Administrative And Regulatory Law CLE

In this seminar, forensic expert Mark Silver provides the immigration lawyer with a detailed analysis of criteria considered by clinical experts when undertaking a psychosocial evaluation in extreme hardship cases for waivers and cancellation of removal cases. Here, Mr. Silver integrates important legal considerations with the psychosocial criteria offering new and different insights to better advocate for the clients and their family members. He also reviews the different challenges that have an impact on extreme hardship considerations. Additionally, he addresses how to best present these issues to help your client.

On July 27, 2006 President George W. Bush enacted the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act. This law was meant to protect children from sexual exploitation in violent crimes, prevent child abuse and child pornography, and to promote Internet safety. However, the act also amended INA Section 204 and effectively prohibited US citizens and lawful permanent resident aliens who have been convicted of any “specific crime against a minor” from filing any family-based immigrant petition on behalf of any beneficiary. In this program, forensic expert Mark Silver presents an overview of the Adam Walsh Act as it pertains to immigration defense lawyers who assist clients with family-based immigration petitions. Mr. Silver will also address how clinical evaluations help advocate for the family members.

Learn what it takes to develop and litigate citizen suits to enforce our country’s landmark environmental laws! This course will cover the basic purposes of citizen suits; the remedies available to successful litigants; the key steps involved in developing and filing citizen suits; and trends that affect the value and viability of citizen suits as a tool.

Congress has often responded to historic medical catastrophes by enacting new regulations designed to prevent their recurrence. With respect to infectious diseases and vaccines capable of preventing them, a well-established regulatory system exists for providing oversight of the process of developing and testing vaccines, licensing their use, controlling their administration, and following up on post-licensure issues. This course covers the structure of FDA regulation in these areas, including its powers governing Emergency Use Authorization and related litigation.

The powerful public interest in preventing the spread of contagious diseases has led to a longstanding history of vaccination mandates being imposed as a prerequisite to access to various rights, such as education and employment. At some points in history, nonvaccination has even been punished with fines. Balancing out this imposition, systems have been established to compensate the small proportion of individuals who claim to have been harmed by an adverse reaction to a vaccination. This course will examine the legal basis and structure of vaccination mandates, including public mandates imposed by state and federal government entities and private mandates imposed by employers. The course will cover the common exemptions from vaccination and accommodations required by employers under federal law. The course will then turn to the function and operations of the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, and to other routes of injury compensation available for vaccines not covered under that program.

Customs and International Trade Law is the intersection of national sovereignty and international commerce. Fueled by economic concerns, national interests and arcane peculiarities, customs law can be an interesting minefield for companies to navigate. You don’t need to be an expert in customs law to serve your clients—but you should be aware of basic principles and be able to identify potential compliance problems and cost-saving opportunities.

The Biden Administration’s proposed budget for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (“OSHA”) seeks, among other things, funding to hire significantly more OSHA inspectors in 2022 and beyond.  As businesses brace for aggressive enforcement in the coming years, this program is designed to help attorneys assist their clients through an OSHA investigation.  You will hear from a former OSHA trial attorney while he reviews the investigation process from the opening conference through the issuance of citations.  The program further addresses considerations attorneys need to be thinking about when advising clients on whether to settle or litigate OSHA citations.  Often these important considerations include how OSHA citations will affect third party claims which may present significantly more liability than the OSHA penalties themselves.  Moreover, the program discusses best practices during the investigation process and settlement strategies to achieve client objectives while minimizing risk of future repeat or willful violations. 

The DOL’s 2022 budget and the Biden Administration’s proposed budget for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration in 2023 seeks funding to hire significantly more OSHA inspectors.  In addition, Doug Parker was sworn in as Assistant Secretary of Labor for OSHA on November 3, 2021, and based on his prior role as chief of California’s Division of Occupational Safety and Health, employers should expect increased rulemaking and more aggressive enforcement activities in the coming years. You will hear from a former OSHA trial attorney as he discusses OSHA hot topics and future agenda items.  These issues include an update on OSHA’s COVID-19 guidance for general industry and the status of OSHA’s health care permanent COVID rule.  Other areas will include discussion of OSHA’s heat stress enforcement and rulemaking; reviewing highly targeted inspection industries; identifying the most common OSHA citations in 2021; workplace violence; proposed changes to the electronic recordkeeping rule; review of recent OSHA standard interpretation letters on recording injuries; overview of the new hazard communication final rule and other expected rulemaking proposals.

