The 2015 Lavender Law Conference will be held August 5-8, 2015 in Chicago, Illinois.

Each year, The LGBT Bar’s Annual Conference provides a challenging and rewarding learning experience for our attendees and presenters. In addition to day-long seminars focused on family law and transgender issues, the 2015 Conference will feature dozens of continuing legal education (CLE) workshops on cutting-edge issues affecting LGBT individuals, families and the community.

The 2015 Conference will also feature workshops geared specifically towards business practitioners and corporate counsel. Topics in previous years included intellectual property, cloud computing and employment law.

Professional development sessions will again be offered in conjunction with the Career Fair. If you are submitting a workshop – not for CLE credit – geared towards assisting attorneys in furthering their careers, please select the appropriate check box on the form.

The LGBT Bar is committed to providing workshops that include diverse perspectives on each panel. Workshop proposal submissions that include a combination of practitioners, legal scholars, members of the judiciary and corporate counsel will be given heightened consideration. To view the workshops offered at last year’s conference, click here. For guidelines on submitting an effective workshop proposal, please click here.

Click here to submit a workshop proposal for
the 2015 Lavender Law Conference

The National LGBT Bar Association is a national association of lawyers, judges and other legal professionals, law students, activists and affiliated LGBT legal organizations. The Association promotes justice in and through the legal profession for the LGBT community in all its diversity.

www.lgbtbar.org

Retreat Theme

Bulldozing the Road to Change:

Law students as architects of social justice.

“The need for change bulldozed a road down the center of my mind.”
– Maya Angelou

The Norman Amaker Midwest Public Interest Law & Social Justice Retreat aims to capture the spirit of our late professor, Norman Amaker, who fought alongside leaders like Thurgood Marshall and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to transform the social justice landscape bychallenging racial discrimination during the civil rights era. Our goal is to support the future generation of public interest lawyers by teaching them the skills needed to bring about legal and social change. By increasing their awareness of inequalities in the community, we hope to inspire students to embrace social justice values. The Amaker Retreat also helps build a network of resources by exposing students to local and national public interest leaders who have made a longtime commitment to serving people who face inequality.

The theme for the 2015 Amaker Retreat is Bulldozing the Road to Change: Law Students as Architects of Social Justice. This theme was inspired by Maya Angelou who said, “The need for change bulldozed a road down the center of my mind.” Through seminars and trainings, the Amaker Retreat affords students from around the Midwest the opportunity to broaden their horizons on social reform.

The goal of the Amaker Retreat is to develop the next generation of public interest leaders who will build the bridges necessary to become stewards for society and protectors of the underserved.

Critical Constitutionalism

LatCrit 2015: Twentieth Anniversary Conference

October 1-3, 2015

Southern California

The United States is at a monumental juncture. Insecurity, inequality, and violence characterize much of contemporary life. Activists and scholars frequently turn to law for solutions, but law so often fails to provide adequate tools to challenge the travails of the contemporary situation, such as the indignity of hunger, the strain of illness, or the horror of state violence. Indeed, law often facilitates and sometimes creates the problems facing traditional and emerging outgroups, as well as substantial sectors of traditionally privileged ingroups. Yet possibility remains in law. Grounded in the lessons of multiple generations of past social justice activism and critical theory, LatCrit will mark its twentieth anniversary by convening critical thinkers pursuing the goal of creating a legal order where equal justice for all is reality, not aspiration.

LatCrit 2015 will launch a multi-year intervention into constitutional law’s potential utility to outgroups as a means to go beyond resisting subordination and to strategically organize critical sociolegal scholars’ work in conjunction with contemporary social justice movements. The conference will interrogate generational transitions within our activist-scholar community and center the question of engendering emerging voices and ethical leadership. LatCrit 2015’s substantive programming will focus on, but not be limited to, the U.S. Constitution’s provisions affecting political advocacy and participation, criminal proceedings, individual rights, and due process guarantees. Paper proposals on other topics related to subordination and resistance are also welcome. Special emphasis will be given to supporting the voices of emerging scholar-activists whose insight and commitment can animate LatCrit into the coming decades.

The deadline to submit proposals is Monday, May 1, 2015. A link for submitting proposals will be available at the LatCrit website at www.latcrit.org<http://www.latcrit.org/content/conferences/latcrit-biennial-conferences/latcrit-2015/> by January 15, 2015.

For general information and questions about the event please email Andrea Freeman at afree@hawaii.edu<mailto:afree@hawaii.edu>.