MIE 2017 National Conference for Legal Services Managers

MIE 2017 National Conference for Legal Services Managers: Management, Supervision and All That Jazz

April 6 and 7, 2017

Register for the conference and reserve hotel rooms by March 20, 2017. 

Click Here to view the Conference Program. 

Join MIE in New Orleans for these sessions designed to boast your skills as a manager, supervisor and leader in your legal aid organization:

Time Management: Taking Control of Your Time with David Cruickshank
Legal aid managers and supervisors must be effective timekeepers in order to manage multiple tasks, technology and people. What are your current time management habits? How can you manage to work smarter, not just more hours? How do your colleagues with a clean desktop do it? Learn the answers to these questions and more during this practical session.

Delegation and Supervision Skills: It’s Not All Up to You with David Cruickshank
As a manager and supervisor, you regularly work with legal and non-legal colleagues. What are your delegation habits? What are the costs of ineffective or inadequate delegation? What do staff say about the impact of poor supervision? Learn how to adjust your supervision and delegation techniques to suit the situation and the experience of your staff.

David Cruickshank, Principal of Edge International, and longtime advisor to private lawyers and legal aid lawyers, offers practical courses to help lawyers and law offices get organized, prioritize demands, manage time and control distractions. He advises law and other professional services firms on practice management, strategy, governance, leadership development and talent retention strategies. He works with managing partners, professional development directors and partners, and hiring partners to convert training to a strategic advantage of the firm. David creates customized programs on leadership, time management, project management, delegation, feedback and business development skills.

He has worked as a training consultant in top firms in Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States since 1990. He is well known academically in the field of legal skills education. He has taught at the law schools of British Columbia, Calgary, Bristol and Pepperdine Universities.  After practicing at Gowlings in Canada, he was Director of Professional Development at Paul Weiss in New York.  David has law degrees from the University of Western Ontario and Harvard.  David is now based in San Diego, where he is a Principal of Edge International.

Plenary: The Professional Duty of Self-Care with Buddy Stockwell
Lawyers often practice in high stress environments that can cause problems such as anxiety, depression, and compassion fatigue. Also, sometimes lawyers turn to unhealthy coping skills to try and alleviate their suffering. This presentation identifies common mental health issues experienced by lawyers, solutions and healthy self-care practices to promote health, and how good health is a component of professional competence.    

J.E. "Buddy" Stockwell III is the Executive Director of the Louisiana Judges & Lawyers Assistance Program, Inc. (JLAP) which provides confidential assistance to lawyers, judges and family members who suffer from alcohol/drug abuse, addiction, depression or other mental health problems. Prior to his tenure at JLAP, Buddy was a solo practitioner in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, focusing on Family Law and Child Custody Litigation. In 2005, he sold his law office, home and cars and he and his wife moved aboard an ocean-rated catamaran and sailed the seas for 6 years. Upon his return, he began a new career with JLAP, located near New Orleans. Buddy actively served on the Louisiana State Bar Association’s Committee on Alcohol and Drug Abuse since 1993, and he is a Certified Clinical Interventionist through Love First at the Betty Ford Center. 

Plenary: Leading Strategic Advocacy as a Middle Manager, with Catherine Carr, NLADA and Legal Aid Consultant, Philadelphia
As managers face renewed threats to legal aid funding and challenges to programs that serve low income communities, it is particularly important to think strategically about how to best use resources and deliberately plan advocacy to best address the problems clients face. Too often programs get stuck doing the same work they’ve always done or not thinking in new and creative ways about how to focus their work. This session will provide information and examples of how managers can provide leadership to move their work in new directions to achieve broad-based and lasting results for clients, and will introduce NLADA’s Strategic Advocacy Initiative. 

Catherine Carr is the immediate past Executive Director of Community Legal Services, the largest civil legal aid provider in Philadelphia, a position she held for twenty years, following service as a staff attorney specializing in public benefits. She is an Adjunct Professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School and School of Social Work and Social Policy, coordinates the NLADA Strategic Advocacy Initiative, and provides independent consulting to legal aid programs. She is a member and past president of the MIE Board and serves on the MIE Journal Committee along with several foundation, bar, and city government boards and task forces in Philadelphia. Cathy may be reached atcathycarrphila@gmail.com.  

