Bar Association to Hold 25th National Meeting in NY

NEW YORK—The Armenian Bar Association will hold its 25^th Annual Meeting in New York City from May 30 to June 1. The meeting will feature a variety of Continuing Legal Education (CLE) panels and a special Friday evening reception and Saturday luncheon. The annual meeting of the Armenian Bar Association, which includes lawyers of Armenian origin throughout the United States, Canada, and worldwide, will bring together practitioners from a variety of backgrounds to discuss issues of mutual interest and to select leadership for the upcoming year.

“We are excited to feature a top-notch lineup of speakers for this historic assembly of the Armenian Bar Association, celebrating our 25 years as an organization dedicated to promoting the interests of the Armenian legal community,” said Garo Ghazarian, chairman of the Board of Governors. “We invite Armenian lawyers to make the time to attend this meeting and deepen their involvement with the important work of our Association.”

The meeting will include three CLE panels on Sat., May 31, including ethics in social media, to be presented by Stacy K. Marcus, a partner in the international law firm of Reed Smith. The session will review current developments in the law and regulations that apply to advertising and marketing and focus on the new world of digital technology, social media, and mobile marketing. Of the two anticipated CLE credits, one will be for ethics.
A second session will feature Mark L. Movsesian, Frederick A. Whitney Professor of Law and Director, Center for Law and Religion, St. John’s University School of Law, on the topic of “Human Rights Concerns of Mideast Christians.” Movsesian will discuss the human rights crisis for Mideast Christians today and relate it to the crisis faced by Armenian Christians in the 19^th century, when attempts at legal reform in the Ottoman Empire led to an anti-Christian backlash.

The third CLE session, “Ongoing Legal Efforts and Challenges to Preserve Armenian Antiquities and Cultural Property,” will be moderated by Mark A. Momjian, a prominent family lawyer and partner of Momjian Anderer, LLC, and include panelists Claire S. Kedeshian, assistant U.S. attorney, Eastern District of New York; Anahid M. Ugurlayan, senior staff attorney, National Advertising Division of the Council of Better Business Bureaus; and Yelena Ambartsumian, law clerk, Shaub, Ahumty, Citrin & Spratt LLP. The panel will cover international law conventions relating to the protection of cultural property, as well as federal and state laws and relevant case law on the recovery of antiquities.

The meeting will kick off with a cocktail reception on Fri., May 30, at the Tufenkian Artisan Carpet New York Showroom. The Board will hold its annual business meeting at the Permanent Mission of Armenia to the United Nations. The Saturday keynote luncheon, to be held at the Association of the Bar of the City of New York, will feature Kenneth Roth, the executive director of Human Rights Watch, a leading global human rights research and advocacy group, to describe human rights issues of interest to the Armenian legal community.

The New York City Armenian Bar Association organizing committee is also organizing a tour of the Court of International Trade and a visit to downtown Manhattan to be held earlier on Friday.

“We promise to deliver a meeting with just the right balance of information, ideas, education and networking,” said Gary T. Moomjian, a New York based Board member of the Armenian Bar Association. “This event will be well worth the time of the many lawyers that we expect will be attending.”

Accommodations for the annual meeting will be at the Roosevelt Hotel, where the organization has negotiated a special rate of $249 per night for bookings by May 15, with reference to the Armenian Bar Conference special rate. To reserve, call (888) 833-3969 or visit https://www.reservations-page.com/C00268/H01416/be.ashx?pc=CAR.