Please be advised that registration for all Training Division Events is limited to persons who provide services pursuant to the Federal Criminal Justice Act (CJA). For more information please read our Training Events Registration Disclaimer.
If you have any questions about registering, please emailus.
19 - 29
Grit: A Workshop to Energize, Elevate and Educate Women in Public Defense
Grit is a workshop designed by women and about women. If you seek community, growth, inspiration and time for reflection and goal setting, Grit is for you.
Who may register?
We welcome lawyers from federal defender offices or who are on CJA panels in any Federal District.
Program description
Women in indigent criminal defense have many successes to celebrate and also face unique challenges. Participants in this small, women-focused course will find an active, collaborative, supportive community. This training will address a variety of topics as experienced by women including the journey to criminal defense work, developing one’s professional identity, identifying leadership goals, navigating client relationships, ethical quandaries, challenges, sexual harassment, vicarious trauma, work-life balance, self-care practices and more.
Participants will hear about these topics from inspiring women in federal indigent defense and the judiciary who have made their mark in this profession. They will also have opportunities in small groups to explore these topics through structured exercises, assessment tools and conversation with the goal of enhancing effectiveness as a defender while maintaining balance and authenticity in one’s personal life. Participants will learn about scientific research on the impact of stress and tension on performance and will have opportunities to sample wellness practices.
Whether you are at the beginning of your career or further along and hitting your stride, assuming leadership roles and maybe facing a roadblock, this workshop is for you. It is introspective, retrospective and prospective. By the end of this training, participants will appreciate anew how the Grit community is large and welcoming, fiercely committed to the mission and absolutely essential to the profession. Participants will set professional goals, learn strategies for handling challenges that arise and strengthen a network of colleagues upon whom they can depend.
Program design & time expectations for participants
Grit is a workshop that engages participants in multiple ways over the course of 11 days. We will have live, moderated panel discussions and a concluding presentation with an interactive component. Certain presentations will be shared via pre-recorded video. Other course materials—additional videos, other media and self-assessment tools—will be posted in a learning management system, permitting participants to watch and read them at their own pace. Participants are expected to provide feedback in a variety of ways on content that they have watched and read. Synchronous learning will also be composed of several live small group sessions led by skilled co-facilitators.
Throughout Grit we will dedicate time to mindfulness exercises. These improve information processing, decision-making, concentration and productivity. We invite you to find a peaceful place and join us throughout the program for highly beneficial activities such as yoga, meditation, tai chi, qigong and a gratitude practice.
Registration process
We have a limited number of spots in this workshop. Our expectation is that each participant will complete all asynchronous segments (12-15 hours) and be present at all live group sessions (10 hours).
CLE
This program may satisfy CLE requirements in professionalism, ethics, health/ substance abuse/mental & physical issues, elimination of bias, inclusion and cultural competency.
4
Webinar: #illegalimages: The Psychology of Child Pornography Offenses
This presentation will review psychological and technological concepts relevant to the defense team’s representation in child pornography cases. The presenters will discuss how psychological, sexual, and technological factors combine to create a perfect storm that facilitates illegal online sexual behavior. The workshop will emphasize the mitigating factors applicable to sentencing hearings based on the latest psychological research regarding risk, recidivism, and the client's amenability to treatment. The discussion will include the necessary elements of psychosexual reports and risk assessments helpful in child pornography cases.
Presenters
Dr. David Delmonico, Professor, Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, PA
Elizabeth Griffin, MA, LMFT, Director of Internet Behavior Consulting, Minneapolis, MN
This webinar may be eligible for CLE credit, where authorized. Applications are pending in all states that grant CLE for Training Division webinars.
6
One of These Things is Not Like the Other: Challenging Drug Predicates
Our clients have been spared decades of prison time, §1326 convictions, and deportation by showing that their prior drug convictions were for substances not controlled by the federal government. In this webinar we will share some of the great law in this area and go step-by-step through the process so you, too, can successfully argue your client’s prior conviction is not a serious drug offense (ACCA), serious drug felony, felony drug offenses (851), controlled substance offense (career offender, §2K1.2), aggravated felony/conviction related to a controlled substance (§1326(d)), or drug trafficking offense (§2L1.2)).
Presenter
Davina Chen, Sentencing Resource Counsel Attorney, Los Angeles, CA
Start time is 2:00 pm Eastern Standard Time.
This webinar may be eligible for CLE credit, where authorized. Applications are pending in all states that grant CLE for Training Division webinars.
10
Military Culture/Military Mitigation Investigations
This presentation will build on Captain Cody's webinar Representing Veterans in Criminal Cases: Obtaining and Understanding Military Records on from June 18, 2020, available here (password protected).
Military Veterans undergo an experience far removed from the vast majority of those who sit in judgment of them in the justice system. The military culture/experience, particularly if it involves combat, indelibly shapes the veteran and often has significant causal or mitigation implications relating to criminal offenses. At core, as mandated by Porter v. McCollum, 558 US 30 (2009), the lawyer’s role and obligation in a veteran’s case is to the greatest degree possible understand military culture and investigate and tell the vet’s story -- to translate this uncommon experience into a human narrative that engenders the comprehension of a prosecutor, judge, jury and evokes their compassion. This practical instruction will assist lawyers in fulfilling their ethical obligation by exploring veteran culture, veteran client interaction, interpreting military records, interview techniques, and an archetypical veteran mitigation brief.
Presenter
Captain Art C. Cody is the director of criminal law at Veteran Advocacy Project, New York, NY.
