[Note from Andrew: Please welcome Dan Silver, Co-Managing Partner of McCarter & English's Delaware office and all-around great attorney! Like magic, we mentioned him and he appeared. Nate and I are still tied up, but we hope to return to our regular posting schedule soon. In the meantime, thank you Dan!]

I have often considered starting my own blog to compete with ipde.com, but unfortunately, deip.com is taken, so I will have to avail myself of the occasional opportunity to write a guest post on ipde.com until I can secure the proper domain rights. Many thanks to Andrew and Nate for the opportunity.
In what has otherwise been a fairly quiet summer in Delaware, the District of Delaware posted two big announcements in quick succession this week. First, on Monday, the Court issued a press release announcing that Magistrate Judge Christopher J. Burke will not seek reappointment as a Magistrate Judge when his current term expires in August 2027. Judge Burke will have served two full eight-year terms at that point, and is currently the longest-serving Magistrate Judge on the Court.
Judge Burke’s contributions to the Court are too numerous to list in a short blog post (especially given the paltry word limit that Andrew and Nate gave me), but certainly one of His Honor’s most impactful endeavors is leading the District’s Federal Trial Practice Seminar. Unique to the District of Delaware, the FTPS is a multi-week seminar for up-and-coming Delaware attorneys with between 5 and 10 years of practice experience to hone their trial skills—from opening statements to closing arguments and everything in between. The Court recruits practitioners to serve as instructors and mentors, and the participants have the benefit of feedback from the District’s Judges and Magistrate Judges, in addition to the practitioners. It is an invaluable program that has surely benefited generations of lawyers under many years of Judge Burke’s leadership. Many of the Delaware lawyers you will encounter as a frequent flier in our Court will ...