Featuring a full slate of CLE offerings and an impressive list of award winners, the 2008 Ohio State Bar Association convention and annual meeting is less than two weeks away.

The event, scheduled for May 14-16 at the Columbus Convention Center, is the highlight of the year for member attorneys, according to an association spokesman.

"The lawyers of Ohio love coming to the convention," Ken Brown said, indicating the event features such a comprehensive package of CLE sessions.

In addition to a session focusing on the timely subject of mortgage foreclosures and predatory lending, the 2008 program boasts sessions on the MySpace generation, family law, ethics and an environmental law update.

Brown said the other highlight of the annual event are the awards bestowed upon distinguished bar members. Nancy Rogers, dean of the Ohio State University Michael E. Moritz College of Law, is recipient of the association's highest honor, the Ohio Bar Medal.

The award is given to an individual who exemplifies unusually meritorious service to the community and to humanity, the program explained. Rogers started her teaching career at the college in 1976 and became dean in August 2001 after serving two years as vice president for academic administration. Additionally, she is the immediate past-president of the Association of American Law Schools.

The award will be presented during the annual luncheon May 15.

Marianna Brown Bettman, professor of Clinical Law at the University of Cincinnati College of Law, is recipient of the association's 2008 Nettie Cronise Lutes Award, which recognizes women lawyers who have "improved the legal profession through their own high level of professionalism and who have opened doors for other women and girls." Presentation is scheduled during the general assembly meeting May 14.

Brown said this year's guests will include an outsider of sorts. Though a lawyer himself, Ohio State President E. Gordon Gee will address the group during the opening general session.

"We thought a lot of people would enjoy hearing from him," Brown said.

Gee will join Ohio Supreme Court Chief Justice Thomas Moyer in a presentation for which participants will be awarded one general CLE hour.

The approximately 1,000 lawyers Brown said he expects to converge upon the city's convention center will be able to browse the wares of the 35 vendors scheduled to set up shop for the event.

For more details and online registration is available at the association's Web site, www.ohiobar.org.