President, Harned Strategies LLC
Karen Harned is President at Harned Strategies LLC. Previously, she served as Executive Director of the National Federation of Independent Business Small Business Legal Center, a post she held from 2002-2022. Prior to joining the Legal Center, Ms. Harned was an attorney at a Washington, D.C. law firm specializing in food and drug law, where she represented several small and large businesses and their respective trade associations before Congress and federal agencies. She also served as Assistant Press Secretary to U.S. Senator Don Nickles of Oklahoma from August of 1989 to March of 1993. Ms. Harned received her B.A. from the University of Oklahoma in 1989 and her J.D. from The George Washington University National Law Center in 1995. She is admitted to practice in the District of Columbia.
As Executive Director of the NFIB Small Business Legal Center, Ms. Harned commented regularly on small business cases before federal and state courts, as well as the U.S. Supreme Court. She has appeared on Fox News, Fox Business, NBC Nightly News, CNN, CNBC and MSNBC, as well as National Public Radio, CBS Radio, and radio outlets across the country. Her opinion editorials and articles regarding healthcare, lawsuit abuse, regulation, and other issues important to small business have been published in newspapers and other publications nationwide.
Ms. Harned has testified before Congress on the small business impact of regulation and the civil justice system. Additionally, she has conducted numerous webinars and legal compliance seminars for small business owners across the country on issues relating to employment law, including unionization and immigration.
President, Harned Strategies LLC
Karen Harned is President at Harned Strategies LLC. Previously, she served as Executive Director of the National Federation of Independent Business Small Business Legal Center, a post she held from 2002-2022. Prior to joining the Legal Center, Ms. Harned was an attorney at a Washington, D.C. law firm specializing in food and drug law, where she represented several small and large businesses and their respective trade associations before Congress and federal agencies. She also served as Assistant Press Secretary to U.S. Senator Don Nickles of Oklahoma from August of 1989 to March of 1993. Ms. Harned received her B.A. from the University of Oklahoma in 1989 and her J.D. from The George Washington University National Law Center in 1995. She is admitted to practice in the District of Columbia.
As Executive Director of the NFIB Small Business Legal Center, Ms. Harned commented regularly on small business cases before federal and state courts, as well as the U.S. Supreme Court. She has appeared on Fox News, Fox Business, NBC Nightly News, CNN, CNBC and MSNBC, as well as National Public Radio, CBS Radio, and radio outlets across the country. Her opinion editorials and articles regarding healthcare, lawsuit abuse, regulation, and other issues important to small business have been published in newspapers and other publications nationwide.
Ms. Harned has testified before Congress on the small business impact of regulation and the civil justice system. Additionally, she has conducted numerous webinars and legal compliance seminars for small business owners across the country on issues relating to employment law, including unionization and immigration.
Tammy McCutchen is a leading authority on federal and state wage-hour laws and prevailing wage laws. She counsels businesses on wage-hour compliance, including conducting internal audits on independent contractor status, overtime exemptions, and other pay practices. She also represents employers during investigations by the U.S. Department of Labor and serves as an expert witness in wage-hour class actions. She was a founding officer of ComplianceHR, a law and technology company, where she created AI-based applications to evaluate independent contractor and overtime exempt status.
Ms. McCutchen served as Administrator of the U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division, appointed by President Bush and confirmed by the Senate in 2001. She was the primary architect of the 2004 revisions to the overtime exemption regulations, the first major changes to the regulations in 55 years.
Before joining DOL, she was senior counsel for the Hershey Company in Hershey, Pennsylvania.
Ms. McCutchen has been a volunteer leader of the Federalist Society since 1989. She served in leadership roles for the Northwestern Student Chapter and Chicago Lawyers Chapter. She currently serves in leadership for the Labor & Employment Practice Group, the Regulatory Transparency Project, and the Knoxville, TN Lawyers Chapter. She served on the Editorial Advisory Board of Law360, the Labor Committee of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Small Business Legal Advisory Board of the National Federation of Independent Business, and a Policy Fellow at the ACU Foundation.
Ms. McCutchen is a graduate of Western Illinois University and Northwestern University School of Law. She clerked for the Hon. Daniel Manion on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.
Wallace Stevens Professor of Law, University of Connecticut School of Law
Professor Bethany Berger is a widely read scholar of Property Law and Legal History and one of the leading federal Indian Law scholars in the country. She is a co-author and member of the Editorial Board of Felix S. Cohen's Handbook of Federal Indian Law, the foundational treatise in the field, and co-author of leading casebooks in both Property Law and American Indian Law. Her articles have appeared in the Michigan Law Review, California Law Review, UCLA Law Review, and the Duke Law Journal, among other publications, and have been excerpted and discussed in many casebooks and edited collections as well as in briefs to the Supreme Court and testimony before Congress.
