Ballow, Howell honored by Nashville School of Law

Nashville School of Law (NSL) will honor the achievements of two distinguished attorneys at its 18th annual Recognition Dinner on Friday, June 3.

Robert Ballow, Metro Law pioneer and NSL class of 1963, is the 2011 Recognition Dinner Honoree, and Trevor Howell, employment and labor law attorney, will receive the 2011 Distinguished Faculty Award.

The annual dinner continues the celebration of NSL’s 100th anniversary, as hundreds of top lawyers, alumni, faculty, and students gather to commemorate this milestone as well as the achievements of this year’s honorees.

Ballow, co-founder of King & Ballow in Nashville, graduated from Nashville School of Law in 1963. Upon graduation, Ballow practiced with Frank King at his solo firm until starting King & Ballow in 1969. Ballow helped establish their general practice firm as a national expert on media law, and the firm now represents many Fortune 500 companies, more than 300 daily newspapers, and 100 radio and television stations nationwide. Ballow has been listed in The Best Lawyers in America since its inception in 1982, and has been named by the Nashville Post as one of Nashville’s top 101 lawyers.

Trevor Howell received his law degree from Samford University’s Cumberland School of Law, and now practices with Gullett Sanford Robinson & Martin PLLC in Nashville. Specializing in employment and labor law, Howell has taught in these areas – including Employment and Labor Law and Business Associations – at NSL since 1988. He also regularly serves as instructor for Continuing Legal Education seminars in the employment law area. Howell is past chair of the Nashville Bar Association’s Employment Law Section, and is a member of the Nashville Bar Association, Tennessee Bar Association, and American Bar Association.

Music Row banking specialist Anson Lewis has joined Fifth Third Bank as a credit manager with expertise in handling wealth management issues for artists, songwriters, producers, publishers and performing rights organizations, along with others in the entertainment and professional sports industries.

Lewis comes to Fifth Third with 13 years of professional experience in banking, including five years exclusively overseeing underwriting and credit approval for the largest and most complex loan requests within SunTrust’s sports and entertainment group.

Fifth Third launched its music and entertainment division a year ago when it hired producer Will Byrd to lead the group.

MLM Lawyers Review 2011 | Direct Selling Facts & Figures

Is a MLM attorney, entrepreneur, and agent of change. He owns and operates The Law Office of Kevin Thompson and specializes in providing legal services for startup direct sales organizations. Named as one of the top 25 most influential people in direct sales, Kevin Thompson has extensive experience and helps entrepreneurs launch their businesses on secure legal footing.

Kevin is a leader and prolific contributor in the direct sales community. He has published multiple ebooks accruing over 65,000 reads and 2,500 downloads.

He’s recently published a widely read, 80 page ebook on the changing state of the law in the network marketing industry. Read the ebook here , free of charge, to learn more about the laws in the industry. He has served as a keynote speaker at the international direct sales conference in Amsterdam.

Prior to starting his law practice, Kevin gained valuable experience while serving as Chief Counsel for Signature Management Team, LLC, also known as Team.

Team is one of the largest providers of sales aids for distributors in the network marketing industry. While at Team, Kevin worked closely with Amway and MonaVie’s compliance departments to ensure Team’s marketing materials passed regulatory review. Also during his tenure at Team, Kevin helped guide the company through commercial litigation with Amway.

is an Attorney in private practice in Muskegon, Michigan. He is one of a very few attorneys nationwide whose practice is devoted exclusively to direct selling and multi-level marketing issues. His 34 years of legal experience includes 9 years at Amway Corporation where he was Director of the Legal Division.

Gerald has counseled and testified on many legal issues of direct selling, including comprehensive evaluations of business plans, and whether they meet the legal standards established in the landmark FTC v. Amway case and cases which followed. Have analyzed in detail the differences and legal significance of plan design, controlled by the company, and plan implementation, where distributor conduct is often the challenge.

Gave testimony on direct selling legal issues in Herbalife v. McCormack, Dunda v. Mary Kay, Florida v. P.R.S.I., FTC v. Trek Alliance, and International Galleries Inc. v. LaRaza.

MULTI-LEVEL SPECIFICS:

Handled the legal and personnel issues for conversion of the single-level direct sales organization to a multi-level system at Fuller Brush. Issues included marketing plan legal review and necessary modification, sales force transition and conversion, literature review, sales training rules and ethics enforcement, advertising guidelines, product line selection and pricing, and creation of a distributor advisory board.

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