Missouri Live Bundle 2025

Corporations may approach diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives via more analytically driven recruitment and retention efforts that employ indirect, race neutral, proxy measures to build a diverse workforce while avoiding legal challenges of discrimination. This assessment considers how anti-bias training practices and promotion policies to senior executive or board positions might satisfy measurable DEI outcomes without implementing diversity quotas or triggering an anti-DEI backlash from employees. Ultimately, the intent is to survive the strict scrutiny commands of the Equal Protection Clause and thereby avoid “pernicious stereotype[s]” or “race . . . used as a negative.”.

The challenges corporations must overcome to develop legally defensible DEI metrics and goals that satisfy the Supreme Court’s recent call for “metric[s] of meaningful representation” that are not based upon “proportional representation” or “racial balancing” while still preserving the litigation shield to claims of discrimination and attaining measurable DEI goals. This issue is timely given calls for enhanced corporate disclosure legislation in tune with the SEC’s approval in August 2021 of a diversity disclosures mandate for boards of Nasdaq-listed companies, along with the ongoing litigation challenging those rules in Alliance for Fair Board Recruitment, National Center for Public Policy Research v. SEC, 2024 U.S. App. LEXIS 3805.

Attorneys at any level who seek greater clarity on how to best serve legally mindful and socially responsible corporations that wish to prioritize progress on DEI goals without alienating segments of the workforce or engaging in mere virtue signaling. This includes preserving the litigation shield of corporate clients from claims of either discrimination based on Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 or concerns of reverse discrimination based on the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.

Learning Objectives:

• Introduce core concepts in the diversity, equity, and inclusion DEI space such as equality versus equity, opinion or belief formation, stereotypes versus prejudice and discrimination
• Canvass recent legal developments in DEI at the federal and state levels in the educational context to the extent they are precursors of or predictors for ongoing legal developments in the corporate context
• Explore the possible reasons for inefficacy of DEI trainings and elusiveness of longitudinal goals to shift corporate culture and achieve greater diversity in the workplace
• Connect corporate social responsibility (CSR) praxis in the environmental social governance (ESG) context with DEI initiatives and illustrate the linkage between trends towards hard and soft information regulation
• Evaluate the vulnerability to discrimination litigation of corporations with ambiguous metrics and goals underlying DEI initiatives (e.g., trainings and long-term workforce diversity balancing goals)
• Assess “show and tell” disclosure requirements on corporate board diversity and whether soft information regulation of this variety is likely to move the needle on achieving DEI outcomes

Course Time Schedule:

Eastern Time: 2:00 PM - 4:00 PM
Central Time: 1:00 PM - 3:00 PM
Mountain Time: 12:00 AM - 2:00 PM
Pacific Time: 11:00 AM - 1:00 PM
Alaska Time: 10:00 AM - 12:00 AM
Hawaii-Aleutian Time: 9:00 AM - 11:00 AM

This course is also being presented on the following dates:

Friday, July 11, 2025
Friday, August 1, 2025
Friday, August 22, 2025
Sunday, August 31, 2025
Friday, September 19, 2025

This course serves as a refresher for attorneys on avoiding basic ethical issues that may arise in their practice, from properly handling client funds to maintaining the right social media presence. Attendees will review real examples and governing rules to learn how to avoid common ethical complaints from clients.

Ethical practice is a key part of legal practice and is even strictly governed by some state bars. In the age of social media, many new ethical issues arise that attorneys may not have been equipped to navigate in law school. This course has everything from basic reminders to things practicing attorneys may have yet to consider. 

This program is ideal for attorneys in any field of law. It is specifically beneficial for attorneys who frequently interact with clients.

