International Bar Association (IBA) Annual Conference Miami 2022

The conference features more than 200 sessions. These vary widely, from core substantive committee sessions which cover most sectors and practice areas, to more specialized topics, providing an opportunity to focus on your own areas of interest. Committee sessions include topics on the challenges of law firm management and international relationships; ethics; the future of the legal profession and the rule of law and human rights. Witness influential speakers discuss the ever-changing role of the legal profession in our society through a series of Showcase sessions.

ArentFox Schiff partners will be speaking on the following panels:

• Monday, October 31, 2022 (2:30 PM - 3:45 PM ET) – Byron Dorgan – “Agricultural food products availability and pricing in pandemic times – has anything changed?”

  • The session will explore the challenges faced by farmers, food businesses, consumers, and environmental institutions and entities when dealing with the global tensions that concern the production and supply of food commodities and products, in relation to farming costs and financing. The panelists will discuss the strategic and legal solutions to be adopted to prevent present and future stress conditions from happening throughout the healthy and less-healthy areas of the world.

• Tuesday, November 1, 2022 (9:30 AM - 12:30 PM ET) – Sarah Fitts – “SUSTAINABILITY FOCUS; LPD Showcase: the intersection of climate change, sustainability, corporate governance, and the role of lawyers: advising clients through transformative times”

  • The role of corporations in being part of both the problem and the solution of climate change and sustainability has never been more pronounced. Pressure from activist investors and financial institutions are holding companies increasingly accountable for their environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance. Governments, activists, and customers are focused on corporate contributions to climate change and the adequacy of efforts to address emissions through various net-zero commitments. This creates legal issues for boards, corporate leadership, governance, and the courts as these issues move from advocacy and policy to regulations, liability, and litigation. This showcase panel will focus on the growing intersection between the climate change and ESG movements and the role of the lawyer in advising clients to prepare for and mitigate legal risks through corporate governance in the wake of growing regulatory and stakeholder pressures and preparing to address them when issues translate to litigation and liability.

• Wednesday, November 2, 2022 (11:15 AM - 12:30 PM ET) – Matt Mills – “’Faction’ (mix of fiction and facts, personality rights, etc.)”

  • The panel will discuss the boundaries of the First Amendment and Fair Use as applied to television series, documentaries, docuseries, and videos. We will explore the legality of using (i) AI to create/recreate individual’s personality rights; (ii) personality rights in a television series/docuseries; (iii) to endorse goods/services; and (iv) how countries without a First Amendment deal with these issues.

• Thursday, November 4, 2022 (4:15 PM - 5:30 PM ET) – Sarah Fitts – “SUSTAINABILITY FOCUS: Balancing renewable electricity: energy storage”

  • As energy storage technologies grow at a swift pace, new legal, institutional, and enforcement challenges are faced. Participants in the energy storage space involve developers, generators, network operators, and consumers (ranging from large energy users through to domestic consumers) among others. This session will explore some of the main legal challenges in energy storage including (a) incentive programs, (b) development of an energy storage regulatory regime, (c) grid connection, (d) procurement and construction (EPC) contracts, operations and maintenance (O&M) agreements and asset management agreements, (e) land rights and (f) electricity supply and offtake arrangements.

The lawyers listed below under “contacts” will also be present at the conference and would be happy to arrange meetings with interested parties. Please click on their photos to access their biographies and contact information. 

We also invite you to learn more about firm’s recent merger. Read the press release.