Back to School: Challenging Disability Issues in a Return to Campus
2024-08-26 12:00 - 14:00 (America/New_York)
Webinar

Time to Update the Playbook: The Expanded Lineup of Federal Higher Education Regulators

Event Details

About this Event

With the beginning of a new academic year comes a wave of student disability accommodation requests and issues. As practitioners in this space know, these requests and issues grow more complex and challenging each year. Therefore, it is crucial that an institution’s departments communicate clearly and effectively to ensure fairness and consistency in addressing student disability matters. Please join us for this two-hour webinar where three disability-law experts, including two former attorneys for the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights and an Associate Dean of Student Accessibility and Academic Resources, will discuss their working relationship in handling and responding to accommodation requests and other challenging disability law issues on campus. The webinar will include:

An overview of the current legal landscape, including how to consider disability following the updates to the Title IX regulations;

Hypotheticals exploring various situations where accessibility services must work with campus counsel to support a positive outcome;

Discussion of challenges when faced with the academic perspective that an accommodation would constitute a fundamental alteration; and

Advice from the perspective of an accessibility services professional, including guidance for how campus counsel can best support these offices.

Who should attend?This webinar will be of interest to college and university counsel who handle disability law related matters, as well as campus administrators with responsibilities related to reviewing and approving accommodations for students or who otherwise work on disability law matters. professionals on campus who maintain responsibilities in these areas.

Speakers

Hailyn Chen

Hailyn Chen
Co-Managing Partner
Munger, Tolles & Olson

Hailyn Chen is a Munger, Tolles & Olson litigation partner and Co-Managing Partner of the firm.

Ms. Chen is known as a leader inside and outside the courtroom, with a practice focused on complex business litigation, white collar criminal defense, and government and internal investigations. She has earned a reputation as one of the nation’s leading lawyers, in particular for matters involving higher education institutions or allegations of sexual misconduct in a range of litigation matters and investigations. Ms. Chen has paved the way for other women attorneys of color to excel in their practices and drive initiatives for diversity and inclusion in the legal profession.

Ms. Chen is recognized in the 2025 edition of The Best Lawyers in America and in the Los Angeles Business Journal’s 2024 Leaders of Influence: Litigators and Trial Attorneys List. In 2023, Ms. Chen was recognized by the Daily Journal in its Top 100 Lawyers List for her investigations practice, including leading an internal investigation on behalf of UC Berkeley into allegations of abuse, bullying and discriminatory conduct by longtime head coach of UC Berkeley Women’s Swimming, Teri McKeever. She also served as lead counsel in an independent internal investigation into decades of alleged sexual abuse at the Thacher School, an elite boarding school in Ojai, California. In 2021, Ms. Chen was listed among California’s “Top Women Lawyers” by the Daily Journal for the fourth consecutive year and, in 2020, she was named “Managing Partner of the Year” by Corporate Counsel.

Ms. Chen is an immediate past member of the Board of Trustees of the State Bar of California, having served for seven years on the Board as an appointee of the California Supreme Court. She is a member of the State Bar Board’s Ad Hoc Committee on Oversight and Accountability Reforms and has testified on those topics at Joint Oversight Hearings of the Senate Judiciary and Assembly Judiciary Committees. She also serves on the UCLA School of Law Advisory Board, which advises the Dean of the UCLA Law School on significant issues. Ms. Chen is a member of the board of directors of the Attorney Liability Assurance Society (ALAS), the nation’s largest lawyer-owned mutual, insuring 222 premier law firms with over 76,000 lawyers around the world.

She has been quoted in numerous publications including The American Lawyer, the Daily Journal, and in 2022 co-authored an article published by the National Association of College and University Attorneys, “Sexual Misconduct Arising Out of Student Health, Athletic Medicine, and Academic Medical Centers,” the first-of-its-kind comprehensive overview of best practices in responding to sexual misconduct in the healthcare context.

Ms. Chen earned her undergraduate degree from Yale University, where she was one of the first female coxswains to lead the Yale varsity men’s crew and was awarded the MVP award in 1996.