In this introduction to the Federal Water Pollution Control Act (the “Clean Water Act”), 33 U.S.C. § 1251, et seq., we will address the Clean Water Act’s genesis and discuss how the Act has evolved since 1972. We will cover the legislative history, permitting requirements, and key definitions under the Clean Water Act. We will also discuss the recent decisions expanding the protections offered by the Clean Water Act and what this means for the environmental law practitioner.

Climate change is the term on everyone’s tongue, but the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, with its goals to half US carbon emissions by 2030 and become a net-zero emissions economy by 2050, is not the only major federal law that continues to shape land use in the United States. From the now defunct navigable waters protection in the 1899 Rivers and Harbors Act to the alive and kicking 1973 Endangered Species Act, a web of evolving laws and regulations touches upon every square inch of land in the country. This course offers an overview of the federal framework for such laws, including enforcing agencies (Hint: It’s not just the EPA) and their more detailed regulations interpreting the laws. We will also touch upon the big 6: Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act, CERCLA, Coastal Zone Management Act, the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), and the Endangered Species Act. Finally, we conclude with historical context, including former president, Teddy Roosevelt, and how Rachel Carlson’s Silent Spring galvanized the nascent environmental movement in the United States and led to many of the subsequently adopted laws.

The National Firearms Act of 1934 (the NFA) was one of the first pieces of federal gun legislation passed in this country and yet remains a source of confusion among attorneys and non-attorneys alike. This presentation will cover what types of firearms are regulated by the NFA, what firearms are outside its scope, the registration and transfer processes, and the penalties for violating the NFA. We will also discuss proposed legislation and regulations that impact the NFA, as well as challenges to the NFA that can be expected in light of the NYSRPA v. Bruen U.S. Supreme Court decision in June 2022. This course will be of interest to attorneys who practice firearms law, those in the firearms industry who work with firearms, and all those who simply want to gain a greater understanding of firearms regulation today.

For over one hundred years, traditional vertical wells have been producing oil and gas across the country. However, as technology has advanced, horizontal wells have become a more profitable way to produce oil and gas from the maximum acreage allowed. What happens when an operator wants to drill a modern, horizontal well, thousands of feet long, under lands covered by old leases, without a pooling provision, without a separate pooling agreement, or when the lease expressly prohibits pooling under certain conditions? In this introduction to allocation wells, we breakdown the different types of horizontal wells, and the current guidance regarding to process of drilling an allocation well, and the related underlying production sharing agreements.

The Anti-Money Laundering Act of 2020 (“AMLA”), passed by the United States Congress over a Presidential Veto, and as a part of the National Defense Authorization Act of FY 2020, is the first significant Anti-Money Laundering (“AML”) legislation passed since the PATRIOT Act in 2001. Several provisions from AMLA have far-reaching consequences for businesses. Foremost among them is the Corporate Transparency Act, which will require most small and medium businesses in the United States to submit information to the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (“FinCEN”), which FinCEN will maintain in a database and will make available to certain law enforcement agencies and financial institutions. Although the applicable regulations are not yet finalized, law firms and their clients should be aware of (and planning for) these new requirements. Separately, AMLA also contains a provision regarding subpoenas served by the U.S. Department of Justice (“DOJ”) on U.S. financial institutions that that have foreign correspondent account relationships. Under AMLA, DOJ can request information relating to the foreign correspondent account, going far beyond activities in and through the United States. Possible consequences for failing to comply are significant fines on the U.S. financial institution and the foreign financial institution. Finally, FinCEN, in conjunction with other federal and state law enforcement authorities, issues an annual Priorities release, identifying particular AML areas of interest to law enforcement and regulators. Lawyers and their clients should be mindful of these items in the Priorities release, and build compliance and supervisory structures around them.

While the first cryptocurrency was created in 2009, it was not until the last year or two that the mining of cryptocurrency made its way into the oil and gas realm. As gas prices fell in the last several years, operators became interested in ways to utilize the wasted gas they were flaring. In certain environments, became obvious that mining cryptocurrency with excess gas was a way to utilize a wasted resource as well as a way to cut down on emissions. However, this new process created new issues for operators to consider. In this presentation, we will discuss the basics of cryptocurrency and the mining of it in the oil patch, and issues that operators must consider, especially when the gas being used to mine becomes more valuable than the currency it is creating.

