Guttman, Buschner & Brooks

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Best Practices for Remote Hearings

with Judge Amy Hanley and Reuben Guttman | May the Record Reflect Podcast, June 3, 2020. Click here to listen.

The disruptions caused by the covid pandemic have suddenly moved the courtroom into your dining room, and our guests are sharing their best do’s and don’ts from their respective positions on and before the bench. The Honorable Amy Hanley is based in Lawrence, Kansas, and presides over a civil, domestic, and criminal docket for the Seventh Judicial District of Douglas County. In his class action and complex civil litigation practice, Reuben Guttman has become one of the most prominent whistleblower lawyers in the world. 

Source: https://www.buzzsprout.com/441178/4017065-episode-8-best-practices-for-remote-hearings-with-judge-amy-hanley-and-reuben-guttman

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CLE: Mastering Covid-19 Stimulus Funds Whistleblower, Qui Tam and False Claims Actions

On Demand: Over the past two decades, nearly $30 billion has been recovered through Qui Tam cases under the False Claims Act. The demand for attorneys in this surging area has become even stronger as the federal government has spent a record $2.7 trillion in response to the rapid spread of the Coronavirus, or Covid-19. As it becomes apparent that some recipients of the funds are not adhering to requisite protocols, there is an immediate need for attorneys to represent clients in this lucrative area of law. In particular, attorneys must be fluent on complaints, defenses, litigation strategies, discovery and government incentives, among others. The faculty for this seminar features three of the nation’s leading authorities in this practice, who will share the latest legal developments, regulations, compliance, and requirements for government, in-house, & private practitioners alike. Registration includes online access to course and reference materials that serve as a helpful guide to the numerous topics and techniques discussed in the program.

Learn more here.

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NITA Publishes Remote Advocacy Primer for Trial Lawyers, Litigators

The National Institute for Trial Advocacy (NITA), the world’s leader in advocacy skills training and publications, is pleased to announce the release of its new eBook, Remote Advocacy: A Guide to Survive and Thrive. It is a collection of thirteen essays that helps trial lawyers and litigators adapt to the whiplash changes, caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, in their practices and the justice system. The digital primer is well-priced at $30 and is available in WebPDF, Kindle, and Apple iOS versions.

With topics ranging from video-conferencing etiquette, attorney-client interviewing and relationship building, ethics, and discovery, to mediation and arbitration, pro se litigants, and hearings from a judge’s perspective, Remote Advocacy provides practical guidance for lawyering in a time of extraordinary change. NITA’s Director of Publications Eric Sorensen explains its conception:

When the COVID-19 shutdowns began to hit and schools, businesses, and lawyers were being forced to move online to conduct their everyday activities, those of us who were already working remotely took note, but didn’t necessarily grasp the monumental change that was taking place. It wasn’t until I sat in on a 100-person call for advocacy professors who were trying to figure out how, on a moment’s notice, to start conducting classes online that it hit home: working remotely was a foreign concept for many in the legal profession and the number and variety of challenges could be overwhelming for many. With our team of editors, we began kicking around ideas on how to help, and thus the survival guide was set in motion. We turned to NITA faculty and authors who had done it, and who were doing it, to get their best advice on how to not only survive this leap into a new world but to thrive . . . and they delivered, in the form of this eBook.

Contributing author and NITA faculty member Christian Hendrickson of Sherman & Howard in Denver states, “This concise manual is not only an interesting read, but provides a real head start and practical tool for the new world in which we lawyers will be presenting our cases. It also reminds counsel to focus on effective advocacy and civility, no matter the forum in which and circumstances under which they are representing their clients. We’ll all be better for reading Remote Advocacy.”

“Remote Advocacy is about adapting the rule of law to the world of isolation, while prying open the door to a glimpse of a future tempered by the COVID-19 era,” states fellow contributor and NITA faculty member and author Reuben Guttman of Guttman Buschner & Brooks in D.C. “It’s classic NITA: teaching skills to cope with the present while anticipating the future.”

Additional information about NITA’s Remote Advocacy eBook can be found here and through Wolters Kluwer, NITA’s publishing partner. The National Institute for Trial Advocacy is the world’s leader in advocacy skills training and publications. A 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization based in Boulder, Colorado, NITA is a service organization made up of a volunteer network of lawyers, judges, and esteemed advocates across the globe whose mission is to train and mentor lawyers to be competent and ethical advocates in the pursuit of justice. To learn more, visit nita.org, or call us at (303) 953-6828

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Thank you for your service

With the masses huddled in their homes
Communicating by video and iPhones

Neighbors on lawn chairs; six foot spread
Passing time bantering; contemplating the dead

Little children perched by window sill
Peering at an idle world; so many ill

Busy sidewalks once crisscrossed the city
Now lonely lanes; desolate or empty

20 million pondering their plight
Out of work; perhaps out of fight

Amidst the dismal confluence of circumstance
The overlooked souls who give us a chance

EMT’s and nurses and laboratory technicians
Hospital service workers, and ER physicians

Grocery store staff and the delivery drivers
Policemen and the folks who put out the fires

Immigrant meat packers and transit workers
Telephone lineman and sanitation collectors

The unsung supporters of basic existence
They tempt the virus absent resistance

No OSHA proscription and no protection
Too many of them have died from infection

History will reflect and lay out the blame
Yet, tempered by loss, we will not be the same

In case we forget let’s make it quite clear
We owe some souls who checked their fear

They are the voiceless; the little guys
Invisible workers who risked their lives

May they find appreciation in a post virus day
May their employers consider raising their pay

May their jobs become safer and more secure
May dignity grace them on the factory floor

And for now; this fleeting moment in time
Just one single line; one without rhyme

“Thank you for your service.”