Sonya Sanchez

Sonya Sanchez

Sonya Sanchez is Managing Counsel for Education Affairs and Governance at the University of California System. She joined the Office of the General Counsel as Senior Counsel for the Litigation group in November 2015, overseeing a wide variety of litigated matters, including personal injury, First Amendment, DACA and sexual misconduct litigation, including Title IX litigation. In addition to managing sexual misconduct litigation, she advises on complex policy, regulatory and crisis management issues arising in the sexual misconduct arena.

She received a B.A. in Philosophy from Wellesley College, a M. Ed. from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and a J.D. from Stanford Law School.

Program Schedule

TimeSession Topic12:00 P.M. ETIntroductionsLegal Updates2:00 P.M. ETAccessibility Services Office OverviewHypotheticalQ&AHypotheticalQ&AHypotheticalsQ&AConclusion

CLE

FAQs

Webinar Recording

Members who purchase the Live Webinar will receive access to the Post-Event Recording in the Online Learning Center at no additional charge. Non-members will not have post-event access to the recording or the materials and should plan to download materials during the live webinar.

If you are a member and couldn’t attend live, the event recording will be available for purchase in our Online Learning Center. The recording may be replayed at any time, but may not be copied, posted, or otherwise distributed within or outside of the institution, organization, or firm. The license entitles the purchaser to replay the recording at one campus or at one location of any organization or firm. You can purchase the Post-Event Recording here.

Access Recording

Purchase Recording

2024-2025 Webinars Sponsored by

Cooperating Associations

NACUA Annual Conference

Join us in the Music City June 29 – July 2 to connect, learn, and lead alongside higher education attorneys shaping policy, practice, and impact nationwide together.

Register

Election 2024: Voting & Political Campaign-Related Activities on Campus
2024-09-11 12:00 - 14:00
Webinar

Time to Update the Playbook: The Expanded Lineup of Federal Higher Education Regulators

Event Details

About this Event

Since 2020, the legal landscape for student voting and elections, in addition to cultural expectations and sensitivities surrounding political campaign activity on campus and in the workplace, have shifted and evolved. As the country leaps into the final sprint to the November election, counsel must contend with a heightened level of legal and reputational risk for colleges and universities, which in turn has increased the importance of timely, informed, and tailored advice and outreach to campus clients and community stakeholders.

Please join us for this two-hour webinar where expert presenters with deep knowledge and practical experience on student voting and campus political campaign activity, including experience serving public and private institutions, will discuss the impact of relevant changes to election and voting laws and the top issues likely to affect your campus over the next few months. The webinar will include:

Changes to voter registration and election laws and impacts on students seeking to vote in your institution’s location or in their home jurisdiction;

Discussion of what likely constitutes “political campaign activity” for students, faculty, and employees in 2024; and

Practical considerations and policy approaches for educating students, advising employees, engaging with the campus community, and liaising with local and state election and political officials.

Who Should Attend?

This webinar will be of interest to college and university General Counsel and counsel who advise student affairs, faculty and employee relations, and government affairs, and/or community affairs campus clients, as well as campus administrators with responsibilities in those areas. her professionals on campus who maintain responsibilities in these areas.

Speakers

Hailyn Chen

Hailyn Chen
Co-Managing Partner
Munger, Tolles & Olson

Hailyn Chen is a Munger, Tolles & Olson litigation partner and Co-Managing Partner of the firm.

Ms. Chen is known as a leader inside and outside the courtroom, with a practice focused on complex business litigation, white collar criminal defense, and government and internal investigations. She has earned a reputation as one of the nation’s leading lawyers, in particular for matters involving higher education institutions or allegations of sexual misconduct in a range of litigation matters and investigations. Ms. Chen has paved the way for other women attorneys of color to excel in their practices and drive initiatives for diversity and inclusion in the legal profession.

