The National Senior Citizens Law Center will be presenting a webinar entitled, Claiming and Collecting Attorneys' Fees: An Introduction, on March 16, 2010 from 1:00 pm to 2:30 pm Eastern.

In December 2009, Congress repealed the prohibition on legal services lawyers claiming and collecting attorneys’ fees. Now fees can be sought under both federal and state law, in cases ranging from individual claims under consumer protection and housing statutes to due process challenges under the Constitution.

This training is an introduction to seeking attorneys’ fees for public interest attorneys who have limited experience with fee petitions. The training will include: strategic use of attorneys’ fees requests, conversations with the client, demand letters, co-counsel agreements, drafting complaints, time keeping, settlement negotiations, and tips for what to include in a fee petition, as well as an introduction to rates, prevailing party law, common objections, and sovereign immunity.

The panelists are:

• Charles Delbaum, staff attorney at the National Consumer Law Center. He is co-editor of NCLC’s Consumer Class Actions manual and a contributing author to NCLC’s Fair Debt, Fair Credit and Credit Discrimination manuals. He was previously the Director of Litigation and Advocacy at New Orleans Legal Assistance.
   
• Barry Litt, partner in Litt, Estuar, Harrison and Kitson – a civil rights/public-interest litigation firm in Los Angeles. He has obtained numerous seven and eight figure verdicts or settlements. He speaks and writes extensively on obtaining statutory attorneys' fees and class fund attorneys' fees, and has engaged in training on maximizing attorneys' fee awards for various nonprofit law firms.
   
• Shelley White, Director of Litigation at New Haven Legal Assistance Association. Her job includes supervision of all federal and state fee applications. She also is counsel in numerous cases and appeals in federal and state courts. She helped develop the Affirmative Litigation training for the Center for Legal Education.

The webinar is moderated by Rochelle Bobroff, Directing Attorney of the Federal Rights Project at NSCLC, and Hannah Lieberman, consultant to NLADA’s Program Enhancement Committee.

The webinar is being conducted using the GoToWebinar online system. it is being presented free of charge except for any personal telephone charges incurred dialing into the available conference call. In order to participate you will need a computer with a reliable internet connection meeting the following system requirements:

• PC-based attendees
  Required: Windows® 2000, XP Home, XP Pro, 2003 Server, Vista
   
• Macintosh®-based attendees
  Required: Mac OS® X 10.4 (Tiger®) or newer

Register for the Webinar