Past Conferences

17^th Annual Litigation Skills Training

February 5-7, 2009 

This marked the seventeenth year the Fair Housing Legal Support Center hosted its Litigation Skills Training, Effective Advocacy Under the Fair Housing Laws.

Sixteen attorneys with one to eight years experience in fair housing litigation participated in the three-day training.  They are employed with various nonprofit entities, community-based legal aid societies, fair housing organizations, and government agencies, such as the US. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).  This year's diverse group of participants represented nine states and the District of Columbia.

This training program focuses on further developing the practical skills attorneys need to proceed in a contested hearing or trial in a fair housing case.  Particular emphasis is placed on trial advocacy techniques used in the direct and cross examination of witnesses, opening statements and closing arguments. The participants receive a case study prior to the conference and are grouped into teams with an assigned client to represent.  They prepare their cases and present during a mock fair housing trial before judges and attorneys. 

This year's trainers included William C. Cregar, formerly with the HUD Office of Administrative Law Judges in Washington, D.C., Judge Deborah Myers, Office of Administrative Hearing, Los Angeles and Attorney Edward Voci of Chicago, who is currently serving as Visiting Clinical Professor to the Fair Housing Legal Clinic.  Each of these trainers has served as instructors for this and other Fair Housing Center-sponsored training programs.

 Trainers (L to R):  Judge Deborah Myers-Cregar, Judge William C. Cregar, Edward A. Voci, Esq.

The Integration Debate: Competing Futures for American Cities

September 5 and 6, 2008

 The John Marshall Law School Fair Housing Legal Support Center sponsored an important and lively conference, The Integration Debate: Competing Futures for American Cities. The conference was co-sponsored with The Department of Sociology of George Washington University, the Poverty and Race Research Action Council, and the National Fair Housing Alliance.  It was supported by a grant from the Field Foundation and private donations.  More than 120 attorneys, academics and fair housing professionals attended from twenty-two states.

Speakers from some of the country's major universities and fair housing organizations discussed the changing demographics of metropolitan America, the shifting legal mandates regarding integration, the economic consequences of segregation, the interrelationship of race, politics and justice, and housing policy initiatives.

The keynote speakers for the conference were Shanna Smith, President and CEO of the National Fair Housing Alliance in Washington, DC and Roger Wilkins, The Clarence J. Robinson Professor of History and American Culture at George Mason University.  Ms. Smith spoke on Market Barriers to Integration: Mortgage Lending, and Homeowners Insurance. Professor Wilkins gave a closing address on Segregation: The Murderous Legacy.  He discussed his childhood in a segregated America, his experiences as an Assistant Attorney General in the Johnson Administraton where he was asked by President Johnson to talk to Mayor Richard J. Daley in an attempt to avert violence at the 1968 Democratic Convention, and his work over the last forty years as a leading civil rights advocate and leader.

The conference explored many provocative issues and left everyone inspired to work to seek solutions for ending the two separate societies described in the Kerner Report in 1968.

Guest presenters were (seated from left) John Relman of Relman & Dane; Professor Mindy Thompson Fullilive, Columbia University; Professor Gregory D. Squires, George Washington University; Professor Roger Wilkins, George Mason University; Professor Stephen Steinberg, Queens College and Graduate Center of the City University of New York; and Maurice McGough, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development; and (back row, from left) Elizabeth K. Julian and Dementria McCain, Inclusive Communities Project of Dallas; Phillip Tegeler of Poverty and Race Research Action Council; Clinical Professor Allison Bethel, director of The John Marshall Law School Fair Housing Legal Clinic; Professor Nancy Denton, SUNY-University of Albany; Professor Melvin Oliver, University of California-Santa Barbara; Professor Kris Marsh, University of Maryland; Chester Hartman, Poverty and Race Research Action Council; Professor Florence Wagman Roisman, Indiana University School of Law; Clinical Professor Damian Ortiz of The John Marshall Law School Fair Housing Legal Clinic; George Lipsitz, University of California-Santa Barbara; and Professor Michael Seng, co-executive director of The John Marshall Law School Fair Housing Legal Support Center.