Ms. Chen is recognized in the 2025 edition of The Best Lawyers in America and in the Los Angeles Business Journal’s 2024 Leaders of Influence: Litigators and Trial Attorneys List. In 2023, Ms. Chen was recognized by the Daily Journal in its Top 100 Lawyers List for her investigations practice, including leading an internal investigation on behalf of UC Berkeley into allegations of abuse, bullying and discriminatory conduct by longtime head coach of UC Berkeley Women’s Swimming, Teri McKeever. She also served as lead counsel in an independent internal investigation into decades of alleged sexual abuse at the Thacher School, an elite boarding school in Ojai, California. In 2021, Ms. Chen was listed among California’s “Top Women Lawyers” by the Daily Journal for the fourth consecutive year and, in 2020, she was named “Managing Partner of the Year” by Corporate Counsel.

Ms. Chen is an immediate past member of the Board of Trustees of the State Bar of California, having served for seven years on the Board as an appointee of the California Supreme Court. She is a member of the State Bar Board’s Ad Hoc Committee on Oversight and Accountability Reforms and has testified on those topics at Joint Oversight Hearings of the Senate Judiciary and Assembly Judiciary Committees. She also serves on the UCLA School of Law Advisory Board, which advises the Dean of the UCLA Law School on significant issues. Ms. Chen is a member of the board of directors of the Attorney Liability Assurance Society (ALAS), the nation’s largest lawyer-owned mutual, insuring 222 premier law firms with over 76,000 lawyers around the world.

She has been quoted in numerous publications including The American Lawyer, the Daily Journal, and in 2022 co-authored an article published by the National Association of College and University Attorneys, “Sexual Misconduct Arising Out of Student Health, Athletic Medicine, and Academic Medical Centers,” the first-of-its-kind comprehensive overview of best practices in responding to sexual misconduct in the healthcare context.

Ms. Chen earned her undergraduate degree from Yale University, where she was one of the first female coxswains to lead the Yale varsity men’s crew and was awarded the MVP award in 1996.

Sonya Sanchez

Sonya Sanchez

Sonya Sanchez is Managing Counsel for Education Affairs and Governance at the University of California System. She joined the Office of the General Counsel as Senior Counsel for the Litigation group in November 2015, overseeing a wide variety of litigated matters, including personal injury, First Amendment, DACA and sexual misconduct litigation, including Title IX litigation. In addition to managing sexual misconduct litigation, she advises on complex policy, regulatory and crisis management issues arising in the sexual misconduct arena.

She received a B.A. in Philosophy from Wellesley College, a M. Ed. from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and a J.D. from Stanford Law School.

Program Schedule

TimeSession Topic12:00 P.M. ETWelcome and IntroductionsOverview of Pre-Election Landscape & TrendsTop Student Voting & Campaign-Related Political Activity IssuesQ&ATop Student Voting & Campus-Related Political Activity Issues (Continued)Q&A2:00 P.M. ETConclusion

CLE

FAQs

Webinar Recording

Members who purchase the Live Webinar will receive access to the Post-Event Recording in the Online Learning Center at no additional charge. Non-members will not have post-event access to the recording or the materials and should plan to download materials during the live webinar.

If you are a member and couldn’t attend live, the event recording will be available for purchase in our Online Learning Center. The recording may be replayed at any time, but may not be copied, posted, or otherwise distributed within or outside of the institution, organization, or firm. The license entitles the purchaser to replay the recording at one campus or at one location of any organization or firm. You can purchase the Post-Event Recording here.

Access Recording

Purchase Recording

2024-2025 Webinars Sponsored by

Cooperating Associations

NACUA Annual Conference

Join us in the Music City June 29 – July 2 to connect, learn, and lead alongside higher education attorneys shaping policy, practice, and impact nationwide together.

Register

Navigating Campus Activism: Legal Insights for University Protests
2024-09-25 12:00 - 14:00
Webinar

Time to Update the Playbook: The Expanded Lineup of Federal Higher Education Regulators

Event Details

About this Event

As students, faculty, and staff head back to campus, colleges and universities around the country anticipate a continued presence of demonstrations and protest activities related to the ongoing conflict in Israel and Gaza and the upcoming presidential election. Counsel must be prepared to advise on how to (1) protect the free speech rights of faculty, staff, and students; (2) appropriately respond to Title VI duties surrounding hostile environments; and (3) ensure campus environments are free from discrimination and harassment based on race, color, and national origin, especially in light of the increase in reports of antisemitism and Islamophobia.

