See Credit Details Below
Overview
Why You Should Attend
With a physical and emotional punch, the pandemic re-shaped the workplace, altered the expectations of employees and employers, and created new types of legal claims. Employers face an array of additional obligations while employees and employers alike cope with challenges ranging from the Great Resignation to layoffs in tech, media and other sectors. Rapid change often gives rise to emotional reactions, some foreseeable, others unanticipated. The psychological factors behind the creation, litigation and resolution of workplace disputes are impossible to ignore.
This program will address in a clear and pragmatic way key employment law issues at the intersection of law and psychology. Claims of harassment, discrimination, and retaliation related to workplace safety and disability accommodation are profoundly impacted by the range of emotions that motivate employees and employers. This program brings together a representative of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, psychiatrists, and prominent California practitioners from the employee rights and management bars to address employment law claims fueled by the pandemic and its aftermath. They will identify key legal issues and ways in which psychological factors influence the employees, managers and employers engaged in conflict. Speakers will transcend jargon, identify practical ways of working together, and describe effective strategies to avoid, pursue and resolve litigation.
This program also considers psychological and neuroscientific concepts that impact the world of the employment law practitioner and the manner in which they negotiate disputes. In the past four decades, a revolution has taken place in the worlds of cognitive and behavioral psychology. We understand far more than ever before about the automatic processes of the brain and the ways in which humans deviate systematically from the strict confines of economic rationality. Our panel will help employment lawyers to recognize psychological manipulations in negotiation, biases that impact strategic decisions, and the ways in which the brain influences our understanding of our opposing counsel’s tactics.
Additionally, this program will address the ethical considerations that arise when California employment lawyers and mental health professionals are aligned or adverse during litigation. Speakers will discuss inquiries about mental disabilities and medical records during discovery, requests for mental examinations of employees, and disclosure of patient confidences by treating therapists during litigation. Our legal and psychiatric experts will consider the ethical and professional responsibilities of attorneys and mental health professionals when they pursue or protect sensitive psychiatric information.
What You Will Learn
After completing this program, participants will be able to:
- Understand the EEOC’s, plaintiffs’ and defense bar’s perspective on employment law claims created during the pandemic, the Great Resignation, and our current economy, and the ways in which litigation of familiar claims has changed
- Assess the role that psychological factors play in the genesis, pursuit and defense of workplace discrimination, harassment and retaliation claims
- Consider how the brain influences our understanding of our own and opposing counsel’s strategy and techniques
- Recognize critical psychological manipulations by negotiating lawyers and the ethics of using them in settlement discussions
- Engage in discovery of sensitive psychiatric information about employees, aware of ethical guidance and constraints under California law
- Utilize the California Rules of Professional Conduct to guide work with treating and forensic mental health professionals
Who Should Attend
In-house employment and labor counsel, outside counsel for employees and employers, human resources executives, and forensic mental health professionals will benefit from this program.
Special Feature: Earn one hour of Ethics credit
Program Level: Overview
Prerequisites: None
Advanced Preparation: None