(The pdf for the issue in which this article appears is available for download: Bifocal, Vol. 38, Issue 2.)
National Aging and Law Conference
2016 marked the third year since the Commission took over hosting the National Aging and Law Conference (NALC). The 2016 NALC was held October 27-28th at the Hilton Alexandria Old Town in Alexandria, Virginia. The agenda included four plenary sessions and thirty workshops around a central theme of “Justice for Elders.” The conference set new records this year, with 252 registered attendees from 42 states. Attendance was up from 163 in 2015 and 143 in 2014. Registration so greatly exceeded projections that we ran out of venue space and were forced to close registration and turn people away.
New to the conference this year was a “Core Essentials” track featuring basics of elder law. This year, NALC hosted 25 Elder Justice AmeriCorps fellows as part of the United States Department of Justice effort to place Elder Justice Attorneys in legal aid offices across the country.
The conference was once again supported by two core sponsors, the Borchard Foundation Center on Law and Aging and the AARP Foundation, which provided the Jerry D. Florence attendee scholarships. These long-term sponsors were joined in 2016 by the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association and Camilla McRory. The Conference featured five paid exhibitors: The Center for Medicare Advocacy, the Harry and Jeannette Weinberg Center for Elder Abuse Prevention, the National Academy of Elder Law Attorneys, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and the National Guardianship Association. The primary audience at NALC is attorneys who work in legal aid, public interest programs, and government.
Planning is underway for the 2017 National Aging and Law Conference, to be held October 26-27, at the DoubleTree by Hilton, in Silver Spring, Maryland. The larger venue for 2017 will allow the Conference to grow up to 300 attendees.
Elder Law Essentials Webinar Series
The Commission produced six webinars in 2016 as part of our Elder Law Essentials webinar series. These programs reached a record 725 people with the live presentations and continue to sell as recorded sessions. Topics for this year were: Ending Guardianship: Handling Termination of Adult Guardianship Orders and Restoration of Rights; 5@55: The 5 Essential Legal Documents Your Need By Age 55; Wills and Estate Administration for the Small Firm Lawyer: Improving Practice and Increasing Income; Finding and Using Options Less Restrictive Than Guardianship – A New Tool for Lawyers; Basics of Counseling Clients on Social Security Retirement Benefits; and How the Updated CMS Nursing Facility Regulations Impact Your Clients.
We recruit outside experts as speakers for the webinars and Commission staff frequently moderate the programs. The primary audience for most of the webinars is ABA members in private practice. The webinars provide CLE credit in all eligible jurisdictions. The webinar series, which is now in its sixth year, help us to promote our mission of improving the lives of older persons by training lawyers and other advocates on critical issues and generate modest non-dues revenue for the Commission.
Where to Go for Further Information
For the latest on NALC, see the Conference homepage.
To stay in the loop on events and CLE, follow the Commission’s twitter feed at https://twitter.com/ABALawandAging.