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e-Discovery has exploded onto the scene of commercial litigation. From its rudimentary beginnings around the start of the 21st Century, it has now become a major component of such litigation. Some have even dubbed it “The Tail that Wags the Dog in Complex Commercial Litigation.” In this Introduction to e-Discovery, attorneys learn e-Discovery from both the vendor’s and the litigator’s perspective. Participants will analyze several cases in which courts have admonished, sanctioned, or ruled harshly against attorneys who have been nonchalant about preserving, collecting, reviewing, or producing e-Discovery.

Representing both the husband and wife in estate planning? Assisting with the divorce of your favorite friends? Asked to represent co-defendants or multiple family members in a criminal, personal injury, or immigration case? New clients want to pay you with stock in their enterprise? From family law, trust and estates, and business law to criminal, personal injury, and immigration law, conflicts of interest exist as a fundamental concern in the practice of law. If ignored or misunderstood, fundamental concerns can create significant problems for the unwary lawyer. What’s a lawyer to do? Step one: assess whether there is a conflict of interest. Step two: analyze whether it is consent-able or impermissible. Step three: proceed accordingly. This course will explore these steps in the context of the conflict of interest rules and their applications in the everyday practice of law.

This presentation is not about how to comply with state law in order to organize and operate a business as an LLC. Instead, ideas and suggestions are offered on how to effectively counsel people who come to your office who want to create and operate their business as an LLC. Do they really know each other well enough? Do they really share the same goals? Do they really agree on how to handle finances and decision making? The content of this course is intended to help you help them make sure they are ready to successfully operate their business as an LLC.

President Joe Biden has signaled his administration’s intention to actively encourage the reopening of physical workspaces and curbing COVID-19 outbreaks by requiring mandatory vaccination of federal employees and employees of federal contractors and direction the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to enact emergency temporary standard (ETS) regulations to require employers with 100 or more employees to require vaccination or submit to weekly testing. President Biden’s announcement will require both employers and employees to confront new realities and to address both physical and operational changes required by the lingering effects of Covid-19 on the workplace. President Biden’s announcement most likely will encourage employers not affected by OSHA’s ETS to also adopt vaccine mandates. This program will offer a guideline for assisting employers to navigate what presumably the new ETS or other vaccine mandates will have on the workplace.

Effective legal writing is a necessary skill in the practice of law and lawyers do tend to write well. However, regardless of how effective a lawyer’s writing skills are, there is always something useful to be gained from a review of effective writing guidelines and advice. This presentation describes the basics of legal writing. All other types of legal writing are built on these basics. Several specific types of legal writing are then addressed with guidelines and ideas to help your writing remain effective.

The Rules of Professional Conduct contain special rules regarding the duties, obligations, and restrictions applicable to attorneys engaged in litigation, which also includes administrative proceedings. The course will provide an overview of the fundamental ethical rules, and their relationship to substantive rules and law, that litigators encounter. The course will include discussion of the rules that ever litigator needs to fully know and understand in order that they can properly represent their clients in dispute proceedings. Since a violation of the rules can result in significant harm to the client’s case, attorneys should stay fully informed about the pertinent rules. Although the course is basically an ethics course, ideas on how to better represent a client in litigation and comply with the rules will be discussed.

Mental health issues and substance use disorders can impact any law student, attorney or judge regardless of ethnicity, gender, age, orientation of socioeconomic status. But no matter the background, the legal profession seems to suffer in silence. Why? Stigma – the cultural prejudice and discrimination that labels an individual as defective or weak has the power to create a reluctance to speak about the issues and be a barrier to seeking treatment. This program will define the stigma, explain the reasons why stigma is so pervasive in the legal profession, and why it is critical to overcome these beliefs and identify effective means to ameliorate stigma and identify affirming aHtudes for recovery. Throughout the presentation, the speaker will focus on several different “life stages” of an attorney and how stigma affects each group and identify best practices to conquer stigma in the legal community.

Before the Internet, there was no such thing as cybersquatting. But once the Internet came into existence, domain-name disputes soon followed. Although cybersquatting does not fit into the traditional trademark paradigm, in 1999 Congress passed The Anti-Cybersquatting Consumer Protection Act ("ACPA"), 15 U.S.C. 1125(d), and it became part of the Lanham Act, 15 U.S.C. 1051 et seq., which is the primary federal trademark statute in the United States. The ACPA established a legal recourse for entities who are the victims of others registering, trafficking in, or using a domain name that is confusingly similar to, or dilutive of, an entity's trademark or a person's name. In this "Introduction to Cybersquatting", attorneys learn the origins and history of cybersquatting, as well as the elements of the cause of action. Participants will also analyze several cases in which courts have addressed cybersquatting at various stages of litigation.