Hot Topics in Legal Aid, with Don Saunders, Vice President, Civil Legal Services, National Legal Aid and Defender Association.  This discussion with Don Saunders, Vice President, Civil Legal Services, National Legal Aid and Defender Association, will cover a variety of topics at the national level related to the delivery of civil legal aid, including the federal budgeting process and the status of appropriations for LSC and programs serving low income clients; LSC requirements on educating legislators, uses of organizational and personal social media accounts and other thorny issues; and other topics of interest to conference attendees.

 

Identifying and Working through Workplace Issues which Implicate Legal Protections with Luz Molina, Professor of Law, Workplace Justice Project, Loyola University School of Law, Michael T. Tusa, Jr., Sutton, Alker and Rahter, LLC; Andrea M. Agee, Staff Attorney, Workplace Justice Project at the Stuart H. Smith Law Clinic and Center for Social Justice at the Loyola College of Law
The presentation will explore difficult and all too common issues which arise in the workplace through fact patterns. Fact patterns discussed will implicate the ADA, FMLA, Title VII, harassment, wage issues and necessary investigations. Your active participation is encouraged.

Performance Management Systems- Getting the Band to Hit Their Notes
A well-run organization needs to have effective ways to manage performance so that when it comes time to do annual appraisals, supervisors and managers are drawing from an established framework that has clearly communicated expectations and goals for professional development.  This workshop will explore the intersection of performance management systems and professional development; evaluation tools; and practical tips to approach the challenge of sustaining a performance management system.  

Facing the Music: What Goes Wrong (And Right!) with Teams and Meetings
Team work is at the heart of any legal services organization where resources are always limited but need is always high.  An essential tool of a manager is the ability to put together functional teams and run constructive, organized meetings which lead to realizing program vision and tangible goals.  Running an effective meeting with your team is easier said than done – it involves providing a context for why you’re there, what you’re hoping to accomplish, having a clear, concise agenda that can serve as your roadmap, and ending with clear next steps and who will do what. This workshop will explore the essential elements of good team-building as well as specific aspects of effective meetings and ways to deal with specific problem areas. 

Providing Effective Feedback and Holding Difficult Conversations- Whether It's "Boogie- Woogie" or "The Blues"  
This session is aimed at newer supervisors.  It will introduce and demonstrate techniques and provide effective feedback to staff and colleagues; create a culture that encourages constructive, effective feedback; craft communications that move work forward and improve performance and plan and hold difficult conversations.

Caring for Yourself is not Self-Indulgence, It is Self-Preservation!  
Burnout is an occupational hazard of legal services.   This roundtable discussion led by HR directors from two legal services programs will provide a framework for thinking about how we identify, anticipate and prevent burnout.  This session will have participants break into groups to discuss ideas that help lead to positive self-care, how to leverage internal resources for purposes of promoting a culture of self-care in your organization and we will discuss ways to re-energize your passion for the life transforming work you do.

Community Lawyering:  Defining the Work, Measuring the Advocacy and Empowering Communities to Ensure Success
Our mission is to address the greatest legal needs of the communities we serve.  But what is “community lawyering”?  How do we define it, and how do we measure its success? How do we do our work in order to keep our hand on the pulse of the community and ensure that we are also empowering those we serve?  This session will focus on defining community lawyering, training advocates in order to create and support a culture of community lawyers, and delving into the metrics of this type of advocacy including evaluating advocates’ work and developing a fundraising strategy to support this work.  

Remote Supervision—Conducting the Band from Afar  
Whether staff are 70 miles away in another program office, or across town at a Medical/Legal Partnership clinic, supervising staff remotely presents unique challenges for communication, oversight, and staff development.  Thoughtful strategies and protocols can help build project, office, and program success and increase the likelihood of staff retention.

Managing with Data with IV Ashton, Greg Landry and George Elliott
This session will show supervisors and managers how to use data for more than reporting. Use your Case Management System to drill deeper into the data already being collected to gain insights into the work being done by staff: amount, type, and quality. In addition, learn to use CMS data to guide targeted outreach efforts, track emerging trends or clusters of legal issues, and find underserved populations or specialized grant cases.

Emerging Technology and Trends with IV Ashton, Glenn Rawdon and Joshua Goodwin
Come to this session to learn what’s new on the technology horizon, and how innovations may impact management and the delivery of services to clients. The session will consider: bring your own device (BYOD) policies realities, and security; artificial intelligence; online intake; and SMS text v. email. 


