Special needs trusts (SNTs) are designed to provide for the long-care of individuals who have physical or intellectual impairments and are unable to provide for themselves, whether they are elderly or very young. SNTs are intended to preserve the beneficiary’s eligibility for public benefits—Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, SSI, and others—while maximizing the private resources of the beneficiary’s family. Crucial aspects of working with these trusts are drafting distribution clauses and selecting the right trustee to make financial and health-care related decisions for the beneficiary. Structuring and drafting SNTs can be a complex process of tradeoffs with the care of a valued family member in the balance. This program provides you with a practical guide to the types of SNTs and the situations in which each is most appropriate, preserving public benefit eligibility, distribution policies, and trustee selection.

When William O. Douglas retired from the U.S. Supreme Court in 1975, he had served longer than any other justice in its history and had helped to decide some of the most important cases in the history of the nation. Anecdote, humor, and painful remembrances are used to explore some of the most explosive issues of William O. Douglas’s 36-year tenure on the U.S. Supreme Court. Douglas wrestles with balancing what he calls the “wilderness mind” with the often-hostile adversarial conflicts created by his controversial opinions and his active public life. He addresses the issues about which he was most passionate as he reflects on Brown v. Board of Education, the “McCarthy Era,” and the Vietnam War. William O. Douglas left a legacy that calls for vigilance to protect human rights and action to protect the environment. The movie explores that legacy and provokes thought about our responsibilities not only as lawyers but also as citizens of the world.

Business transactions, particularly mergers and acquisitions, can be done or undone in business in the due diligence period as strengths and weaknesses in a business are discovered, confirming the negotiated terms of a deal or calling them into question. When diligence is not conducted vigorously, misunderstandings about crucial financial and business facts may go unaddressed and the essential benefit of the bargain among the parties potentially lost through a failure to make an effort. Diligence can be wide in scope and costly, potentially hobbling a transaction, or with careful planning it can be tailored to areas of a specific transaction most likely to give rise to issues. This program provides you with a practical guide to planning the diligence process, an understanding of the most areas of inquiry depending on the transaction, and checklists.

Fiduciary litigation continues to rise as beneficiaries challenge the decisions of trustees and other fiduciaries managing their inheritances. Trustees continue to wrestle with volatility in the equities markets, and as it becomes more difficult to generate income because of historically low bond yields, trustees are increasingly the target of beneficiary claims for failure to properly manage trust assets and make distributions. There is also the steady drumbeat of claims related to communications with beneficiaries, proper diversification of concentrated asset positions, and issues related to family businesses held in trust. This program provides you with an update on recent trends and developments in fiduciary litigation, including those related to asset management, distribution practices, and communications with beneficiaries.

Learn how to collect, review, and present electronic evidence in your family law cases. Demonstrations will show the use of computer, cell phone, and social media data in family law cases. Using and minimizing social media evidence and preserving data in the cloud will be discussed. Gain an understanding of the new Oregon State Bar ethics opinion on metadata. Evidence matters!

“Crowd funding” is an innovation under securities law that allows companies to raise capital from small investors using certain online platforms. Companies are able to raise capital from investors that would not otherwise qualify to participate in securities offerings. The idea behind the new law is to open new sources of capital for companies that are too small for public offerings and too big for private offerings. Disclosure and solicitation rules vary from existing securities law, but there are still substantial regulatory requirements that must be satisfied to avoid giving rise to liability for the issuer and others. This program provides you with a practical guide to the new crowd-funding law, the types of companies for which crowd funding will work best, the practical process of working with online platforms to raise capital, and how crowd-funding law alters existing securities law requirements.

Multi-family properties—apartment buildings, multiplexes, rehabbed and subdivided single-family houses—have fared well during the general real estate downtown. As individuals look to more affordable, stable, and short-term housing, they increasingly look to apartments and multiplexes. These trends are fueling a substantial increase in the development of new multi-family properties and the rehabilitation of existing properties into multiplexes. The credit crisis and recession in the real estate economy, however, have made both conventional and government-guaranteed financing of these properties much more challenging. The short-term nature of occupancy of these properties also puts a premium on carefully drafted management agreements. This program provides you with a practical guide to planning, structuring, and drafting the development, finance, and management of multi-family properties.

For employers, the workplace is deep with potential torts. Hiring can be a delicate balance of adequately investigating the background of an applicant to cover past misconduct without making legally prohibited inquiries. Workplace supervision in a digital age easily gives rise to claims of invasions of privacy. Workplace investigations, often involving conflicts among employee, can implicate claims of the intentional infliction of emotional distress, defamation, and retaliation. At every stage of the employment process there are potential torts. This program provides you with a practical guide to tort liability in the employment relationship, including torts in recruiting and hiring applicants, retaining and monitoring employees on the job, and best practices to avoid or limit liability.

In many instances, clients want to be jointly represented—in litigation, a business or commercial transaction, or an estate planning matter. Their motivations may include a desire to save attorney fees, more closely align positions and strategies in litigation or a transaction, and often a belief that no conflicts exist between the parties and thus there is no need for independent representation. Despite these client desires and beliefs, ethics rules require attorneys to carefully identify and disclose conflicts and obtain a waiver (where possible) to continue a representation or withdraw (where a waiver is not possible). Explaining this to clients who are intent on a joint representation may be difficult but is necessary to avoid later ethics complaints. This program provides you with a guide to identifying the ethical issues in joint representations, how to discuss them with clients, and how to obtain waivers or withdraw from the representation.