Successfully Practicing Family Law: Defining and Maintaining Your Integrity and Sanity

Why Attend?

• Learn the role that consistency plays in how clients, opposing counsel, and judges view you as a professional.
• Understand the finer points of maintaining professional interactions with others, including opposing counsel, even in the midst of heated litigation.
• Find out how good practice management skills contribute to your ability to not only maintain your own sanity, but to boost your efficiency and reliability in the eyes of clients, counsel, and judges.
• Discover outreach methods to help others using your professional expertise and how such engagement is also a boost to your reputation.

A positive professional reputation is priceless, but how does a family law practitioner achieve that goal? Once achieved, how can it be sustained?

The focus of this family law seminar is building and sustaining a stellar reputation with clients, opposing counsel, and the bench while maintaining your integrity and sanity as a practitioner. Presenters David Masterman and Julie Day provide guidance on the professionalism, communication, and practice management skills that are building blocks of positive recognition in your field, learned from their combined decades of family law experience.

Registration Deadlines:

Cancellation Policy: Cancellation/transfer requests will be honored until 5:00 p.m. the day preceding the seminar. You will, however, be charged $40 if you cancel or transfer your registration to a different seminar after the link to the materials has been e-mailed by Virginia CLE^®.

Full refunds or transfers are available up to two days after a webcast in the unlikely event that you experience technical difficulties.

Dietary Restrictions: If you have dietary restrictions and are attending the seminar in person, please email tfitzgerald@vacle.org.

Inclement Weather Policy and Updates

MCLE Credit Caveat: The MCLE Board measures credits by the time you spend in attendance. If you enter a seminar late or leave it early, or both, you must reflect those adjustments accurately in the credits you report on your credit reporting form. A code will be given at the end of the seminar, which must be written on your MCLE form.

Private recording of this program is prohibited.

Can’t Attend?

E-mail distance_ed@vacle.org to be notified when/if this program is made available as an online or USB seminar.
E-mail publications@vacle.org to be notified when/if this program’s seminar materials are made available for sale.

Course Schedule

• Q&A will be handled via chat room for Webcast attendees.
• Q&A will be handled via e-mail for telephone seminar attendees.

Faculty

Julie Hottle Day, Culin, Sharp, Autry & Day, PLC / Fairfax

David Masterman, Masterman Krogmann PC / McLean

About the Speakers

Julie Hottle Day, Culin, Sharp, Autry & Day, PLC / Fairfax

Julie Day represents parties in family law litigation and mediation, focusing on families in which small business ownership or complex assets and retirement benefits are at issue. Northern Virginia executives and business owners rely on her as an attorney who can comprehend and resolve the unique issues that arise for divorcing parties whose assets and issues are outside the norm. She prides herself in her reputation as an honest, hardworking attorney who keeps her clients well informed, and she believes that a client who is well informed is a client well served. She is an experienced practitioner whose careful preparation and attention to detail during the course of representation benefit the interests of her clients as much at the mediation table as they do in the courtroom.

Ms. Day practices in her firm’s Fairfax City and Warrenton offices. She has conducted litigation in the Virginia counties of Fairfax, Arlington, Loudoun, Prince William, Fauquier, Culpeper, and Orange and argued appeals to the Virginia Court of Appeals. She has been admitted to practice in Maryland since 1999 and is also admitted to practice before the United States Supreme Court.

A firm believer in giving back to her personal and professional communities, Ms. Day frequently authors and presents Continuing Legal Education seminars on matters related to the practice of family law. Her personal passion is the importance of liberal arts education. She is an avid supporter of her liberal arts alma mater, Lycoming College, having served as the vice president of its Alumni Association Executive Board, chaired the Annual Fund, served as a member of the President’s Leadership Counsel, and, most recently, as a member of the Lycoming College Board of Trustees.

David Masterman, Masterman Krogmann PC / McLean

David Masterman has served as chair of the family law section of the Arlington County Bar Association, the Virginia Trial Lawyers Association and, more recently, the Virginia State Bar. He served on the Board of Governors for the Family Law Section for six years and later on the Board of Governors of the General Practice Section of the Virginia State Bar for two years. He most recently was the Chair of the Board of Governors of the Diversity Conference of the Virginia State Bar, with his term ending in 2022.

Mr. Masterman frequently lectures to other family law attorneys at both basic and advanced family law seminars, with topics ranging from the issues involved in divorce following short marriages, the effects of parental relocation on child custody arrangements, enforcement and setting aside of agreements, obtaining the best possible property division in divorce, and issues affecting custody of children, as well as the ethical rules applicable to attorneys in this practice field. He is also the author of materials used as resources by other attorneys.

Mr. Masterman received his undergraduate degree with honors from Grinnell College, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, and graduated from the University of Virginia School of Law.

Other attorneys, professional athletes, politicians, corporate executives, military members, stay-at-home parents, and virtually every other type of person can be found among Mr. Masterman’s clientele.

Mr. Masterman carries the “AV” rating from Martindale-Hubbell, the highest rating for skill and ethics, and is listed in its volume on pre-eminent attorneys in the United States. He has been recognized and listed in The Best Lawyers in America, and he has been ranked as one of the top family lawyers by the Washingtonian and Washington Post magazines. He is also a Fellow of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers.

Mr. Masterman was the 2020 recipient of the Virginia State Bar Family Law Section’s Betty A. Thompson Lifetime Achievement Award.

Mr. Masterman practices in all aspects of family law, except adoption matters. He most commonly appears in the circuit courts of Fairfax County, Loudoun County, the City of Alexandria, and Arlington County, but also regularly represents parties in Prince William and Fauquier Counties.

Mr. Masterman’s interests outside the law include cats, and occasionally other things. More recently, he has started a YouTube channel on his travel adventures.