Professor Berger graduated with honors from Wesleyan University, where she was elected to phi beta kappa, and from Yale Law School. After law school, Professor Berger went to the Navajo and Hopi Nations to serve as the Director of the Native American Youth Law Project of DNA-People's Legal Services. There, she conducted litigation challenging discrimination against Indian children, drafted and secured the passage of tribal laws affecting children, and helped to create a Navajo alternative to detention program. She then became Managing Attorney of Advocates for Children of New York, where she worked on impact litigation and policy reform concerning the rights of children in public education.
At the University of Connecticut School of Law, Professor Berger teaches American Indian Law, Property, Tribal Law, and Conflict of Laws. She is also the Wallace Stevens Professor of Law, a chair named for one of America’s greatest poets, a lawyer who lived and worked in Hartford for most of his life. She has served as a judge for the Southwest Intertribal Court of Appeals and as a visiting professor at Harvard Law School and the University of Michigan Law School.
Senior Counsel and VP, Appellate Advocacy, Alliance Defending Freedom
John Bursch is senior counsel and vice president of appellate advocacy with Alliance Defending Freedom. Bursch has argued 12 U.S. Supreme Court cases and more than 30 state supreme court cases since 2011, and a recent study concluded that among all frequent Supreme Court advocates who did not work for the federal government, he had the 3rd highest success rate for persuading justices to adopt his legal position.
Bursch served as solicitor general for the state of Michigan from 2011-2013. He has argued multiple Michigan Supreme Court cases in eight of the last ten terms and has successfully litigated hundreds of matters nationwide, including six with at least $1 billion at stake. As part of his private firm, Bursch Law PLLC, he has represented Fortune 500 companies, foreign and domestic governments, top public officials, and industry associations in high-profile cases, primarily on appeal. He was inducted into the American Academy of Appellate Lawyers and serves as a member of the American Law Institute. His work has resulted in repeated listings in Michigan Super Lawyers and Best Lawyers.
Before entering private practice, Bursch served as a law clerk to the Honorable James B. Loken on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit. He received his J.D. magna cum laude in 1997 from the University of Minnesota Law School, where he served as Chief Note & Comment Editor for the Minnesota Law Review. Prior to that, he attended Western Michigan University, where he received degrees in mathematics and music performance summa cum laude.
Wallace Stevens Professor of Law, University of Connecticut School of Law
Professor Bethany Berger is a widely read scholar of Property Law and Legal History and one of the leading federal Indian Law scholars in the country. She is a co-author and member of the Editorial Board of Felix S. Cohen's Handbook of Federal Indian Law, the foundational treatise in the field, and co-author of leading casebooks in both Property Law and American Indian Law. Her articles have appeared in the Michigan Law Review, California Law Review, UCLA Law Review, and the Duke Law Journal, among other publications, and have been excerpted and discussed in many casebooks and edited collections as well as in briefs to the Supreme Court and testimony before Congress.
Professor Berger graduated with honors from Wesleyan University, where she was elected to phi beta kappa, and from Yale Law School. After law school, Professor Berger went to the Navajo and Hopi Nations to serve as the Director of the Native American Youth Law Project of DNA-People's Legal Services. There, she conducted litigation challenging discrimination against Indian children, drafted and secured the passage of tribal laws affecting children, and helped to create a Navajo alternative to detention program. She then became Managing Attorney of Advocates for Children of New York, where she worked on impact litigation and policy reform concerning the rights of children in public education.
At the University of Connecticut School of Law, Professor Berger teaches American Indian Law, Property, Tribal Law, and Conflict of Laws. She is also the Wallace Stevens Professor of Law, a chair named for one of America’s greatest poets, a lawyer who lived and worked in Hartford for most of his life. She has served as a judge for the Southwest Intertribal Court of Appeals and as a visiting professor at Harvard Law School and the University of Michigan Law School.
Shareholder and Co-Chair, Workplace Safety & Health (OSHA/MSHA) Practice Group, Littler Mendelson P.C.
Bradford T. Hammock's national practice focuses on all aspects of occupational safety and health law. In particular, he provides invaluable assistance to employers in a preventive practice, including: conducting full-scale safety and health compliance audits; reviewing and revising corporate safety and health policies; and conducting manager and supervisor training on employee safety and health
Mr. Hammock works closely with employers to help them understand and implement safety and health management systems. In addition, he represents employers throughout OSHA rulemaking proceedings, including OSHA’s informal public hearings on proposed rules. He also defends employers against OSHA enforcement actions. For an employer that is the target of an OSHA inspection, he offers representation from the start of the inspection through settlement or litigation.
Prior to joining Littler, Mr. Hammock was the Washington, D.C. region office managing principal of a large national firm representing management in workplace law matters. He was previously an OSHA attorney within the Department of Labor, serving as lead counsel for safety standards. He is widely regarded as one of the nation’s most knowledgeable attorneys on the topics of OSHA recordkeeping, crystalline silica, and ergonomics.
