Virginia Live CLE Bundle 2021

Attorneys often serve clients at their most vulnerable and emotionally challenging moments. Whether it’s navigating probate after a death or representing someone struggling with psychiatric illness, lawyers must communicate with empathy and professionalism while also protecting themselves and others from burnout or abuse. This course is designed to help attorneys effectively serve emotionally distressed clients experiencing mental illness or exhibiting hostile or irrational behavior.. This includes clients navigating trauma, death, or mental health crises common in child protection, conservatorship, estate planning, and family law cases.

This program provides practical strategies for attorneys to remain composed, ethical, and effective in high-stress interactions without compromising legal standards or personal boundaries. Participants will learn: how to maintain professional boundaries with emotionally volatile or mentally ill clients; how to communicate with empathy while managing irrational or aggressive behavior; how to recognize warning signs of mental health concerns and ethical duties surrounding them; and how to set expectations and deadlines with resistant or high-conflict individuals. This course will also teach attorneys how to de-escalate tense situations while staying trauma-informed and provide techniques to validate feelings while setting realistic expectations.

This course is ideal for attorneys in high-emotion practice areas, including child welfare, probate, estate planning, family law, elder law, and criminal defense. Both new and seasoned attorneys will benefit from the practical tools shared.

Learning Objectives:

1. Analyze the psychological and emotional challenges faced by clients in crisis. 
2. Acquire trauma-informed communication skills to navigate high-stress legal situations effectively. 
3. Identify mental health warning signs and how to respond ethically. 
4. Practice de-escalation techniques and boundary-setting with irate clients. 
5. Develop effective systems for setting clear expectations and adhering to deadlines. 
6. Explore attorney wellness strategies when working with emotionally difficult clients.

Course Time Schedule:

Eastern Time: 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
Central Time: 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Mountain Time: 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM
Pacific Time: 9:00 AM - 10:00 AM
Alaska Time: 8:00 AM - 9:00 AM
Hawaii-Aleutian Time: 7:00 AM - 8:00 AM

This course is also being presented on the following dates:

Monday, January 26, 2026
Monday, February 9, 2026
Monday, February 23, 2026
Monday, March 16, 2026
Monday, March 23, 2026

The juvenile justice system can present significant challenges for attorneys, requiring skillful navigation to ensure the best possible outcomes for young clients. The repercussions of a guilty plea can affect a juvenile’s life far into adulthood. This course is designed to equip attorneys with a thorough understanding of the legal and ethical issues surrounding guilty pleas in the juvenile justice context.

Attendees will gain insight into the juvenile justice process, including its historical foundations, evolving trends, and potential future developments. The program will also address attorney ethics in juvenile matters, the lasting consequences of guilty pleas, and the dynamic roles and interactions among attorneys, the courts, victims, and families.

This course is suitable for attorneys at all stages of their careers, particularly those interested in expanding their practice into juvenile or criminal law.

Learning Objectives:

1. Describe the core principles of juvenile justice.
2. Identify the roles of the defense attorney, family, victim, and the court play in the guilty plea.
3. Explain the ethical obligations defense attorneys have in ensuring juveniles understand the full implications of a guilty plea.
4. Analyze how defense attorneys can ensure that a juvenile defendant is fully aware of collateral consequences.

Course Time Schedule:

Eastern Time: 1:30 PM - 2:30 PM
Central Time: 12:30 PM - 1:30 PM
Mountain Time: 11:30 AM - 12:30 PM
Pacific Time: 10:30 AM - 11:30 AM
Alaska Time: 9:30 AM - 10:30 AM
Hawaii-Aleutian Time: 8:30 AM - 9:30 AM

This course is also being presented on the following dates:

Monday, February 9, 2026
Monday, March 2, 2026
Monday, April 13, 2026
Monday, May 11, 2026
Monday, June 1, 2026

This program will explore the evolving status of college athletes as paid employees in the wake of NCAA rule changes and litigation. Colleges and universities, for the first time in the history of the NCAA, were given the right to pay players directly. The impact of these payments on the legal landscape for workers' compensation has shifted dramatically. Attendees will examine how New York's broad definition of 'employee' applies to student-athletes, including scenarios involving injuries both within and outside the state.

As student-athletes gain compensation and employee-like rights, legal claims are poised to increase. This program equips attorneys to counsel clients, whether athletes, universities, or sponsors, on compliance and litigation risks. Attendees will learn how NCAA reforms and NIL compensation impact employment classification, when athletes may be considered employees under New York law, and how jurisdiction applies even to out-of-state injuries and athletes.

This program is designed for all attorneys who wish to understand how the transformation of college athletics impacts the practice of law in New York. It will be valuable for lawyers in workers' compensation, employment, personal injury, higher education, compliance, or general practice who may be asked at some point whether a student athlete is entitled to benefits in the event of an injury.

Learning Objectives:

1. Differentiate between employees and independent contractors. 
2. Examine jurisdiction and when it applies.
3. Review Special Rules for workers under 25.

