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Session I - LGBTQ+ 101 for the Legal Profession – Joni Watke
This session will help you become more culturally competent with the topics of sex, gender, and allyship. Joni presents to educate and raise awareness of sex, gender, and allyship issues across the country. Attendees will learn culturally competent terminology, gain a deeper understanding of sexuality, and be able to implement steps to becoming a stronger ally to the LGBTQ+ community both with their colleagues and their clients. The first step in improving culture is to become educated in the basics and to create a common language from which more work can be done.
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Session II - Couples in Relationships – Patricia A. Cain
Same-sex couples can be in relationships that include marriage, registered partnerships that in some states are the equivalent of marriage, or in relationships where they are simply cohabiting and not married or registered. This session will provide an analysis of how these various types of relationships are treated by state and federal governments. The presenter will also cover the rights of partners in these relationships when they dissolve either during lifetime or at death. An analysis of the various tax issues that arise for these couples will also be covered.
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Session III - Beyond LGBT: Family Law for Polyamorous, Nonbinary, and other SOGI Minorities – Toby Adams
This session will focus on some of the minorities within the SOGI (sexual orientation/gender identity) community. Bisexual clients assumed to be straight or gay, nonbinary and intersex clients whose pronouns aren’t understood, polyamorous families seeking protection for children with more than two parents, and neurodiverse queer clients who are looked on as “troublesome” by attorneys who don’t understand their communication needs.
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Closed-captioning available
Joni Watke | Watke, Polk & Sena, LLP
Joni Watke has been an attorney in private practice since 1996 focusing on family law and estate planning. She has been educating on LGBTQ+ topics since 2008. She co-founded Academy LGBTQ+ whose mission is to educate organizations and families to elevate themselves so they can celebrate LGBTQ+ individuals. Joni is also a former PFLAG National Board Member. PFLAG is the country’s oldest and largest organization of allies and LGBTQ+ individuals working together to move equality forward.
Joni presents to educate and raise awareness of LGBTQ+ issues for thousands across the country each year, including Fortune 500 companies, the American Bar Association, state bar associations, first responders, medical and mental health professionals, educators and administrators, non-profit organizations, and faith communities.
Patricia A. Cain | Santa Clara University
Professor Patricia Cain is a national expert in federal tax law and sexuality and the law. Her area of specialization is taxation and estate planning for unmarried couples and she frequently lectures on this topic at state and national continuing legal education programs. She is the co-author, with Professor Arthur S. Leonard, of one of the leading casebooks for Sexuality and the Law courses, Sexuality Law, 3 rd. edition (2019). She is also the author of Rainbow Rights, The Role of Lawyers and Courts in the Lesbian and Gay Civil Rights Movement (2000) and has recently edited a pivotal book on early women law professors, originally authored by the late Herma Hill Kay and titled, Paving the Way: The First American Women Law Professors (2021). In 2023, she published a casebook on remedies, Remedies: Classic and Contemporary Cases (with co-author, Jean Love).
Professor Cain began her law teaching career at the University of Texas in 1974, where she was a member of the faculty for 17 years. She then joined the law faculty at the University of Iowa, where she held the Aliber Family Chair in Law and served as Interim Provost of the University and later as Vice Provost. She has been a member of the Santa Clara University School of Law faculty since 2007. She is a member of the ALI and a fellow in ACTEC and ACTC. In 2024, the Tax Section of the Association of American Law Schools awarded her the inaugural lifetime achieve award.
Toby Adams | Law Office of Toby Adams
Toby Adams (she/her) practices family law and estate planning California with a focus on the polyamorous, LGBTQIA+, and disability communities. Toby has served nontraditional families for her entire legal career and clerked for the National Center for Lesbian Rights, Legal Aid at Work, Transgender Law Center, InterACT, and Equality California. She founded the first organization in the United States to address the rights of people to identify as nonbinary on government issued documents. She has been a leader in nonbinary & intersex rights, bisexual visibility, and marriage equality for over two decades. Toby was one of the principal authors of BiLaw’s amicus brief filed in the Obergefell Supreme Court marriage case in 2015 and received the BALIF 2018 Legal Services Award.
Toby received her J.D. with Distinction from University of Pacific, McGeorge School of Law in 2012, and her M.B.A. from San Jose State University in 1995. Prior to beginning her legal career Toby was a Project Manager at Hewlett-Packard and before that was a lighting and sound engineer. Toby is a recent empty nester living with her spouse, Dylan. They are currently building a wheelchair accessible house in the Hayward Hills, and Toby swears the location has nothing to do with her 20-something-year-old kids living 5 minutes away.
Session I – LGBTQ+ 101 for the Legal Profession | 11:00am – 12:00pm
Break | 12:00pm – 12:10pm
Session II – Couples in Relationships | 12:10pm – 1:10pm
Break | 1:10pm – 1:20pm
Session III – Beyond LGBT: Family Law for Polyamorous, Nonbinary, and other SOGI Minorities | 1:20pm – 2:20pm
only $395 yearly
only $395 yearly