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Registration is now open! 

Reilly Pozner LLP, NACDL, and the Foundation for Criminal Justice will present the National Criminal Defense Forum on Forensic Mental Health & the Law in Denver, CO, September 19-20, 2013.

Due to lack of availability to mental health treatment facilities and services, jailhouses are now the home to many individuals with mental illness and developmental disabilities. To be an effective defender, regardless of the crime, you must become competent with forensic mental health law.

This National Forum on Forensic Mental Health & the Law is the first two-day program of its kind.  It will present you with the most prominent forensic psychologists, psychiatrists, and lawyers from around the country who are experts in the areas of competency and insanity.   

These professionals will provide you with the necessary tools to understand  forensic assessments and standardized testing, decipher the proper credentials of an expert, dissect and understand the essential components of an examination report, and  strategize the confidentiality  issues.  They will teach you how to ethically communicate and strategize with and for your client.  The experts will assist you in identifying your client’s disability, including speech and language disabilities, cross examining the interrogator of your disabled client, and representing the veteran with PTSD.  The program will include a panel discussion on the pending passage of the DSM V by members of the DMS V draft committee which will address possible changes and how they will affect future and prior diagnoses.

This Forum has been made possible by a generous grant from the firm of Reilly Pozner LLP.  The firm recently successfully prosecuted a civil rights case to ensure humane treatment of persons with disabilities held in Colorado jails.  The donation reflects their dedication to enhancing the quality of advocacy on behalf those with mental health impairments.

1. Representing the Incompetent:  Decision Making, Confidentiality Barriers, and Communication with Clients with Mental Impairments
2. Science behind Competency Examinations and the Standardized Testing Used
3. Effectively Preparing and Examining Mental Health Experts
4. Language Disabilities in Offenders and Implications of Language Competency
5. DSM-V Panel – The Pros and Cons of the Potential Changes to the DSM  and how they will affect our clients with mental impairments
6. Litigating Veterans’ Mental Impairment Issues
7. Finding the Right Expert and Combating Insanity Examinations and the Forensic Instruments Used
8. Preparation and Cross-Examination of Forensic Psychologists Testifying on Competency  - from a Forensic Psychologist’s Perspective
9. Challenging Law Enforcement Officers and Interrogation of People with Mental Impairment