The "big picture" challenges to legal ethics principles posed by advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and related high-technology advances require consideration from attorneys. Stephan Hawking, the leading physicist of the latter 20th and early 21st centuries, predicted (until his death in 2018) that "artificial intelligence" would be mankind's "last invention." How near or far into the future is such a fate awaiting humanity? Will he be proven right, or will human intelligence (HI) manage to prevent such an apocalypse? How long will AI's "childhood" last? Can humans (or will humans) identify evolutionary changes warranting countermeasures so they don't become irreversible revolutionary changes for the worse rather than the better? Do not ethical duties of the legal profession necessarily include continuing vigilance regarding such technological changes to enable us to protect and preserve the tools (such as attorney-client confidentiality and privilege) needed for the legal profession to continue performing our most important mission: to protect liberty writ large?

Attendees will cover topics such as how AI was viewed in the past, how it has evolved in the present, and possible future implications. The types of AI and their classifications will be discussed. Participants will learn how the judiciary has treated AI and current questions and issues related to AI usage in the legal profession.

The format of this program combines the lecture method with the Socratic method, fostering extensive interactive participation and critical analysis of a broad range of issues relevant to the seminar's subject matter. This approach goes beyond merely chronological descriptions of specific topics and subtopics. In other words, the content of each workshop (and the order and extent of emphasis upon particular topics and subtopics) will be substantially influenced by the nature and extent of interactive participation regarding specific aspects thereof. Depending on the number of participants in a particular seminar, the format typically results in most, if not all, participants engaging in conversational-style, interactive discussions and analyses of specific topics during the seminar, and also permits interruptions, questions, challenges, and other contributions throughout the seminar. Think of collegially enjoyable and enlightening round-table discussions. It's a form of learning that involves thinking while interactively participating, rather than learning solely by listening (the latter of which is the lecture method).

This program is designed for any lawyer who understands: (a) that the very nature of the constitutional form of government is to protect the good of liberty from the evil of tyranny, (b) that, therefore, the primary mission of our profession is to protect liberty writ large within the bounds of the rule of law [in contrast to the rule of men (mankind)], and (c) that protecting such good from such evil requires our profession to be disciplined by understanding essential principles of science in seeking to prevent the latter from destroying the former.

Learning Objectives:

1. Refresh what should be every lawyer's common knowledge of unique aspects of the legal profession in contrast to all other professions, occupations, etc.: It's the effect of the Constitution's (and each state constitution's) vesting of "the judicial power" of the sovereign in its "Supreme Court" and its thereby incorporation of the evolutionary nature of the judiciary's common law inherent judicial power (i.e., sui generis power) to define, prescribe, and enforce educational, moral, ethical and civil standards for the practice of law and the status of lawyers as officers of the courts.
2. Understand that common law inherent judicial power (sui generis power) in an adversarial system created under common law, the supreme court of the sovereign (i.e., the U.S. Supreme Court and each state supreme court) creates structural and functional tools for the administration of justice – i.e., rules of evidence, burdens of proof, procedural rules, definitions of the practice of law, regulatory control over the conduct of attorneys, and the nature and scope of attorney-client confidentiality, attorney-client privilege, and attorney work-product. 
3. Examine how the judiciary generally encourages lawyers to utilize modern devices, programs, applications, and procedures, and in some contexts specifically requires the utilization of particular devices, programs, applications, and procedures while also requiring lawyers to utilize them in ways that comport with duties imposed by the judiciary upon lawyers.
4. Explore how lawyers' uses of AI and similar or related programs, applications and procedures intrinsically undermine the extent of privacy necessary for proper utilization of particular tools (such as attorney-client confidentiality, attorney-client privilege, and attorney work-product), and such undermining of privacy a fortiori interferes with, or jeopardizes, lawyers' abilities to utilize them in ways that comport with duties imposed by the judiciary upon lawyers. This creates a conundrum. 
5. Evaluate the significance of such a conundrum where privacy is undermined; lawyers must have sufficient scientific literacy to recognize the contexts in which technology can undermine or even negate efforts by lawyers to satisfy the legal and ethical duties imposed upon them by the judicial branch as "officers of the courts." 
6. Assess how the nature and ubiquity of technological threats to lawyers' ethical duties are such that efforts by individual lawyers to counter or negate such threats cannot succeed without overt and comprehensive regulatory measures by the courts to provide constitutionally effective countermeasures against such threats.

Course Time Schedule:

Eastern Time: 4:00 PM - 6:00 PM
Central Time: 3:00 PM - 5:00 PM
Mountain Time: 2:00 PM - 4:00 PM
Pacific Time: 1:00 PM - 3:00 PM
Alaska Time: 12:00 PM - 2:00 PM
Hawaii-Aleutian Time: 11:00 AM - 1:00 PM

This course is also being presented on the following dates:

Monday, January 19, 2026
Monday, January 26, 2026
Monday, February 2, 2026
Monday, February 9, 2026
Monday, February 16, 2026