National attention has addressed the pay gap for women. Beyond that, there is an information gap, a power and understanding gap, and common perceptions of femininity that have resulted in institutional disadvantages for female attorneys, especially litigators. This program exposes nationwide statistics regarding the wage gap between female and male attorneys and pays special focus to recent academic and bar association studies addressing gender differences in the profession. The course also addresses practical ways to overcome this gender gap, including negotiation strategies and skills to foster leadership and opportunities for professional development. The goal of this program is not just to raise awareness of the issue but to also offer its participants the opportunity to solve the problem.

Lawyers generate tons of paper. Receiving, reviewing, producing, sharing, filing, and retrieving paper documents has a huge cost to a practice, whether it is a solo or small firm, a large firm, a corporate legal department, or a government or public interest office. Fortunately, lawyers can save time and money by transitioning to a paperless office. In fact, during the pandemic, lawyers quickly realized that if their offices were not digitized – that is, every document scanned and available for viewing online – they were not able to function. This course will take users through the basics of becoming paperless and highlight the benefits of a digitized workflow. You’ve put it off for years. It’s time to learn how reducing the amount of paper in your practice will increase your productivity.

Non-compete agreements shape the American employment landscape, affecting both employees and employers. Because these agreements prevent an employee from working within a particular industry for a defined time period, courts tend to closely examine these provisions. In recent years, many states have passed legislation to modify non-compete provisions in both employment agreements and business purchase agreements. Some states uphold non-compete agreements only when a legitimate business interest is at stake, while others have banned non-competes altogether. Certain states require employers to provide additional consideration or benefits to an employee to bind them by a non-compete. If employers are to adequately draft non-compete provisions, and if employees are to successfully negotiate such provisions, they must understand how the law is evolving in this area. Kristen Prinz, the Founder and Managing Partner of the Prinz Law Firm, P.C., will discuss best practices for drafting non-compete clauses from an employer’s perspective, and best practices to negotiate and handle non-compete clauses from an employee’s perspective.

Discover from corporate insider and attorney Douglas Gordon, in a nationally recognized program, the best corporate governance practices for the board of directors of any size corporation, large or small, public or private. Learn why the board of directors is the most powerful force in the corporation and why it should act accordingly. Get the tools the board and individual directors need to do their job such as Mr. Gordon’s exclusive “Ten Commandments for the Board” (as a group) and the “Director Bill of Rights” (for individual directors). If you’ve ever served on a board, would like to serve on a board, or you're an attorney with corporate clients or director clients, or you’re an attorney who would like to have those types of clients, this course is for you.

It is not always clear how a deposition or written discovery responses can be used by a party during an evidentiary hearing or trial. The applicable discovery rules provide guidance, but frequently the judge is unsure of what is and is not permissible, and whether the response even needs to be shown to the witness or whether the witness or opposing party is allowed to explain or rebut a discovery response. This presentation will discuss the permissible use of discovery responses and depositions under the applicable rules of civil procedure. Additionally, there will be a discussion of practical considerations for use of the discovery. Finally, this presentation will provide suggestions on methods to make the discovery responses more effective or useful at a hearing or trial.

This course is designed to address the various evidentiary issues that arise with electronic evidence. For example, the presentation will cover the use of social media as evidence and how it is obtained and introduced into evidence. There will be a discussion of some of the preliminary evidence rules that are sometimes overlooked that can apply to social media and other electronic evidence. Issues with juries using social media during trial will also be covered. There will be a general discussion of the application of the hearsay rule to electronic evidence, and how to lay the proper foundation. Rules regarding spoliation of electronic evidence and the effect will be examined. The presentation will also deal with statutory provisions regarding discovery electronic information from third party providers. With the increased use of e-signatures, there will be coverage of issues that arise when introducing a document that has been electronically signed.

Attorneys in firms of all sizes – from solo practitioners to lawyers are multinational Big Law firms - face a number of ethical issues relating to cybersecurity, and preserving the confidentiality and security of their clients’ data. Contrary to what some lawyers may believe, law firms are often a valuable target for hackers because they can hold vast collections of sensitive and highly valuable client-related data. These cybersecurity threats come from individual hackers, international cybercriminals, and even a firm’s own attorneys and other employees. This program provides a basic primer on attorneys’ ethical obligations to understand and address the cybersecurity risks they face, and provides practical advice for attorneys in addressing issues that arise will undoubtedly arise in their legal practice.