The Emerald City hosts DRI’s annual meeting

To my civil litigation defense colleagues:

Please join me at the Defense Research Institute’s annual meeting, taking place Oct. 16-18 in Seattle. DRI’s annual meeting offers civil defense lawyers the opportunity to network with peers from around the country, attend top educational programming, and hear from leading national speakers.

As the largest bar association for civil defense lawyers and in-house counsel, DRI’s annual meeting provides a robust forum where relationships and business opportunities flourish!

If you have never been to a DRI annual meeting, I strongly encourage you to attend and take advantage of the networking opportunities offered.

If you are not already a DRI member, I encourage you to join, or re-join, and attend the upcoming annual meeting in Seattle. The meeting is simply unlike any other DRI seminar.

Don’t hesitate to register and attend; there is no need to be timid. DRI’s annual meeting provides a special First and Second Timers Program on the evening of Oct.16.

This program will offer a preview of what to expect during the weekend, followed by a networking reception. Having attended this program myself, I can attest that it will exceed your expectations!

This year’s agenda is full of innovative topics and programming.

Keynote speakers include two-time NBA champion and former U.S. Senator, Bill Bradley, who will present his talk, “We Can All Do Better.”

He will review the state of the nation and how we can move forward when the current path is unclear. Rick Steves is also a keynote speaker. Steves is a public television host, best-selling author, and widely considered America’s leading authority on European travel.

He will discuss travel as a political act as well as the crucial role that empathy plays in our interactions with others.

General session educational programming this year includes seminars on artificial intelligence, improving the behavioral health and well-being of lawyers, social inflation and nuclear verdicts, and creating a culture of collaboration for navigating disputes.

Attendees can earn up to eight hours of CLE credits including one hour of ethics credits. CLE-on-the-Go opportunities will also be available, allowing attendees to explore local sights and obtain legal education credits from their cell phones during a guided group tour.

Partnership

DRI Cares is partnering with Blessings in a Backpack during the annual meeting. DRI Cares is dedicated to giving DRI members the opportunity to support a charitable organization through fundraising and volunteer activities.

This year, attendees will have the opportunity to participate in a service project on by filling bags of food for school-aged children who may not have enough on the weekends. The Museum of Pop Culture will host a premier networking event for attendees on Thursday evening, sponsored by LawyerGuard.

MoPOP has collections of memorabilia and artifacts related to Nirvana, Jimi Hendrix, Hip-Hop, Grunge, Guitars, and more. Seattle, with its mountains and evergreen forests, is the birthplace of grunge.

The average high temperature in October for Seattle is 59 degrees, with cooler temps in the evenings around 50 degrees. To save your spot in Seattle and view the full agenda for this year’s DRI Annual Meeting, please visit the website at dri.org/annual-meeting/2024.

Register by Sept. 9 to save up to $700 off the full conference registration fee.

The Hyatt Regency Seattle is the DRI headquarters for the meeting and a limited number of rooms have been reserved at a discounted rate of $299.

Remember: DRI’s Annual Meeting is where relationships build business!•

__________

Elliott I. Pinkie, Pinkie Law LLC, is the Indiana State Representative to DRI. He is also a former president of Defense Trial Counsel of Indiana (DTCI). The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author.