Start time is 1:00 pm Eastern Standard Time.
This webinar may be eligible for CLE credit, where authorized. Applications are pending in all states that grant CLE for Training Division webinars.
12
Webinar: #onlinesexcrimes: Understanding The Child Online Solicitation Offender
This presentation will introduce defense teams to psychological and technological concepts relevant in online child solicitation cases, including sting operations. The session will emphasize the mitigating factors applicable at sentencing hearings based on the latest psychological research regarding risk and recidivism of online child solicitation offenders. How people charged with these offenses generally differ from those charged with child pornography will also be discussed. The presenters will also discuss the necessary elements of psychosexual reports and risk assessments helpful in child online solicitation cases.
Presenters
Dr. David Delmonico, Professor, Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, PA
Elizabeth Griffin, MA, LMFT, Director of Internet Behavior Consulting, Minneapolis, MN
1
Wellness for All in Public Defense
Public defense work is incredibly stressful. The work impacts our lives personally and professionally. You deserve to take care of yourself, for the benefit of yourself, your family, and your clients. This webinar will offer concrete ways to do just that. Ron Tyler is a Professor of Law and Director of the Stanford Criminal Defense Clinic. One of his areas of focus is on self-care for lawyers and law students. He has written and presented nationwide on the topic. His 22 years of experience as an AFPD prior to coming to Stanford gives him true insight into the vicarious trauma we all experience.
Presenter
Ron Tyler is a Professor of Law and Director of the Criminal Defense Clinic at Stanford Law School. The Clinic represents clients in the superior courts of California. Prof. Tyler’s scholarly agenda focuses on self-care skills for lawyers and criminal practice and procedure. His article: The First Thing We Do, Let’s Heal All the Law Students: Incorporating Self-Care Into A Criminal Defense Clinic, 21 Berkeley J. Crim. L. 1 (2016) is available at: http://scholarship.law.berkeley.edu/bjcl/vol21/iss2/1
Before joining the Stanford Law School faculty, Professor Tyler was an Assistant Federal Public Defender for 22 years in the Northern District of California. A dedicated defense attorney and nationally recognized expert, he has litigated at trial and appellate courts covering the full gamut of federal criminal cases. He teaches regularly at seminars for criminal defense attorneys, investigators and paralegals. He is also active in several nonprofits, serving on the Executive Committee of the American Civil Liberties Union, the Board of Regents of the National Criminal Defense College and the William A. Ingram Inn of the American Inns of Court.
Professor Tyler received his BS in computer science and engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1981 and had a brief career in high tech before changing his focus to public interest advocacy. He began law school as a Tony Patiño Fellow at Hastings College of the Law and earned his JD from UC Berkeley School of Law in 1989, where he served as notes and comments editor on the Ecology Law Quarterly. After law school, he clerked for U.S. District Court Judge Marilyn Hall Patel.
Start time is 1:00 PM Eastern Standard Time (10:00 AM PST).
3
Disrupting Ableism: Strategies For Supporting And Representing Disabled And Neurodiverse Clients
The vast majority of people facing criminalization and incarceration are disabled, many in ways that affect their communication, understanding, or thought processes. Many disabled people may not be identified explicitly or accurately as disabled while they are entangled in the criminal legal system. Regardless, they are marginalized and targeted by a form of systemic, structural, and institutional discrimination and prejudice called ableism, which takes on particularly pernicious forms against Black, Native, and other people of color. Attorneys and legal professionals must understand how ableism manifests in the legal system, including in the attorney-client relationship; further, we all need practical strategies to recognize ableism in ourselves and others.
This presentation will provide an overview of ableism in the legal system and discuss strategies for effectively and respectfully working with disabled clients, especially those with often hidden disabilities such as many autistic and other neurodiverse people. We will focus in particular on addressing ableism and other prejudices in working with disabled clients who are marginalized by other factors such as race, gender, sexuality, class, immigration status, or religion.
Presenter
Lydia X. Z. Brown, Founder & Director, Fund for Community Reparations for Autistic People of Color's Interdependence, Survival, & Empowerment
7 - 15
The Andrea Taylor Sentencing Advocacy Workshop – Virtual Style
The Andrea Taylor Sentencing Advocacy Workshop focuses on a vital area of federal practice that has evolved since the Supreme Court declared the federal sentencing guidelines were advisory and no longer mandatory. Since approximately 97% of federal criminal cases continue to the sentencing phase, participation in the Sentencing Advocacy Workshop should not be missed. The Sentencing Advocacy Workshop teaches a comprehensive approach to sentencing where participants are trained to develop persuasive, fact-based, sentencing theories, and are provided with the advocacy skills necessary to advance their theories both in writing and during sentencing hearings. Presentations and demonstrations at the workshop include client-centered communication, interviewing for mitigation, fact busting, developing persuasive theories and themes, storytelling at sentencing, persuasive writing, and persuasive presentation.
This first ever virtual iteration of the workshop consists of live-webinar presentations, pre-recorded videos, and small group breakout sessions. In the small group sessions, participants will use pending cases of their own to bust the facts, develop theories and themes, practice storytelling, persuasively write part of their sentencing memorandums and discuss how best to conduct sentencing hearings.
Please note that due to the workshop format of this program, participants must commit to attend all parts of this workshop, i.e., live webinars, pre-recorded videos, and small group breakouts.
Enrollment for this program is limited to 60 participants – priority will be given to those people who have not attended this workshop in the past.