40th Environmental Permitting Summer School

Expert testimony can make or break adversarial proceedings. This session shows lawyers how to manage experts effectively, protect their opinions under applicable legal standards, and elicit clear, credible, and persuasive testimony. It also shows PhDs, engineers, and other technical experts how to deliver defensible work, withstand challenges, and communicate opinions with greater impact. This session will teach lawyers how to best serve their clients when working with experts and teach experts how to make themselves highly valued and sought-after partners who clients and counsel will want to retain again and again.

This session will provide an overview of policies and regulations that link disaster mitigation policy to climate resiliency issues. The presentation will explore these linkages as well as room for improvement in them. With major storms continuing to impact Florida every few years, agency orders are also a policy implication to be considered, both in short-term response and long-term planning factors. Case studies will be presented that harmonize the concepts of planning for, or responding to, disasters and incorporating aspects of future resiliency into projects. Finally, the session will also explore an important relationship with insurance and funding mechanisms, some of which provide dual benefits in the disaster mitigation and recovery realm as well as the flexibility to add components that address future resiliency.