SESSIONS:

Choose Your Own Adventure: Navigating the Ethical Challenges Facing Lawyers

Courtney DaCosta, Senior Counsel, Consumer Business Group, 3M Company 
Lisa Beth Lentini, Assistant General Counsel – Compliance, Deluxe Corporation 
Maureen Sheehan, General Counsel and Chief Compliance Officer, ITM TwentyFirst, LLC
Shannon Bjorklund, Anthony Epps and Kenneth Jorgensen, Dorsey & Whitney LLP 

The ethics of lawyering can be like a Choose Your Own Adventure book.  You come to a point in the story where you have to choose a direction.  One path leads to a happy ending.  Others may lead to adventures you would just as soon avoid.  The best choice is not always the intuitive one.  In this interactive session, you will choose your own adventure by voting after being presented with a hypothetical on Responding to Social Media Ratings and Reviews, Employer Email and Privilege, Professional Discipline of In-House Counsel, GCs as Whistleblowers and more.  We’ll tally the results and see how many chose the adventure with the happy ending and how many chose a one-way ticket to trouble.

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Not Your Grandfather's Workplace: Today’s Trends and Tomorrow’s Challenges in Employment Law & Practices

Lori Marco, Senior Vice President, External Affairs & General Counsel, Hormel Foods Corporation 
Reagan Wilkins Oden, Senior Vice President, HR Strategic Planning Manager, U.S. Bank National Association
Rebecca Bernhard, Aaron Goldstein and Ryan Mick, Dorsey & Whitney LLP

Employers of every size, industry and geography are grappling with dynamic changes in the workforce.  Trends toward greater employee mobility and a “gig economy” are accelerating, requiring employers to find new ways to retain and incentivize employees, while protecting proprietary information and valuable goodwill.  Employers are adjusting to increasing numbers of millennial employees, and they continue to strive for more diverse and inclusive workplaces.  This session will provide diverse perspectives on these and other challenges facing employers in 2017 and beyond.

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Embracing the Dragon: Secrets to Success in the New Era of U.S.-China Business

Tim Beastrom, Vice President and Deputy General Counsel, The Sherwin-Williams Company
Jeff Hanson, Vice President International Finance, Barry-Wehmiller Companies Inc.
Chris Bercaw, James Liu and Catherine Pan-Giordano, Dorsey & Whitney LLP 

What began with a steady stream of U.S. companies establishing manufacturing operations in China is now a robust, two-way flow of substantial investments by Chinese and U.S. companies in each other’s economies, with growing scale and complexity.  Our panel will discuss strategies for working with Chinese companies in China and in the United States, and navigating China’s evolving legal system and competitive landscape.

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Breaking Down Barriers to Justice by Building Up In-House Pro Bono Programs

Karen Canon, Senior Vice President and Deputy General Counsel, U.S. Bank National Association
Michelle Huntley, Chief Privacy Officer, UnitedHealth Group Incorporated
Jordan Martell, Vice President and Managing Counsel, Thrivent Financial 
L. Joseph Genereux and Eric Ruzicka, Dorsey & Whitney LLP 

Join us for a panel discussion on how in-house pro bono programs and partnerships have the power to increase access to legal services for and eliminate biases against persons of diverse race, gender, economic status, creed, color, national origin, disability, age or sexual orientation.  In-house legal departments present an important resource in the provision of pro bono services to those in need in our communities.  This panel discussion will address topics relevant to doing pro bono in-house, including fears, administrative considerations, leadership, recognition tools, ethical considerations and pro bono partnerships.

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Secrets? What Secrets? Protecting the Client’s Confidential Information From Complaint Through Appeal

The Honorable Hildy Bowbeer, Magistrate Judge, United States District Court, District of Minnesota
Douglas Peterson, General Counsel, University of Minnesota 
Meghan DesLauriers and Steven Wells, Dorsey & Whitney LLP 

A key concern for inside and outside counsel in any litigation is protecting the client’s valuable confidential information to the fullest extent possible in the face of discovery demands, recent limitations on sealing imposed by courts in many jurisdictions, advocacy pressures and the rocky road of unintended consequences.  A panel of litigation veterans discusses recent trends and decisions, best practices and crucial strategies aimed at protecting client confidences and secrets from the time the complaint is filed to discovery to trial and on to appeal, including the latest in motions to seal and unseal, dealing with subpoenas, handling the media, competitors and other interested third parties and coping with information breaches by the parties or the court.

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Avoiding Death by a Thousand Cuts: How to Negotiate M&A Indemnification Without Fatal Injury

Stephen Friend, Senior Counsel, Thrivent Financial 
Ben Randall, Deputy General Counsel, UnitedHealthcare Inc.
Gina Betts, John Marsalek and Eric Rauch, Dorsey & Whitney LLP

Indemnification provisions are among the most highly negotiated and critical deal points in private M&A transactions. They are also among the most complex and least understood.  Deal lawyers use terms of art, such as “baskets,” “materiality scrapes,” and “anti-sandbagging,” which add to the confusion.  Danger lies in every potentially lacerating turn.  Our panel will help you negotiate the sharp edges of indemnification with your skin intact.  We will explain terms of art, why those terms are important to buyers and sellers, and how to emerge victorious from the “bloody business” of negotiating indemnification.

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Behind the Headlines: What’s Really Happening in Health Care?

Charlie Johnson, Managing Counsel, Prime Therapeutics LLC 
Ross D'Emanuele, Melinda Maher and John Marti, Dorsey & Whitney LLP

Health care is a massive and incredibly complex industry.  It is also a critical benefit that employers administer on behalf of employees and dependents.  Industry experts will take you behind the headlines (and beyond the tweets) to explore the real changes in the health care industry and what they mean for employers, providers, insurers and manufacturers.

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Corporate Governance in the Age of Covfefe: Counseling Boards Facing Turbulent Change

Peter Carter, Executive Vice President, Chief Legal Officer and Corporate Secretary, Delta Air Lines, Inc. 
James Chosy, Executive Vice President and General Counsel, U.S. Bancorp 
Dannette Smith, Secretary to the Board of Directors and Senior Deputy General Counsel, UnitedHealth Group Incorporated 
Cam Hoang and Robert Rosenbaum, Dorsey & Whitney LLP 

Corporate boards face daunting volatility in politics and the global economy and new and rapidly evolving risks.  Boards must deal with these and other challenges under the critical gaze of activist shareholders, the plaintiff’s bar, the SEC and other regulators.  What are the top issues facing public company boards today and how can in-house and outside counsel help boards navigate through the treacherous shoals?  Board room veterans explore the latest hot topics and share the advice they are giving behind closed doors.

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Precision Agriculture:  The Business of Growth and How IP Laws Protect It

Teddy Bekele, Vice President of IT, WinField United division of Land O'Lakes, Inc. 
Troy Greenfield, Manager - Crop Protection and CHS YieldPoint, CHS Inc.
Daniel Brown, Bridget Hayden and Jamie Nafziger, Dorsey & Whitney LLP

GPS guidance systems, robotics, drones and other precision and variable-rate technologies are transforming farming and leading to production efficiencies once thought impossible.  Industry leaders in precision agriculture will share their perspectives on this fast-growing area of technology and join in a lively discussion of the role intellectual property laws will play in preserving competitive advantages and in ensuring continued technological innovation and improvement in the business of growth.

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