President's Message from Susan Gunter of Dutton Brock LLP

Canadian Defence Lawyers has grown a lot over the last few years.

Founded just 15 years ago, CDL's objective is to bring together civil defence litigators across Canada. Our membership includes about 1400 lawyers from East to West. We have members in every province. CDL is governed by a National Board, with members currently from Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta and British Columbia. There is no other association like Canadian Defence Lawyers. 

We offer regional defence-oriented education programs for defence lawyers, law clerks and their clients. Our program chairs are able to access the best speakers from across the country. CDL is also affiliated closely with the Defense Research Institute, the American association of defence litigators, which now boasts a membership of 35,000. Through this contact, CDL has access to defence resources from South of the border. As always, CDL offers several annual national education programs, including our Annual General Meeting and our Insurance Symposium. We also offer continuing legal education delivered by audioconference and web-broadcasts which allow attendees to participate from the comfort of their own desks or boardrooms.

CDL this year has focused our efforts on the insurance industry and our contact with the associations which represent it. We recognize that one thing CDL can offer our mutual clients in the insurance industry is assistance with defence oriented education to help them with their ongoing mandatory professional education requirements. Canadian Defence Lawyers is the best vehicle to provide this regionally-specific service. We also understand that our members benefit from opportunities to dialogue with their clients in educational and social settings. At our annual Roundtable Breakfast, held in conjunction with the Canadian Insurance Adjusters Association and the Canadian Insurance Claims Managers Association, we were able to conceive of a new forum whereby our CDL members can interact with their local insurance industry representatives - we will call these "Regional Roundtables." These will be organized over the coming months so please watch for this excellent marketing opportunity in your local area.

Technological advances have allowed CDL to become more user-friendly. This year, we have completely renovated our association's website, www.cdlawyers.org. I encourage you to visit it to learn more about us. Members can now use our Regional Blog service, which allows the ever-growing discussion traffic on the CDL listserve to focus more on regional issues and queries. Our news bulletins about late-breaking case law and statutory developments will continue as a service to our members.

CDL has adopted this year a policy towards improving the relationship between lawyers and insurance industry "sister" associations. We believe at CDL that open dialogue and cooperation with other members of the bar can improve the image of the profession and help us deliver better quality, potentially joint-association, programming to our members. Our efforts include regional social events, including the "Jingle Mingle" held in Toronto in December 2009.

Canadian Defence Lawyers' Executive Director, Clare Samworth, and her staff, have worked tirelessly this year to implement our technological changes and to continue to achieve the high-quality standard expected of CDL programming. On behalf of the Board, I'd like to thank our staff very much. To the Board of Directors, I would like to extend my gratitude for their volunteer efforts in embracing our new committee structure and accomplishing our many project goals which benefit our members and the legal profession.