The first national symposium on multidistrict litigation will be held at Tulane Law School in New Orleans on February 15th and 16th, 2008.

With one exception, the speakers are an extraordinary bunch, including: Judge John Heyburn (W.D. Ky. and Chairman) and Judge Kathryn Vratil (D. Kan.) from the MDL panel; Judge Mark Davidson (Chair of Texas MDL committee), Judge Stanwood Duval (E.D. La.), Judge Eldon Fallon (E.D. La.), Judge Carol Higbee (N.J. Sup. Ct.), Judge Janis Jack (S.D. Tx.), Judge Lee Rosenthal (S.D. Tex.), and Judge Sarah Vance (E.D. La.), distinguished state and federal judges with extensive MDL experience; academic commentators Alexandra Lahav (Connecticut), Robin Effron (Chicago), Richard Marcus (Hastings), Francis McGovern (Duke), and Edward Sherman (Tulane); and practitioners intimately involved with multidistrict litigation on both sides of the bar today, such as Richard Arsenault (Neblett, Beard), Judy Barrasso (Barrasso, Usdin), Dawn Barrios (Barrios, Kingsdorf), Russ Herman (Herman, Herman), Mark Herrmann (Jones Day) (yes, yes — he’s the exception) , Todd Hilsee (Hilsoft Notifications), and Phillip Wittman (Stone Pigman).

The symposium will cover a wide range of issues across the national landscape of multidistrict litigation, from the actual workings of the United States Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation and the selection of the transferee court, to the question of coordination between simultaneous MDLs in both state and federal courts.

You can view the symposium schedule and speakers, as well as register online at: www.law.tulane.edu/lawreview.

Questions? Please contact the Symposium Editor, Mary Kathryn Nagle at mnagle@tulane.edu.