Please join us for this two-hour webinar in which two experienced NACUA member-presenters will cover topics, including:

An overview of free speech and protests on campus;

Updates on relevant case law impacting colleges and universities;

Scenarios exploring Title VI liability, campus protest management, principles of academic freedom, and protected speech related to the 2024 presidential election; and

Best practices and guidelines for responding to campus protests and protecting your institution from legal liability.

Who Should Attend?

This webinar will interest in-house and outside postsecondary counsel who advise on matters related to free speech and campus protests, as well as campus administrators and other professionals on campus who maintain responsibilities in these areas.

Speakers

Hailyn Chen

Hailyn Chen
Co-Managing Partner
Munger, Tolles & Olson

Hailyn Chen is a Munger, Tolles & Olson litigation partner and Co-Managing Partner of the firm.

Ms. Chen is known as a leader inside and outside the courtroom, with a practice focused on complex business litigation, white collar criminal defense, and government and internal investigations. She has earned a reputation as one of the nation’s leading lawyers, in particular for matters involving higher education institutions or allegations of sexual misconduct in a range of litigation matters and investigations. Ms. Chen has paved the way for other women attorneys of color to excel in their practices and drive initiatives for diversity and inclusion in the legal profession.

Ms. Chen is recognized in the 2025 edition of The Best Lawyers in America and in the Los Angeles Business Journal’s 2024 Leaders of Influence: Litigators and Trial Attorneys List. In 2023, Ms. Chen was recognized by the Daily Journal in its Top 100 Lawyers List for her investigations practice, including leading an internal investigation on behalf of UC Berkeley into allegations of abuse, bullying and discriminatory conduct by longtime head coach of UC Berkeley Women’s Swimming, Teri McKeever. She also served as lead counsel in an independent internal investigation into decades of alleged sexual abuse at the Thacher School, an elite boarding school in Ojai, California. In 2021, Ms. Chen was listed among California’s “Top Women Lawyers” by the Daily Journal for the fourth consecutive year and, in 2020, she was named “Managing Partner of the Year” by Corporate Counsel.

Ms. Chen is an immediate past member of the Board of Trustees of the State Bar of California, having served for seven years on the Board as an appointee of the California Supreme Court. She is a member of the State Bar Board’s Ad Hoc Committee on Oversight and Accountability Reforms and has testified on those topics at Joint Oversight Hearings of the Senate Judiciary and Assembly Judiciary Committees. She also serves on the UCLA School of Law Advisory Board, which advises the Dean of the UCLA Law School on significant issues. Ms. Chen is a member of the board of directors of the Attorney Liability Assurance Society (ALAS), the nation’s largest lawyer-owned mutual, insuring 222 premier law firms with over 76,000 lawyers around the world.

She has been quoted in numerous publications including The American Lawyer, the Daily Journal, and in 2022 co-authored an article published by the National Association of College and University Attorneys, “Sexual Misconduct Arising Out of Student Health, Athletic Medicine, and Academic Medical Centers,” the first-of-its-kind comprehensive overview of best practices in responding to sexual misconduct in the healthcare context.

Ms. Chen earned her undergraduate degree from Yale University, where she was one of the first female coxswains to lead the Yale varsity men’s crew and was awarded the MVP award in 1996.

Sonya Sanchez

Sonya Sanchez

Sonya Sanchez is Managing Counsel for Education Affairs and Governance at the University of California System. She joined the Office of the General Counsel as Senior Counsel for the Litigation group in November 2015, overseeing a wide variety of litigated matters, including personal injury, First Amendment, DACA and sexual misconduct litigation, including Title IX litigation. In addition to managing sexual misconduct litigation, she advises on complex policy, regulatory and crisis management issues arising in the sexual misconduct arena.

