The SL Bar Association, an informal professional organization for attorneys and legal scholars in the virtual world of Second Life that I founded in late 2006, recently concluded its 2008-2009 elections for President-Elect, Vice President of Communication, Vice President of Finance, and three Executive Board Seats.

Stephen Wu, a California attorney who goes by ‘Legal Writer’ in Second Life, was elected as the organization’s third president.  Wu will follow U.K. attorney David Naylor (‘Solomon Cortes’ in Second Life) as President when Naylor’s term expires at the end of January.  From Wu’s nomination statement in the SLBA forums (email-only registration required):

I am a partner in the Silicon Valley law firm Cooke Kobrick & Wu LLP.  You can see my background at http://www.infoseclaw.com, but in brief, I have been a California-admitted lawyer since 1999, and was first admitted to the bar in NY in 1989.  My practice includes software licensing, Internet law, other technology transactions, trade secret/copyright/trademark litigation, and general commercial litigation.  My sweet spot, however, is data protection and secure ecommerce, and I have co-written five books on these topics and give frequent presentations on them, as well as presentations on electronic discovery and digital evidence.  I spent almost five years as VeriSign’s second in-house lawyer before starting my own practice, and before that practiced at two large law firms in the areas of IP and general litigation and technology transactions.

The SLBA’s new Vice President of Communications is Second Life’s ‘Cat Galileo’ (real life law librarian Kate Fitz) who maintains the popular Lawspot Virtual Worlds Law Library.  Last year, ‘Galileo’ was on the SLBA’s Executive Board, and was instrumental in organizing the SLBA’s first-ever in-world Continuing Legal Education (CLE) seminars.

‘Geri Kuhn’ (Geri Kahn in real life) was re-elected to her position as Vice President of Finance.  Over the last year, ‘Kuhn’ has managed the organization’s dues collection and expenditures, and also supervised the process of changing the SL Bar Association’s name (the organization was formerly the “Second Life Bar Association”) in order to comply with changes in Linden Lab’s trademark policy.

Three members were also elected to the Executive Board.  They are Second Life’s ‘Juris Amat,’ ‘Lexis Looming,’ and ”Ida Recreant.’  ‘Amat’ is Tamiko Franklin in real life, a Massachusetts attorney living in Croatia who founded the non-profit Virtual Intellectual Property Organization.  ‘Recreant’ is Ida Jones in real life, a professor of Finance and Business Law at California State University, Fresno.  ‘Looming,’ is A. Craig Abrahamson in real life, a practicing attorney of 27 years based out of Oklahoma.  The Executive Board is responsible for shaping the organization’s agenda for the coming year, and board members frequently head up special projects for the SLBA.

The new Executive Board members and Vice Presidents assume their new roles immediately.  The SL Bar Association has over 100 active members, and regularly holds meetings, lectures, and social events in the virtual world of Second Life.