Disability Law

NAELA's Special Needs Summit - 1

By Patrick Hindert

More than 25 years following its formation, the 5,000 member National Association of Elder Law Attorneys (NAELA) hosted its first-ever "Special Needs Summit" in New Orleans February 25-27, 2010 acknowledging what many NAELA members have understood for years - special needs law is a separate and fast-growing ancillary component and legal domain strategically related to elder law.

The highlight of NAELA's first Special Needs Summit was NAELA's awarding and honoring Dick Traum as the first recipient of NAELA's Special Needs Leadership Award. Traum is the founder and CEO of Achilles International, a non-profit organization providing community support for athletes with disabilities. Achilles International, with members in more than 70 countries, has recently developed specialized running programs for disabled children and wounded war veterans.

The educational component of NAELA's first Special Needs Summit featured NAELA's extensive knowledge resources and positive knowledge sharing culture. NAELA's educational program complemented, expanded and updated recent annual conferences presented by the Academy of Special Needs Planners (ASNP), the National Association of Medicare Set-aside Professionals (NAMSAP) and Stetson Law School as previously reported by S2KM.

NAELA's educational conferences regularly feature sections or entire programs titled "unprograms". NAELA's unprograms are moderated group discussions about specific topics. NAELA's Special Needs Summit included six separate one hour unprograms with a concluding unprogram wrap-up session. One example of an unprogram in New Orleans was titled "Collaboration Opportunities for Special Needs Attorneys and Financial Planners".

Other topics discussed at NAELA's Special Needs Summit:

• Special needs public policy and legislative issues
• Communicating with the disability community
• Pooled trusts
• Social security applications
• Medicare secondary payer compliance
• National project for state reviews of special needs trusts
• Veterans benefits
• Special needs law case update
• Emergency preparedness
• Independent community housing
• Divorce of parents with a special needs child
• Special education law
• Self-settled third party special needs trusts
• Fair Housing Act
• Serving on a non-profit Board of Directors

Congratulations to NAELA's Special Needs Summit Co-chairs: Joan Lensky Robert, Stephen Dale and Howard Krooks, and NAELA's Program Director, Casey Anderson, for organizing an historic and educational special needs conference.

In a subsequent blog post, S2KM will publish its analysis of the NAELA Special Needs Summit utilizing two strategic perspectives: structured settlement and Internet-based knowledge management.

For prior S2KM reporting about NAELA conferences, see S2KM's structured settlement and web 2.0 for lawyers wikis.

Full post as published by Beyond Structured Settlements on March 02, 2010 (boomark / email).