She received a B.A. in Philosophy from Wellesley College, a M. Ed. from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and a J.D. from Stanford Law School.

Program Schedule

TimeSession Topic12:00 P.M. ETWelcome and IntroductionsOverview of of Free Speech Considerations on Campus2:00 P.M. ETCase Law Update Q&AScenariosPractical Tips and ConsiderationsQ&AConclusion

CLE

FAQs

Webinar Recording

Members who purchase the Live Webinar will receive access to the Post-Event Recording in the Online Learning Center at no additional charge. Non-members will not have post-event access to the recording or the materials and should plan to download materials during the live webinar.

If you are a member and couldn’t attend live, the event recording will be available for purchase in our Online Learning Center. The recording may be replayed at any time, but may not be copied, posted, or otherwise distributed within or outside of the institution, organization, or firm. The license entitles the purchaser to replay the recording at one campus or at one location of any organization or firm. You can purchase the Post-Event Recording here.

Access Recording

Purchase Recording

2024-2025 Webinars Sponsored by

Cooperating Associations

NACUA Annual Conference

Join us in the Music City June 29 – July 2 to connect, learn, and lead alongside higher education attorneys shaping policy, practice, and impact nationwide together.

Register

Fall 2024 CLE Workshop: Sponsored Research and Technology Transfer
2024-11-13 00:00 - 2024-11-15 23:59 | Omni Shoreham Hotel, Washington, DC, Washington, DC

The Law of Gender Identity on Campus
2024-11-22 12:00 - 14:00
Webinar

Time to Update the Playbook: The Expanded Lineup of Federal Higher Education Regulators

Event Details

About this Event

The law pertaining to antidiscrimination protections for postsecondary students, faculty, and staff who identify as transgender, or whose gender identity is nonbinary, is complex. It is a combination of federal, state, and local laws, interpreted via inconsistent and occasionally conflicting jurisprudence across different jurisdictions, which is further complicated by regulatory and sub-regulatory guidance. Beyond the complicated legal framework, higher education counsel are also often called upon to advise their clients on how to navigate the politics attendant to the law(s) of gender identity on campus.

Please join us for this two-hour webinar in which a trio of NACUA member-experts will examine the legal authority and practical considerations impacting gender identity in the postsecondary space, including:

Title IX, including related to healthcare, athletics, facilities use, and minors on campus;

Title VII, including legal developments post-Bostock v. Clayton Cty. (2020);

Religious accommodations & academic freedom, including name and pronouns usage; and

An overview of emerging State law trends.

Who Should Attend?

This webinar will interest in-house and outside college and university counsel who advise on matters related to antidiscrimination law and related policies, as well as campus administrators and other professionals on campus who maintain responsibilities in these areas.

Speakers

Hailyn Chen

Hailyn Chen
Co-Managing Partner
Munger, Tolles & Olson

Hailyn Chen is a Munger, Tolles & Olson litigation partner and Co-Managing Partner of the firm.

Ms. Chen is known as a leader inside and outside the courtroom, with a practice focused on complex business litigation, white collar criminal defense, and government and internal investigations. She has earned a reputation as one of the nation’s leading lawyers, in particular for matters involving higher education institutions or allegations of sexual misconduct in a range of litigation matters and investigations. Ms. Chen has paved the way for other women attorneys of color to excel in their practices and drive initiatives for diversity and inclusion in the legal profession.

Ms. Chen is recognized in the 2025 edition of The Best Lawyers in America and in the Los Angeles Business Journal’s 2024 Leaders of Influence: Litigators and Trial Attorneys List. In 2023, Ms. Chen was recognized by the Daily Journal in its Top 100 Lawyers List for her investigations practice, including leading an internal investigation on behalf of UC Berkeley into allegations of abuse, bullying and discriminatory conduct by longtime head coach of UC Berkeley Women’s Swimming, Teri McKeever. She also served as lead counsel in an independent internal investigation into decades of alleged sexual abuse at the Thacher School, an elite boarding school in Ojai, California. In 2021, Ms. Chen was listed among California’s “Top Women Lawyers” by the Daily Journal for the fourth consecutive year and, in 2020, she was named “Managing Partner of the Year” by Corporate Counsel.

