South Africa 2011

Details and photos to come

Vietnam (2009)

We arrived in Saigon (still called that although technically it is Ho Chi Min City) at the stroke of midnight bringing in 2009 (with Auld Lange Syne being played in the hotel lobby). Our visits took us from Saigon through Hue to Hanoi. We found a bustling, capitalistic economy with hard working people and motorbikes everywhere. We visited the consulate in Saigon and the Hanoi office of the Philadelphia law firm of Duane Morris.

An entrance to the Cu Chi tunnels that went under a U.S. army base near Saigon.

Reunification Hall, seat of the South Vietnamese government.

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Egypt, November 2007

Some pictures from my trip to Egypt.

Great pyramids at Giza

Original

Temple of Horus at Edfu

Spice Market at Luxor

Posted by Alex Miller on behalf of Richard B. Klein

Greece, October 2006

The C.P.C. trip to Greece featured a stay in Athens and a cruise on the Sea Diamond to the Greek Islands. We visited with the Piraeus Bar Association to discuss current legal issues, where there was an emphasis on maritime law. We discussed the origins of law, as our Western civilization is so much influenced by the ideas from ancient Greece. We took the Sea Diamond for a cruise that included Crete; Rhodes; Myconos; Kusadasi, Turkey and Ephesus; and Santorini. Back on land, we drove to Corinth, Mycenae and Epidaurus.

Posted by Alex Miller on behalf of Richard B. Klein

China, Dec. 2005 to January 2006

The Corporation for Professional Conferences in late 2005 vividly showed the contrast between the “old” China and the “new” China. We met with the extensive Temple Law School family – both people who studied in Philadelphia and those participating in the Temple classes in Beijing. We met at the Zhong Lun law firm, where our host Liu Chi is, a senior partner, who received his L.L.M. from Temple in 1986. Mr. Liu is president of the Temple Law School Alumni Association of China. We also visited the office of Baker and McKenzie in Shanghai. It was located in the largest building in Shanghai, the Jin Mao Tower, an 88-story building. This is in the Pudong section of Shanghai, with dozens of skyscrapers, an area that was just rice paddies a few years ago. In both settings, the facilities were modern and the lawyers every bit as knowledgeable and forward thinking as those in major firms in the United States. This contrasted with the “old” China that still prevails in Xian, the home of the ancient capital and the terra cotta warriors, and in places such as the Forbidden City and the Great Wall of China.

Posted by Alex Miller on behalf of Richard B. Klein

St. Petersburg, Russia, Dec. 2003 – Jan. 2004

The group that traveled to Russia saw the great change in the legal system in the transition from the Soviet economy to more of a market-based economy. The group met President Judge Alyss Varanuva, head of one of five courts of general jurisdiction in St. Petersburg. Judge Varanuva also served as a judge in the old system prior to the reforms. The group also visited the bar association, where the association provided space and overhead for lawyers in exchange for 20% of the fee. They were very upset because President Putin mandated that the association split into several smaller groups, which diminished the power of the association and was another step of Putin in centralizing power in Moscow.

Posted by Alex Miller on behalf of Richard B. Klein

Poland and the Czech Republic – 2003

In Poland the group visited the Warsaw Bar Association. The Bar houses offices for lawyers rather than just being a professional group as in the U.S. The hosts talked about some of the pressures put upon the legal profession to speed up the processing of cases to comply with requests made before Poland’s integration into the Economic Union could be finalized. Included in the trip was a visit to the Monument to the Warsaw Ghetto Heroes.

Dick Klein at the Warsaw Ghetto Monument

Posted by Alex Miller, on behalf of Richard B. Klein.

On the way to Krakow, the group visited Auschwitz.  In Krakow the group went to court and was hosted by Judge Witold Korycinski, the Vice Chair of the Court, and, representing the Polish Bar, advocate Zbigniew Cichon.

Judge Klein with Judge Witold Korycinski, Vice Chair of the Court

In the Czech Republic, the group visited the Central European Advisory Group, a group of bright young lawyers and businesspeople, many of whom left the branches of large American firms, to provide soup-to-nuts legal and consulting help to foreign businesses planning to start operations in the Czech Republic.

Dick Klein and tour group at Auschwitz