New Nonprofit Organization to Offer CLE on “Stress and Secondary Trauma in Family Law Practitioners”

Plymouth, MN, United States., December 13, 2021 - Echion, a new nonprofit educational organization in Minnesota, will be offering continuing legal education courses for attorneys and other family law professionals on a variety of topics in 2022. The first offering of the new year will take place on January 11, 2022, 12:00 - 1:00 p.m. (CST). Cokato, Minnesota attorney Thomas James will host an online continuing legal education program for attorneys and other family law practitioners at that time on "Stress and Secondary Trauma in Family Law Practice."

Karl Nastrom, Indian Child Welfare Law Center, and Bob Schuneman, Outreach Coordinator for Lawyers Concerned for Lawyers of Minnesota, will present information on the nature and sources of stress and secondary trauma among family law attorneys and other professionals who work in the family law field. They will also provide information about help and resources that are available.
Karl S. Nastrom is an attorney licensed in Minnesota, Alabama, and California who has practiced family law, criminal defense, and intellectual property litigation at various times since 2001. Most recently, he practiced family law in Santa Clara County, California for eight years, from 2013 through 2021. In his family law practice, Mr. Nastrom represented clients ranging from indigent families to families with $100 million estates in trials, contested hearings, and settlement negotiations related to all aspects of family law, including child custody, child support, domestic violence, alimony, paternity, marital dissolution, property division, and marital and pre-marital agreements. Prior to his family law practice, Mr. Nastrom worked for two years as an Assistant Federal Defender for the Middle District of Alabama in Montgomery, Alabama, representing death row inmates in state and federal post-conviction proceedings, as well as federal criminal defendants. Mr. Nastrom also worked in Minneapolis for two years as an associate at Robins Kaplan Miller & Ciresi, LLP and served as a capital habeas graduate extern at the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, Alabama. Before attending law school, Mr. Nastrom served for four years as a U.S. Air Force Intelligence Officer. Mr. Nastrom is currently employed at the Indian Child Welfare Law Center in Minneapolis.

Bob Schuneman, M.B.A., J.D. is the Outreach Coordinator for Lawyers Concerned for Lawyers of Minnesota. He is a graduate of Mitchell Hamline School of Law and holds an MBA in Marketing from the University of Saint Thomas. Before becoming a lawyer, he was a business executive for many years. He taught business courses on graduate and undergraduate levels at Twin Cities colleges and universities for nineteen years. Before joining LCL, Bob practiced as a solo attorney in Woodbury, representing business and individual clients.

The live Zoom webinar will be held on January 11, 2022, 12:00 to 1:00 p.m. (CST). There will be a video replay on January 28, 2022, 12:00 to 1:00 p.m. (CST). Another video replay will be offered on February 18, 2022, 3:00 to 4:00 p.m. (CST)

Application has been made to the Minnesota Continuing Legal Board for approval of 1.0 Standard CLE credit (professional development). The Minnesota CLE Event Code is 427963. Cost is $25. If approved, CLE credit may also be claimed in Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Connecticut, Florida, Guam, Hawaii, Montana, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota and the Northern Mariana Islands.

For more information, or to register, visit the Courses page at the EchionCLE. website.

Echion
440 North Broadway Avenue, Cokato MN 55321 (USA)
Contact:
Thomas James
tom@echioncle.com
(320) 237-2711

Echion CLE is the brainchild of Cokato, Minnesota attorney Thomas James (more commonly known as Tom James.) A former family law attorney, Tom founded Echion as an adjunct to his intellectual property law practice to serve as a vehicle for creating and hosting webinars on e-commerce, trademark and copyright law. After discussions with friends, colleagues, and clients, Tom sensed a need to broaden the scope of the enterprise. He found the plight of adult male survivors of childhood sexual abuse, in particular, profoundly disturbing. Reaching out to organizations such as 1in6 and MenHealing, he learned, first, that this population is much larger than he had thought. Second, he found that it is greatly misunderstood, greatly underserved -- and greatly disserved -- by the legal system and society in general. He felt called upon to try to do something about it. The result was a 2-hour presentation with Dr. Richard Gartner (author of Betrayed As Boys, and widely regarded as a leading authority on the subject), Jim Struve, (executive director of Men Healing), and Rhett Hackett (founder of the Humanity Preservation Foundation and host of the television show, "Hands Off!") Tom networked with the RAINN organization to assemble a panel of actual male survivors of child sexual abuse to put a human face on the problem. The program was offered to attorneys free of charge. Lawyers attending the course received 2 Elimination of Bias CLE credits, or in some states, ethics or standard CLE credit.

The experience reminded Tom of why he decided to go to law school in the first place: to try to make the world a better place for the less fortunate amongst us. While continuing to pursue the idea of preparing and offering presentations on business and IP topics, he decided to shift its primary focus. To that end he, along with two newly-acquired board members, decided to transform it into a nonprofit educational organization. They plan to use Echion as a platform to give a voice to those who do not often have one, and more generally to attorneys who simply wish to have an opportunity to teach a continuing legal education course.

This release was published on openPR.