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De Die In Diem

November 2021
President's Message from Carey Schmidt

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

The WMBA is ready to dip its toes back to meeting in person and we greatly look forward to sharing some time together. I personally feel lucky to practice law in Montana where we know 
each other, see each other in many cases, and develop a strong professional rapport.  The WMBA serves to foster collegiality among members, and we look forward to getting back to that in person. 

The WMBA is an excellent way to meet your colleagues and maintain friendships. Membership affords the opportunity to put faces to names, meet lawyers outside your general area of practice, and humanize the person you cursed while writing briefs long into the night.  We plan to entice you to attend with interesting and useful CLEs that serve lawyers as well as the public.    

I want to express a heartfelt thank you to Randy Tanner, who served excellently and is now our Immediate Past President.  Find Randy soaring around Mount Sentinel in a paraglider or at the US Attorney’s Office.  Katy Stack, who only rarely paraglides around Mount Sentinel, is our President Elect and current Vice President.  Katy is the Director of Career Development at UM Law.  Rachel Parkin kindly accepted the position of Treasurer and works at Milodragovich Dale Steinbrenner, PC.  Travis Dye is our Secretary and expert “dad joke” teller; he's with Missoula Legal Solution, PLLC.  Directors at large are Meri Althauser, who does it all, and works at Forward Legal, PLLC.  Natalie Hammond keeps us honest and works at Cotner Ryan Law.  John Newman, when not on the water, is at the US Attorney’s Office.  Adam Shaw will out-fish you every time and works at the Brown Law Firm, PC. 

We hope to resume lunch CLEs at the Florence Ballroom soon and will be in touch with information about upcoming CLEs. While the COVID pause means we lost the tried and true third Thursday slot at the Florence, we will be looking to set an equally easy-to-remember date and time. We also look forward to kicking off in-person gatherings with the holiday party on Thursday, December 16 in the lobby of the Florence Building. Please join us if you can, as it promises to be a good time! For those with higher risk to COVID, we intend to continue to offer CLE credits by Zoom. We ask that COVID protocols be followed for our in-person events. Please, don’t come sick and respect social distancing and mask wearing.  We all want to stay healthy!

Dues for 2021-2022 will remain at the low-low price of $25 per attorney. We have not increased dues in at least a decade and membership is certainly worth the price of admission. As always, WMBA functions are open to all attorneys and interested persons, not just members.  However, lunch CLEs are cheaper with the membership discount.  We look forward to seeing you in person soon. 

I sincerely hope that 2021 has been good to you.  Be kind to each other out there!
NEWS AND ANNOUNCEMENTS

                     UPDATE FROM THE CLERK OF COURT

The Missoula County Clerk of Court office provides the following updates for WMBA members and all attorneys practicing in the Montana 4th Judicial District.

  • SB0402 from the 2021 Legislative Session increases the fee for entry of judgment from a prevailing party under §25-1-201(a)(c) and (1)(h), MCA, from $45 to $50.  The bill, effective upon passage and approval, was signed by the Governor on May 20, 2021, but was inadvertently overlooked by the Legislative Committee of the Montana Association of Clerks of District Court (MACDC) until a few days ago.  The fee tables have now been updated to reflect the appropriate $50 fee in both the E-Filing system and our case management system, FullCourt Enterprise. Going forward, please expect to pay $50
  • The MACDC Automation Committee prepared a best practice document for submitting a judgment fee in e-filing.  Going forward, attorneys are expected to follow the process outlined in the "Attorney Procedure – Submission of Judgment Fee" (see below) and submit the judgment fee via the e-filing system at the same time the proposed Judgment/Decree is e-filed.  After September 1, 2021 filings submitted without the required $50 judgment fee will be rejected.
  • Please scan documents in portrait mode and 8.5 x 11 page size.
  • When e-filing a request for entry of decree without hearing in a domestic relations matter, please remember to submit the $50 judgment fee, proposed Decree/Order, and the statistical report required under §40-5-907, MCA & §50-15-302, MCA.

Please contact the Missoula County Clerk of Court with any questions.   

 
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                         RENEW YOUR WMBA MEMBERSHIP 

It's time to renew your membership! Only $25.00 per attorney for the year. Click below to access a printable application, and return the form with payment to our next Luncheon or by US Mail.
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Announcement & Advertisement Policy

The WMBA periodically emails attorneys and other interested parties regarding upcoming events. To balance providing notice of relevant events while at the same time avoiding clogging our members’ inboxes, the WMBA will send email announcements to its members for non-WMBA events on the first and third Monday of each month (if requested), and only for events that are not for profit and that promote the mission of the WMBA as approved by the Board. These announcements can also be included in the WMBA’s monthly newsletter.

As a service to its members, the WMBA publishes announcements and general classified advertisements in its newsletter free of charge. Announcements published free of charge include:
  • those for public events such as CLEs, seminars, lectures, and other events that may be of interest to our members;
     
  • firm-specific announcements, such as new hires, promotions, mergers, transitions, new firms, and office changes will also be published free of charge;
     
  • classified advertisements for the sale of a law practice, lease of office space, and sale of items related to the practice of law will also be published free of charge.
Announcements or advertisements primarily designed to solicit business may be published for a fee.

The WMBA will publish announcements of candidate forums where all candidates for an office have been invited to participate. The WMBA will not publish any other announcements or advertisements related to campaigns for political or judicial office. The WMBA has sole discretion to determine whether an announcement or advertisement complies with this policy.

If you are not receiving announcements, please contact the current President, Randy Tanner: president@westernmtbar.com. If you would like to inquire about including an announcement or purchasing ad space in the WMBA’s newsletter, please contact the current Secretary, Travis Dye: travis@406law.com
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