Learning Objectives: 

• Preserve client confidence
• Protect attorney-client privilege
• Navigate new issues created by social media, such as negative online reviews
• Properly handle client funds in either dedicated client trusts or in pooled accounts
• Avoid client complaints for lack of diligence
• Avoid client complaints for failure to communicate
• Properly handle mistakes in client interfacing
• Avoid making public or online comments about pending matters
• Stay mindful of basic ethical principles so one’s judgment is not clouded by ambition, greed, or fame
• Recognize and properly respond to mental health, substance abuse, and personal finance issues

Course Time Schedule:

Eastern Time: 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Central Time: 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM
Mountain Time: 9:00 AM - 10:00 AM
Pacific Time: 8:00 AM - 9:00 AM
Alaska Time: 7:00 AM - 8:00 AM
Hawaii-Aleutian Time: 6:00 AM - 7:00 AM

This course is also being presented on the following dates:

Sunday, July 6, 2025
Sunday, August 24, 2025
Sunday, August 31, 2025
Sunday, September 14, 2025
Sunday, October 12, 2025

Investor-State Arbitration (Investment Arbitration) is a unique area of dispute resolution with many specific features that are quite different from commercial arbitration. This course will identify and explain the unique aspects of investor-state arbitration.

This program will cover topics such as the differences between investor-state and commercial arbitration, the unique features of investment arbitration, various forums, including ICSID, and where investment matters can be arbitrated.

All practitioners who want to understand how investor-state arbitrations work are encouraged to attend this course. Those who have that basic understanding but do not regularly practice investment arbitration and, therefore, need a refresher may also find this course helpful.

Learning Objectives:

• Analyze the difference between investor-state arbitrations and commercial arbitrations
• Explore how tribunals evaluate whether they have jurisdiction or not
• Examine the International Centre for the Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) and its significance in investor-state arbitrations
• Assess potential breaches of state responsibility and the measure of damages

The Rules of Professional Conduct in the various jurisdictions are notoriously full of black holes and missing guidance: ethics rules lag behind the reality of legal practice, and there are stubborn problems in the ethical practice of law that the profession still wrestles with. Ethics is always evolving, and one of the ways this evolution can be seen is in legal ethics opinions, the periodic holdings of ethics committees in the nation’s bar associations attempting to settle perplexing ethics conflicts and dilemmas.

Unfortunately, most lawyers don’t keep up with these often important new analyses in their jurisdictions, never mind others. Attendees will be guided by legal ethicist Jack Marshall who follows these important analyses and will explain them so participants in this program can be forewarned and forearmed. 

The Legal Ethics Grand Tour identifies and explores critical legal ethics issues that each state, the District of Columbia, and the American Bar Association have recently clarified. Attendees will learn about the many legal ethics traps and landmines of emerging technologies and the proper usage of social media. Attorneys as whistleblowers, conflicts of interest, and when they cannot be waived will be discussed. Marshall will also supply attendees with useful tools, references, and information on emerging developments in this comprehensive exploration of recent legal ethics issues. 

This course is ideal for all attorneys interested in recent legal ethics developments.

Learning Objectives:

• Emphasize the importance of state, D.C., and American Bar Association legal ethics opinions (LEOs) as essential resources for lawyers to keep up-to-date on the constant evolution of legal ethics standards
• Analyze how jurisdictions influence each other
• Define the perils of practicing outside one’s home jurisdiction without checking the current jurisdiction’s recent LEOs
• Distinguish between legal ethics opinions and the Rules they interpret
• Focus on the major legal ethics opinions from many sources to protect a lawyer from serious ethical missteps and malpractice
• Apply invaluable legal ethics analysis tools and techniques to professional dilemmas and conflicts when they arise

Course Time Schedule:

Eastern Time: 2:00 PM - 4:00 PM
Central Time: 1:00 PM - 3:00 PM
Mountain Time: 12:00 PM - 2:00 PM
Pacific Time: 11:00 AM - 1:00 PM
Alaska Time: 10:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Hawaii-Aleutian Time: 9:00 AM - 11:00 AM

This course is also being presented on the following dates:

Sunday, July 27, 2025
Sunday, August 10, 2025
Sunday, August 17, 2025
Sunday, September 28, 2025
Sunday, October 5, 2025