President’s Column – October 2020

Michael Frape

Covid-19 – The Second Wave

After the reprieve of the summer months, it seems that we are about to enter a second wave of Covid-19 and a second period of lockdowns. At the time of writing (12.10.20), it appears that (at least for the time being) it won’t be the entire country in lockdown. Instead there will be localised lockdowns across the country at various (probably three) levels of severity. But who knows how the pandemic will pan out over the winter months.

Although our knowledge about the Novel Coronavirus is also increasing all the time and much progress is being made in terms of both treatments and vaccines, it is clear that, much like the common cold, the Coronavirus is going to be with us forever. And there is growing evidence that surviving Covid-19 does not give you permanent immunity from re-infection. This is obviously a hugely complex subject with an emerging science, but what can be said is that future historians will refer to “BC” (“Before Covid”) and “AC” (“After Covid”) in their works, and life will never be the same again.

What does this means for CLS and our members?

Put simply, until a vaccine has been developed and deployed (to create the fabled herd immunity), we will have to interact with our members online. That means an excellent website is a “must have” as well as the ability to deliver excellent L&D content and social events via the new media we have all grown accustomed to using over the past six months. I am pleased to say that the last three L&D events have been well attended with 46, 22, and 20 attendees at those events and plans are afoot for further ways of “connecting” in a social way.

New website

We are making good progress in procuring a new website. This is not a quick process, because it is imperative that we get it right and spend our members’ money wisely. We hope to be up and running however by the New Year.

Committee News

I am delighted to welcome Chris Hoole of Appleyard Lees to the committee. Appleyard Lees is a firm of patent attorneys, but Chris is a dual-qualified solicitor and chartered trade mark attorney and will take on the L&D role. We hope to ramp up our programme of both technical and soft skill training events shortly.

The roles of Career Development and Mentoring, CSR and Pro Bono and Webmaster remain vacant.  We aim to make working on the committee fun and rewarding and a way of developing your skill sets and experience in ways not always possible as a lawyer. We are looking for proactive, reliable, enthusiastic, positive-minded team players to join our fantastic team. Please contact me if you are interested.

I extend our warmest wishes to all our members.

12.10.2020

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