful to have knowledgeable CALL members to review and evaluate new products!

CALL is also looking toward the future.  Our recent election assures that CALL will have great leadership for the next few years.  Thanks to all of the candidates for their willingness to throw their hats in the ring, and welcome to ­­Todd Ito as our 2015-2016 Vice-President/President-Elect, Diana Koppang as Secretary and Konya Lafferty as Board member at large.

CALL’s next business meeting is May 14, 2015 at Wildfire.  We are fortunate to have Holly Riccio, AALL President, as our speaker.  I hope to see you all there!

Best regards,

Margaret Schilt
CALL President, 2014-2015