SWALL In Little Rock: Fantastic Opportunities for a student-attendee

Emily G. Cunningham

Graduate Student, University of North Texas

As the grateful recipient of this year’s SWALL travel grant, I just wanted to write a short thank you to the committee, for selecting me, and to the Association, for putting on such a wonderful program. For those of you who were unable to attend, we missed you and want you to know how incredible SWALL was! It was a fantastic opportunity to meet people, learn more about the future of the profession, and eat like a king! I am especially grateful that other student-attendees and I had the extreme pleasure of meeting, and talking with intimately, the president of the national organization, AALL, Tory Trotta. She was so gracious and had so much wisdom and experience to share with us, it was a real treat.

The Honorable Lavenski Smith, of the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals, was a wonderful opening speaker. He made insightful and amusing comments, and offered a wonderful real-life description of his job, his profession, and his love for the law. It was inspiring and funny! There were also several presentations on legal information technology that I just loved! They were timely, informative and understandable, which made learning so much fun!

The opening dinner at the Clinton Presidential Library could not have been more fabulous. Truly. The food was excellent, the library was a rare treat, and the entire evening was thoroughly educational, touching, and motivating. This was a real treasure of our profession - the creation of such a beautiful library, on behalf of a widely accomplished lawyer and politician.

Thomson/West offered us some really valuable talks about their products and the future of legal information. I most enjoyed meeting and listening to Mike Dahn, senior director of product development with Thomson West. He was funny and very knowledgeable, and offered a view that most end-users dont see of the tools that we use every day.

My personal idol and all-time favorite blogger, Sabrina Pacifici was on hand the last two days with wonderful presentations and information to share, joined by DALL's own Barbara Fullerton. I thoroughly enjoyed their talks and learned a great deal about research on the web and the roles of information in the legal and business arenas. It was great! Plus, Sabrina was really nice to me when I gushed on about being her biggest fan.

Unfortunately, I missed University of North Texas’ own Professor Florence Mason give a talk on "Change in the Information Age," but I happen to know that she is brilliant, and am pleased that she could be at our conference. I'm certain that she was a real treat and had many key ideas to share with the conference on the topics of technology, economics, and information in the 21st century.

All in all, I had a FABULOUS time, and am so grateful to the grants committee for getting me there! I can’t wait to go back, and encourage all of you to attend any conference you can. I also went to the WestPac conference last fall, courtesy of the group up there, and had a fantastic time there as well. Thank you to Dr. Yvonne Chandler, my mentor, for all her contributions to the conference to make it such a special event, and congratulations to her on her new Presidency!

Thanks again to everyone for making this such a special event. See y’all in San Antonio!