Legal Education

This CLE is titled Jewish Practices Spark Homeowner Lawsuits. The Jewish home is the center of Jewish religious practice, but simple acts such as mounting a mezuzah or an eruv marker can lead to a dispute with a city or homeowners association involving issues of housing law and even constitutional law. These problems most recently came to a head in Bloch v. Frischholz, 533 F.3d 562 (7th. Cir. 2008) and Tenafly Eruv Association, Inc. v. Borough of Tenafly, 309 F.3d 144 (3d Cir. 2002).

This CLE is titled Straddling the Gap: Where Jewish Ethics and Lawyer Ethics Diverge. In most areas of ethics, Jewish law and Washington law dictate nearly identical rules for the professional conduct of lawyers. This presentation will explore the rare areas where true conflicts of law exist, from breaching the duty of confidentiality to "double-billing" a client.

The presenter is Etan Basseri, an associate at the Law Office of Evan L. Loeffler and a member of the WSBA Rules of Professional Conduct Committee since 2008.

On December 1, the Jewish Federation's Cardozo Society of Washington State held a panel discussion and CLE regarding Pasado's Safe Haven v. State, a lawsuit that seeks to declare unconstitutional a provision in Ch. 16.50 RCW allowing kosher slaughter and other types of religious ritual slaughter to take place in Washington. Adam Karp, the attorney for Pasado's, spoke about the lawsuit and his position regarding the constitutionality of the kosher slaughter law.

Please join us for our Brown Bag CLE program, "How Jewish Law Is, and Is Not, Like American Constitutional Law," on August 27, 2009 from 12:00 - 1:30pm.

The Cardozo Society of Washington State gained valuable recognition when it was hosted by the Attorney General of Washington, Rob McKenna, on Friday, January 16 at his office. McKenna hosted and introduced Cardozo Society co-chair Aric Bomsztyk (of Barokas, Martin & Tomlinson) and Rabbi Will Berkovitz for a talk entitled "Using Law to Repair the World: Public Interest Lawyering and Tikkun Olam."