10-Hour Special Subjects Package

Using real-world legal examples, this presentation will showcase the capabilities of industry-leading AI tools such as ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and CoPilot, demonstrating how they can be utilized in your legal practice.

Additionally, the presentation will address critical aspects of privacy and highlight the unique strengths of each AI tool, enabling you to make well-informed decisions when incorporating AI into your legal technology strategy.

Over the past two years, our speaker, Stephen M. Smith, has provided AI education to over 100 organizations, teaching them how to transform their businesses with AI tools to increase productivity, improve analytics, overhaul their content creation processes (from marketing content to legal briefs), lower costs, and increase revenues

As the State Bar has recognized in its new MCLE requirements, incivility is an increasing problem in the legal profession. It is important to acknowledge that all of us at times, either intentionally or more likely unintentionally, contribute to this problem by acting uncivilly based upon our own biases. Moderated by internationally recognized McGill University assistant professor, Dr. Jordan Axt, who focuses his research on the formation of intergroup bias, this program will explore why we form these unintentional biases. It will then untangle the nexus between unintentional biases and incivility, and how we can learn to recognize these biases in order to curb our own incivility.

Ask the speaker a question. Email and be sure to include the program name in the subject line.

Life as an attorney can be exhausting, overwhelming, and all-consuming. The constant stress and demands on your time can put any attorney in a never-ending cycle that can lead to burnout or otherwise harm the career you have worked so hard to build. In this program, family law attorney turned life coach and author Wendy Meadows will discuss what “burnout” really means, what it looks like in the legal profession, identify the signs to look for that might signal that burnout is on the horizon, and give you the tools you need to overcome burnout starting NOW! To delve even deeper into the discussion, special education lawyer and trained moderator Jackie Deam will be helping to facilitate the presentation to ensure Wendy answers the questions on everyone’s mind.

The presenters are Neville Johnson, author of the best-seller, The John Wooden Pyramid of Success, Stephen S. Marmer, MD and PhD, a top psychiatrist with an extensive and impressive resume, and Judge Stephen Pfahler’s (Superior Court, Stanley Mosk Courthouse), The Whole Truth For Lawyers, A Complete Guide To Flourishing In Your Life And Career. John Wooden created the legendary Pyramid and its elements will be discussed along with a discussion of the recent Harvard study on happiness, and Judge Pfahler will discuss his findings and conclusions on the subjects.

What is implicit bias and how can it manifest in almost undetectable ways in all aspects of the legal profession? Our distinguished panelists have been on every side of the legal profession: attorney, mediator, and judicial officer. They will discuss two prevalent, yet covert ways implicit bias affects every sphere of the legal profession: microaggressions and gaslighting. They will provide real life examples from the legal profession and what we as attorneys can do better to move the legal profession forward.

As lawyers, we are looked to for sound, strategic advice by our clients. We are asked to solve complex issues and often must navigate heightened emotions from various parties while diligently advising our clients. In the session, you will learn how to have greater awareness of bias in decision making and how to interrupt bias before it negatively affects you and your client. Mindy Gulati will touch on the brain science of cognitive bias and dig into practical tips and tools for how to address bias as we navigate our ethical obligations to our clients.

This program will explore the ethical duties of an attorney when billing clients, as well as best practices to avoid fee disputes and ensure entitlement to payment.

The State Bar of California has adopted new guidelines which address the use of Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the legal profession. The “Practical Guidance for the Use of Generative Artificial Intelligence in the Practice of Law,” which is influenced by the recommendations of the Committee on Professional Responsibility and Conduct (COPRAC), touches upon confidentiality, competence, compliance, communication, candor, billing, and bias. The goal is to clarify what ethical obligations lawyers have and what pitfalls to avoid when relying on AI.

Lawyers need to know about this evolving technology in order to understand the coming regulation, avoid non-compliance, and to protect the public.

This program will review the new guidelines and how AI promises to revolutionize the practice of law.

The new Rule of Professional Conduct 8.3, that requires lawyers to report other lawyers for certain types of illegal conduct, has generated questions about when it is necessary to report conduct, what types of illegal conduct are required to be reported, and what types of conduct shouldn't be reported. This program will provide guidelines for the average practitioner and will also address reporting requirements when the conduct comes from lawyers within the same firm, pursuant to Rules 5.1 and 5.2. This knowledge is essential for anyone managing a law office, particularly since a violation can affect not only a lawyer involved in wrongdoing, but the lawyer or lawyers who could be disciplined for failing to report the errant lawyer.

This panel of top attorneys in malpractice and ethics will discuss the complicated issues in fee agreements, including:

- Contingent fees of 50% or more
- Changing fee amounts mid-stream
- Can a contingent fee ever be increased after the initial K is entered?
- Taking a percentage of the client’s income in perpetuity (despite new counsel, new K having been negotiated, and other change of circumstances, can this be shoehorned into an unconscionability argument?)
- Nuances of referral fees; best practices for handling fee disputes
- Requirement of observing MFAA in B&P Code before compelling contractual arbitration
- Arbitration agreements
- When and what do you have to tell the client to seek independent counsel before agreeing (e.g., waiver of a jury trial is an essential right that needs to be carefully considered; that the loser in litigation may pay attorney’s fees)