Bar Crawl – 3/13/13

Bar Crawl highlights bar association news around the state. Indiana Lawyer strives to include bar association news and trends in its regular stories, and we would like to include more news from specialty and county bars. If you’d like to submit an update about your bar association or a photo from an event your bar association has hosted, or if you have questions about having your bar association news included in the newspaper, please send it to Marilyn Odendahl at [email protected], along with contact information for any follow-up questions at least two weeks prior to the issue date.

Evansville Bar Foundation taking nominations for board

The Evansville Bar Foundation is taking nominations for its board of directors.

Members of the board of directors are expected to attend board meetings regularly; attend EBA Foundation and EBA activities and social functions; promote involvement in the foundation initiatives; and review written materials.

The foundation was formed in 1999 with the mission of promoting justice and improving lives through the law.

Anyone interested in serving on the board should submit a letter of interest to the EBF, 401 SE 6th St., Suite 101, Evansville, IN 47713 or email [email protected].

IBF launches pro bono website to help underserved Hoosiers

The new Indiana Legal Answers website is giving a number of Hoosiers access to counsel they might not otherwise be able to get. Since going live in mid-January, the online legal service has received 40 questions and had 34 attorneys volunteer to provide answers.

The site, www.indianalegalanswers.org, enables residents to post a legal question and get a response within 30 days. Attorneys are notified when new questions in their areas of expertise are posted, and they can decide whether they want to provide an answer.

“All in all, it’s worked really well,” said Charles Dunlap, executive director of the Indiana Bar Foundation. “Frankly, I’d like to have more questions.”

To date, the questions have ranged from visitation and garnishment to foreclosure and employment discrimination. However, most of the inquiries fall into the family law area.

The IBF along with the Indiana Pro Bono Commission worked to set up and launch the website. The Tennessee Alliance for Legal Services and the Tennessee Bar Association gave Indiana the computer program at no charge, and Barnes & Thornburg LLP provided technical assistance in getting the program operating.

The site is geared toward individuals who are not income eligible for legal services but do not have enough resources to hire an attorney on their own. In addition, Dunlap hopes the website will provide a service to residents in rural areas where few attorneys are available and to pro se clients who have a question or need a little help with the legal process.

Attorneys interested in participating in the online service or wanting more information should visit the website and click on the “Lawyers Sign UP!” button in the top right corner.

Artwork honoring Randall Shepardset to be unveiled at Wabash

The Indiana State Bar Association Leadership Development Academy has selected a design for the artwork that will honor retired Indiana Chief Justice Randall T. Shepard. A special ceremony to unveil the winning submission will be held at 4:30 p.m. March 14 at the Salter Concert Hall in the Fine Arts Center at Wabash College.

The inaugural class of the LDA launched this effort as their class service project. They joined the city of Evansville and put out a call to Indiana college students for proposals that would create an interactive work of art to both honor Shepard and encourage youngsters to play outside and be physically active.

“Frankly, we were blown away by the creativity shown in the submissions,” said Casey Kannenberg, LDA graduate and member of the project’s steering committee. He noted the skill and creativity of the student artists took the project beyond what the committee had envisioned.

“Everybody’s pretty excited,” Kannenberg said.

The winning design will be located in the new Bicentennial Park in Shepard’s hometown of Evansville. Originally, the park was scheduled to open July 4, 2013, but the opening has been delayed several months.

Two Wabash art majors – Mark Shaylor and John Vosel – were chosen as finalists in the statewide competition. As part of the project, the LDA had planned on awarding one $2,000 scholarship to the winning student. However because the entries were narrowed to two proposals from Wabash and the finalists were asked to put in some extra work and revise their designs, the committee decided to award scholarships to both students.

The unveiling ceremony will include Shepard, former ISBA president C. Erik Chickedantz, and Wabash College president Patrick E. White, along with members of the LDA inaugural class.•