Mr. Hammock is a popular guest speaker and lecturer on OSHA issues. He has published numerous articles on occupational safety and health law. While attending law school, he was editor-in-chief of the Syracuse Journal of International Law and Commerce, and associate editor of The Labor Lawyer.
Robins Kaplan Distinguished Professor and John H. Faricy Professor of Empirical Research; Senior Fellow, Dispute Resolution Institute, Mitchell Hamline School of Law
Professor Henry Allen Blair is the Robins Kaplan Distinguished Professor of Litigation Skills and International Dispute Resolution, a John H. Faircy Professor of Empirical Legal Research, and a senior fellow in the Dispute Resolution Institute at Mitchell Hamline. He’s also a Fellow with the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators. He teaches and writes primarily in the areas of arbitration and international dispute resolution, contract law, and commercial law, with a focus on law and economics. In addition to his teaching and writing, he serves as the on-site director for Mitchell Hamline’s Certificate in Global Arbitration Law and Practice program in London and is the faculty advisor and coach for the Willem C. Vis International Commercial Arbitration Moot Court teams.
Professor Blair keeps connections with the world of practice, serving as Of Counsel at Greene Espel, and as an arbitrator or mediator in commercial disputes. He also regularly represents pro bono clients, or consults with other attorneys representing pro bono clients, who are seeking asylum in the United States.
Tammy McCutchen is a leading authority on federal and state wage-hour laws and prevailing wage laws. She counsels businesses on wage-hour compliance, including conducting internal audits on independent contractor status, overtime exemptions, and other pay practices. She also represents employers during investigations by the U.S. Department of Labor and serves as an expert witness in wage-hour class actions. She was a founding officer of ComplianceHR, a law and technology company, where she created AI-based applications to evaluate independent contractor and overtime exempt status.
Ms. McCutchen served as Administrator of the U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division, appointed by President Bush and confirmed by the Senate in 2001. She was the primary architect of the 2004 revisions to the overtime exemption regulations, the first major changes to the regulations in 55 years.
Before joining DOL, she was senior counsel for the Hershey Company in Hershey, Pennsylvania.
Ms. McCutchen has been a volunteer leader of the Federalist Society since 1989. She served in leadership roles for the Northwestern Student Chapter and Chicago Lawyers Chapter. She currently serves in leadership for the Labor & Employment Practice Group, the Regulatory Transparency Project, and the Knoxville, TN Lawyers Chapter. She served on the Editorial Advisory Board of Law360, the Labor Committee of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Small Business Legal Advisory Board of the National Federation of Independent Business, and a Policy Fellow at the ACU Foundation.
Ms. McCutchen is a graduate of Western Illinois University and Northwestern University School of Law. She clerked for the Hon. Daniel Manion on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.
Deep Dive Episode 66 – Americans with Disabilities Act Litigation Enters a New Frontier – Websites
Karen Harned
Regulatory Transparency Project's Fourth Branch Podcast
Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act requires public accommodations be accessible to the...
Americans with Disabilities Act Litigation Enters a New Frontier – Websites
Karen Harned
Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act requires public accommodations be accessible to the...
Topics
Trump National Labor Relations Board Protects Employee Freedom of Choice
On July 3, 2019, the National Labor Relations Board issued an important decision in Johnson...
One Year Later: Impact of Encino Motorcars on FLSA Litigation
Tammy Dee McCutchen
Just over a year ago, in a case involving an obscure car dealership exemption from...
Deep Dive Episode 59 – Cedar Point Nursery v. Shiroma
Bethany Berger
Regulatory Transparency Project's Fourth Branch Podcast
On May 8, 2019, the Ninth Circuit issued a 2-1 decision in Cedar Point Nursery...
Litigation Update: Title VII Cases
John J. Bursch
RG & GR Harris Funeral Homes has been serving the Detroit area for more than...
Litigation Update: Cedar Point Nursery v. Shiroma
Bethany Berger
On May 8, 2019, the Ninth Circuit issued a 2-1 decision in Cedar Point Nursery...
OSHA in 2019: A Review of What has Occurred and a Look Ahead
Bradford T. Hammock
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) continues to make headlines in both the regulatory...
Courthouse Steps Decision Teleforum: Lamps Plus, Inc. v. Varela
Henry Allen Blair
On Wednesday, April 24, the Supreme Court handed down the decision in Lamps Plus, Inc....
The Wage & Hour Trifecta: DOL Proposals on Overtime Exemptions, the Overtime Calculations, and Joint Employment
Tammy Dee McCutchen
Regulatory Transparency Project and Labor & Employment Law Practice Group Teleforum
After over two years of regulatory inactivity, the Wage and Hour Division of the U.S....