-
We’re pleased to report that ACCD Secretary Lindsay Kurrle has confirmed that effective May 18 No/Low Contact Professional Services may operate with up to ten people per office location, if they comply with the mandatory health and safety requirements. Click the heading for the specific guidance that is about to be issued and click HERE for the ACCD website detailing the mandatory health and safety requirements. Please check our COVID-19 Resource Page for ongoing developments and information. Thank you to everyone who contributed to this effort, and please stay safe!
-
Click the heading for a notice from VBA Board Secretary Ted Tyler regarding the VBA elections for three VBA Board of Managers seats and one VBA Delegate to the American Bar Association House of Delegates seat. The elections will be conducted online at 1:15 on Friday, June 12. The notice includes additional details about the voting meeting and a link to statements from the nominees.
-
On Friday, May 15, the VBA Board voted to approve the eFiling Fees Study Report and Recommendations, linked HERE. Click the heading for an Executive Summary of the Report, links to the Senate Judiciary video testimony and for more information. Many thanks to the eFiling Fees Study Committee and other volunteers for their generosity of time and effort in compiling the Report so expeditiously. Copies of the Report have been provided to the Supreme Court, the Court Administrator’s Office and Senate Judiciary, which has taken an active interest in the topic. We will keep you posted on further developments as they happen.
-
Please check out our new COVID-19 Resource Page for the latest resources regarding the Governor’s orders, Judiciary orders, emergency legislation, wellness, technology and employer resources and more, all in one place! A new VBA COVID-19 Committee has been created to ascertain what COVID-19 issues are impacting the legal community. The Committee will be providing guidance regarding those issues, including resources such as best practice guides and trainings, providing wellness resources for attorneys, and recommending how the VBA or its members can answer the Governor’s call to serve. Click HERE for more information about the Committee. If you have questions or suggestions for the Committee, please email info@vtbar.org with “COVID-19 Committee” in the subject line.
-
For those of you not following us on Facebook or Twitter, we wanted to repost some of our Lawyer Well-Being Week messages here and on our blog. This week is Lawyer Well-Being Week, with each day’s work week theme focusing on a different aspect of well-being. Our VBA COVID-19 Resource Page has a link to the full package of materials for the week. But through the week, we’ve been posting on Facebook and Twitter the abbreviated version of the materials, highlighting just one video, one article and one activity per day. Click the heading for more and check out our blog!
-
VBA President Beth Novotny published a comment correcting the misrepresentations made about attorneys by the subject of a VT Digger article. President Novotny chose to praise Vermont lawyers for all of the committment and good deeds performed during this crisis and generally in her response to the article. Click the heading for her comments or find the article and comment, here.
-
In response to COVID-19 restrictions and their impact on the practice of law, the VBA was instrumental in marshaling several pieces of emergency legislation to address that impact. Governor Scott signed the bills into law on April 28. Act 96 allows for the remote witnessing of wills, and Act 95 allows for the remote witnessing of powers of attorney and deeds. (Check out our webinars on May 11 & May 13 on remote executions!). Act 95 also extends the statute of limitations in civil cases that would have otherwise expired during the state of emergency. Legislation to allow the remote witnessing of advance directives (H. 950) is in process. Click the heading for more details!
-
If you've been following our Wellness Webinars, you'll see that every other webinar is a free 30 minute session, and the alternate ones are 1.0 MCLE credit hour sessions for $35, focused on being well for your practices. Our wellness guru, Samara Anderson, strongly believes in attending the series to maintain mindfulness as a practice, and we agree! If you register for one of the CLE hour mindful sessions for $35, you can attend the whole series for free. We intend to continue the series into July, so it is never to late to join! Check out our CLE calender for more info.
-
The Vermont Agency for Commerce and Community Development (ACCD) has issued weekly guidance for business operations during the COVID-19 crisis. Recent ACCD guidance requires businesses to undertake on-line VOSHA COVID-19 health and safety training, in a power point format. The deadline for the training is May 4, 2020. The training takes approximately 10 minutes to complete. Employers are also supposed to document that their employees have completed the training. Here’s a LINK to the ACCD Guidance, and here’s a LINK to the VOSHA website power point training.
-
Governor Scott recently established a State of Vermont Economic Mitigation and Recovery Task Force. It’s tasked with “providing technical assistance and expertise to mitigate the devastating short-term economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, and with developing strategies designed to speed long-term business and community recovery”. Here’s a LINK to more details. The Task Force includes Action Teams, one of which is a RestartVT Team, focused on re-opening business sectors. One of the RestartVT Teams includes “Professional Services” as a sector.