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Lee Byrd Elected Officer of International Law Firm Group

RICHMOND, VIRGINIA--L. Lee Byrd, a member of the Board of Directors of Sands Anderson Marks & Miller, P.C. and the firm's Chief Operating Officer, has been re-elected to a three-year term on the Executive Committee of the Law Firm Alliance and will serve as the Secretary of the international law firm network for the next two years.

Byrd, a civil litigation attorney who is the immediate past chair of the Business and Professional Litigation practice group at Sands Anderson, has been one of the law firm's two representatives to the Law Firm Alliance (LFA) since October 2004. His role includes attending the semi-annual educational meetings of the group and managing Sands Anderson's receipt and distribution of referrals for client work within the LFA membership. As a member of LFA's Executive Committee, he will be participating in LFA's strategic planning initiatives, as well as the program planning for the group's semi-annual meetings.  As Secretary of LFA, he will be responsible for handling the Executive Committee's communications with member firms, including meeting notices, and he will be managing the official documents of the organization.

The LFA is an invitation-only membership network of 52 law firms throughout the world, with the majority of its members being located in North America.  The organization was created by five law firms in 2000 and has been growing at about five firms a year ever since. The group meets to share information and best practices in client service and law firm management, economics and marketing twice a year in one of the member firm's home cities. The Spring 2010 meeting will be held in Toronto, Canada, the home base of McLean & Kerr LLP. The member firms are allowed an exclusive geographic market area. The network facilitates the distribution of referrals for client work that is outside the market area for the originating firm.

Founded almost 160 years ago, Sands Anderson has 74 lawyers practicing among its offices in Richmond, Christiansburg, Fredericksburg and McLean, Virginia, and the Research Triangle of North Carolina. In 2010, it was ranked 8th in the Virginia Lawyers Weekly annual listing of the state's largest law firms. Sands Anderson provides a full range of legal services to corporations and businesses, healthcare providers, financial institutions, state and local governments, the insurance industry and individuals.