In this discussion of the Federal Water Pollution Control Act (the “Clean Water Act”), 33 U.S.C. § 1251, et seq., we will address the Clean Water Act and the Supreme Court’s “functional equivalent” standard established in the Supreme Court’s County of Maui v. Hawaii Wildlife decision. We will cover the history of the Clean Water Act with respect to point sources, the evolution of how point sources have been defined since the Clean Water Act was established, and the newly adopted “functional equivalent” standard. We will focus our discussion on the County of Maui decision and address what the standard means for the environmental law practitioner.

Every student is entitled to basic due process rights when being disciplined at school. Students with disabilities are entitled to additional rights under federal law. This session will focus on the basic due process rights owed to all students, and those additional considerations that exist under Section 504 and the Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act.

The topic of Website Regulatory Compliance is made up of a complex set of federal regulatory rules and guidelines to ensure that business websites and digital communications are honest and truthful, accessible to people with disabilities and compliant with financial services requirements.  These rules and guidelines can be found under: The Federal Trade Commission (FTC)
The Americans with Disabilities’ Act (ADA);The Federal Communications Commission (FCC); and
Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA).

Many (if not most) people, including lawyers and law students, find reading and working with Federal statutes intimidating. In this course, you will learn from a person responsible for drafting many of the bills that became Federal law, what legislative drafting is, how Federal laws tend to be structured, how to parse through often confusing amendatory language, and how to craft a simple bill. This course will include a guided exercise using a hypothetical request for a bill involving none other than Little Red Riding Hood.

The Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act -- otherwise known as CERCLA or Superfund – is the federal statute that provides a funding mechanism to clean up uncontrolled or abandoned hazardous waste and accident sites. In this course, Connie Sue Martin will lead you through the CERCLA liability framework, contribution and cost recovery, and the roles of key players such as EPA, states, and Indian tribes.

In this course, we will analyze the historical context of civil RICO claims and explore how relevant case law affects a RICO case plaintiff, including the particularity required of a claim (time, place, etc), details of the mental state, and pattern of activity.

This course will give an overview of the origins and framework for Native American law in the United States, with a focus on guiding the general and specialized practitioners through the history of Indian Law and federal policy to modern day sources of conflict and cooperation – such as federal, state and tribal jurisdiction, taxation, property rights, Indian gaming, natural resources issues and economic development.

Generally Board Committees are delegated to undertake internal investigations when the issues are important to the company , complex, and need to be done by sophisticated people who have no personal stake in the outcome. Other investigations can be undertaken by employees in the legal function or the human resources department. Such investigations may be very important to the organization but lack the need to be done by individuals who have no need to satisfy internal corporate pressures on their decision making. However, given the hierarchical structure of most companies, where an investigation must actually be free of influences from within the company there is a need for truly independent investigators. This can often only be achieved by having critical investigations be under the supervision of the Board or a Board committee such as the audit committee, a risk committee or a special committee appointed by the Board to run the investigation. The key notion to understand is the great importance of their being no conflicts of interest and independence of the investigation so that its work is above reproach and not conflicted. This course will teach among other things, when a board committee investigation is called for, how it should be populated, how to preserve attorney client privilege and how the committee should bring its findings back to the full board.

From FTX to NFTs, it seems like cryptocurrency and blockchain technology are at the top of news and culture. But which laws apply to this technology, and which government entities regulate this space? And what do businesses, investors, and consumers need to know to avoid legal pitfalls?

For the uninitiated, oil and gas law concepts can be daunting and confusing at first.In many ways, learning the law of oil and gas requires learning a whole new language. This course will go over lexicon of the oil and gas industry, along with the basics of oil and gas law. We will also dig into common litigation topics, including royalty, leasing, and mineral trespass disputes.

For more than 30 years, the win-loss record for tribal interests at the United State Supreme Court was dismal. Between 2018 and 2022, however, tribal interests were on a remarkable winning streak. But what is the continuing outlook for tribal interests at the Supreme Court? This program will analyze the three cases decided by the Supreme Court in June 2022 and consider what they might portend for the future. The program will benefit tribal attorneys, practitioners of federal Indian law, and other attorneys who wish to learn more about federal Indian law.

When taxpayers fail to timely file or comply with other Internal Revenue Service (IRS) rules, the agency may issue many different types of penalties. Penalties are typically associated with late payment of tax and/or late filing of tax or information returns. Information returns can be domestic or international.  The international information returns carry significant penalties for late filing and/or filing inaccurately. These penalties can range from a few hundred to a few million dollars. Mishkin Santa will provide practical insight for lawyers on IRS rules related to these penalties and advice on how to obtain abatement of these penalties for clients.