IV Ashton, founder and President of LegalServer and Houston, has a proven track record of providing technical assistance to non-profit organizations with regard to designing, developing and implementing vital information and knowledge management solutions. As the co-founder of the Illinois Legal Aid Online, IV developed the first web-based platform to deliver legal training and support to volunteer attorneys and pro se litigants in Illinois.  In addition to his work domestically, IV has significant international experience assisting governmental and non-government organizations in developing information technology solutions to increase efficiencies. For instance, he designed Albania’s legal information infrastructure for the World Bank. He also lead a team in developing a war crimes database to track the violations of human rights in Kosovo and has led legal/information technology projects in Bosnia, Kosovo, Macedonia and Albania.  IV may be reached at ivashton@legalaserver.org.

Glenn Rawdon, Senior Program Counsel for Technology, Legal Services Corporation, is responsible for helping legal services programs with their technology efforts and with the administration of the Technology Initiative Grants (TIG) program. Since the program started in 2000, TIG has made over 640 grants totaling over $53 million, many of them in partnerships with SJI and the courts. He is a member of the Executive Committee of the Self-Represented Litigants Network and a frequent speaker on self-help strategies. He is a fellow in the College of Law Practice Management. Before coming to LSC in 1999, he was a managing attorney at Legal Services of Eastern Oklahoma for five years and before that, he was in private practice. He has served as co-chair of the Law Office Management section of the Oklahoma Bar Association and was a member of the Legal Technical Advisory Counsel of the ABA.
 

Structuring the Dialogue of Diversity and Inclusion in Legal Aid: Can We Talk  
Why is Diversity and Inclusion such a hot topic these days in legal aid? Diversity comes in many forms—generational, racial, gender, age, sexual identity and orientation.  Recognizing the differences amongst your staff, appreciating how those differences make your program stronger and leveraging the unique perspectives that diversity brings to a legal services program are just some reasons why diversity is so important.  Is there a way to structure this dialogue so it is effective, inclusive and garners tangible goals and results? At this session you will hear from two legal aid programs about why D & I is important and how creating a diversity committee can serve as a powerful vehicle for fostering the diversity and inclusion conversation.   

Approaches to Leadership in Legal Services- Getting the Band to Follow Your Tune
This workshop will examine leadership in the context of working from a vision and mission statement to set strategic objectives, work plans and individual performance objectives.  The group will discuss methodologies for: setting goals and priorities; bringing the goals into sharp focus for each employee and effectively implementing and achieving the new goals and priorities.  The group will also discuss a few of the key principles of leadership in legal services as set out in the MIE Principles of Leadership in the Legal Aid Community.

The Roles of Supervisors and Managers: Keeping the Beat
This session is aimed at newer supervisors and managers and will review and discuss the myriad possible roles that these staff members may adopt, the factors to consider in determining what roles are appropriate for their particular situation, and how to balance supervision, management and case load responsibilities. 

Managing Up - Getting in Sync with the Bandleader
As legal aid managers, whether managing attorneys, unit chiefs, litigation directors, or executive directors, we focus most of our attention on directing and guiding the work of staff who report to us. This session will present strategies and skills to help influence the work and decisions of colleagues, peers and your own supervisors to achieve a shared vision, better collaboration, and greater effectiveness of your office’s work.

Roundtable:  Unique Personnel Challenges in a Unionized Workforce
Managing and supervising staff in a unionized workplace can be a challenging, and unique environment for middle managers.   One of the more challenging factors is effectively handling personnel problems when there are so many layers to consider.  Middle managers have to balance dual roles and competing interests in personnel matters, while upholding the integrity of the union/management relationship.  This roundtable invites participants to confidentially discuss some of the more sensitive, more unique personnel challenges they face as middle managers in a unionized environment, in the hopes of learning from each other some best practice tips on how to navigate this space.

Roundtable: Personnel and Management Issues
An MIE roundtable presents an opportunity for supervisors and managers to raise specific issues in their program in a safe and confidential environment and receive feedback, suggestions and support from their peers. Perennially, personnel and inter-personal issues present challenges for managers and tend to be the issues that keep people up at night. This session will provide an opportunity to address some of these issues and enter into a dialogue about approaches to deal with these challenges. 

Click Here to view a draft Agenda for this conference.

Ace Hotel New Orleans
600 Carondelet St.
New Orleans, LA 70130
Rooms at the Ace are full.  The nearby Troubadour Hotel will make your room reservation. Call 888-858-6652 and reference the MIE group or
Click Here to book your room at the Troubador. 

Registration:
$465 MIE subscribers
$565 non-subscribers

Register for the conference and reserve hotel rooms by March 20, 2017. Hotel rooms are filling up rapidly.
Click Here to view a draft Agenda for this conference.