Cybersecurity risk management and the potential for enforcement actions is not diminishing. An area of increasing interest by the Federal Trade Commission, the United States Department of Justice, and Congress is third parties benefiting financially from taking sensitive data, including protected health information, without obtaining affirmative patient/consumer consent (especially from social media and search engine giants). The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the agency tasked with enforcing HIPAA, also plays a critical role here. The purpose of this presentation is to address different federal government initiatives, recent enforcement actions and incidents, and risk mitigation.

When lawyers meet clients who need assistance with family members suffering from a mental health impairment, traditional legal responses need to be viewed and approached through an appropriate mental health lens. Lawyers must be aware of what unique tools are available and  how traditional legal resources can be adapted for an individual suffering from a mental illness.

This course will discuss the various green card options available to artists, entertainers, and athletes. We will provide a broad overview of business immigration and take a deep dive into sports and entertainment immigration options, including visa options and paths to permanent residency. This course will also discuss strategies for how to choose the right path to a green card for your client.

Wetlands are often attractive areas for development but wetland regulations can make it difficult to build at a property. This course will address how to identify wetlands, why wetlands matter, and how wetlands came to be regulated. Additionally, this course will explore the various types of permits for wetlands use and their processes. Throughout this course attorneys will gain familiarity with wetlands, their functions, and legal issues involved in their use.

The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) has committed to moving forward with the process of establishing final regulations for governing the valuation of companies for employee stock ownership plan (ESOP) transactions. In this one-hour course we will provide an in-depth case study on a landmark trial victory that has had a direct impact on this new development. This course will focus on the ongoing efforts for recovering attorney’s fees and costs in the U.S. Court of Appeals. We will analyze how this effort to recover attorneys' fees and expenses increased pressure on the DOL to clarify ESOP valuations and related transactions for companies and fiduciaries.

Americans owe more than $1.75 trillion in student loan debt. The Supreme Court struck down the Biden Administration’s student loan relief plan on June 30, 2023. With repayments set to resume in a few short months, millions of student loan borrowers will be seeking legal advice about their options.This course will cover trending topics in student debt relief including the Biden Administration’s new actions to provide debt relief for student loan borrowers. Designed for consumer and debt relief attorneys, the program will explore repayment options, loan forgiveness programs and new guidelines on the discharge of student loan debt in bankruptcy.

As the student debt crisis grows, more bankruptcy filers are seeking discharge of their student loan debt. Be prepared to assist clients burdened by student loan debt get the fresh start they deserve. Discharging Student Loan Debt in Bankruptcy will explore the treatment of student loans in bankruptcy including determining a client’s eligibility for discharge. This program will guide you through the process of litigating student loans in bankruptcy court from case evaluation and intake to trial and discuss the recent policy change designed to provide a more expeditious process for discharging student loan debt.

Any employer or employee representative, must keep abreast of the rulings and guidance provided by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). The rulings and guidance impact both employees in unions and those not in unions. The current NLRB has been very active since taking majority status on the Board, either issuing new decisions that changed old precedents or creating new law impacting all employers. This course will provide background on the latest important rulings of the NLRB and portend what may lie ahead in the not so distant future.

For more than 30 years, the win-loss record for tribal interests at the United State Supreme Court was dismal. Since 2018 however, tribal interests have been on a remarkable winning streak in the United States Supreme Court. But what is the continuing outlook for tribal interests at the Supreme Court? This program will analyze past cases decided by the Supreme Court and consider what they might portend for the future as well as providing a thorough analysis of the Haaland v. Bracken decision. The program will benefit tribal attorneys, practitioners of federal Indian law, and other attorneys who wish to learn more about federal Indian law.

Since states have started to legalize commercial cannabis operations, businesses have mostly focused their operations on the sale and monetization of cannabis as an agricultural commodity. However, cannabis was never just about the sale and consumption of the plant itself for consumers and patients. There has always been a lifestyle and sense of community associated with the act of consumption. People have always sought entertainment out of their homes. This seminar focuses on this unique intersection and opportunity for the cannabis industry.

For the last five years, real estate has been at a premium in the cannabis industry – and so have rental rates. This seminar will review how the market has and has not changed for cannabis tenants and what both landlords and tenants should be concerned with when negotiating their relationship.