Ms. Chen is an immediate past member of the Board of Trustees of the State Bar of California, having served for seven years on the Board as an appointee of the California Supreme Court. She is a member of the State Bar Board’s Ad Hoc Committee on Oversight and Accountability Reforms and has testified on those topics at Joint Oversight Hearings of the Senate Judiciary and Assembly Judiciary Committees. She also serves on the UCLA School of Law Advisory Board, which advises the Dean of the UCLA Law School on significant issues. Ms. Chen is a member of the board of directors of the Attorney Liability Assurance Society (ALAS), the nation’s largest lawyer-owned mutual, insuring 222 premier law firms with over 76,000 lawyers around the world.

She has been quoted in numerous publications including The American Lawyer, the Daily Journal, and in 2022 co-authored an article published by the National Association of College and University Attorneys, “Sexual Misconduct Arising Out of Student Health, Athletic Medicine, and Academic Medical Centers,” the first-of-its-kind comprehensive overview of best practices in responding to sexual misconduct in the healthcare context.

Ms. Chen earned her undergraduate degree from Yale University, where she was one of the first female coxswains to lead the Yale varsity men’s crew and was awarded the MVP award in 1996.

Sonya Sanchez

Sonya Sanchez

Sonya Sanchez is Managing Counsel for Education Affairs and Governance at the University of California System. She joined the Office of the General Counsel as Senior Counsel for the Litigation group in November 2015, overseeing a wide variety of litigated matters, including personal injury, First Amendment, DACA and sexual misconduct litigation, including Title IX litigation. In addition to managing sexual misconduct litigation, she advises on complex policy, regulatory and crisis management issues arising in the sexual misconduct arena.

She received a B.A. in Philosophy from Wellesley College, a M. Ed. from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and a J.D. from Stanford Law School.

Program Schedule

TimeSession Topic12:00 P.M. ETWelcome and IntroductionsTitle IX2:00 P.M. ETTitle VII Religious Accommodations & Academic FreedomState TrendsPractical Tips and ConsiderationsQ&AConclusion

CLE

FAQs

Webinar Recording

Members who purchase the Live Webinar will receive access to the Post-Event Recording in the Online Learning Center at no additional charge. Non-members will not have post-event access to the recording or the materials and should plan to download materials during the live webinar.

If you are a member and couldn’t attend live, the event recording will be available for purchase in our Online Learning Center. The recording may be replayed at any time, but may not be copied, posted, or otherwise distributed within or outside of the institution, organization, or firm. The license entitles the purchaser to replay the recording at one campus or at one location of any organization or firm. You can purchase the Post-Event Recording here.

Access Recording

Purchase Recording

2024-2025 Webinars Sponsored by

Cooperating Associations

NACUA Annual Conference

Join us in the Music City June 29 – July 2 to connect, learn, and lead alongside higher education attorneys shaping policy, practice, and impact nationwide together.

Register

Stop Campus Hazing Act: What You Need to Know to Comply
2025-01-17 13:00 - 13:30
Webinar

Time to Update the Playbook: The Expanded Lineup of Federal Higher Education Regulators

Event Details

About this Event

President Joseph R. Biden, Jr. signed the Stop Campus Hazing Act (the “Act”) into law on December 23, 2024, to address concerns about injuries and deaths on college campuses related to hazing activities. The Act, which amends the Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime Statistics Act, imposes several requirements on colleges and universities, many of which already became, or will soon become effective. Notably, the Act requires institutions to compile and disclose an additional class of broadly-defined hazing statistics in a distinct new report, to disclose additional information in Annual Security Reports, and to publish information related to anti-hazing policies and prevention programs.

Please join us for a 30-minute audio-only briefing during which NACUA member-experts, Guilherme Costa and Janet Judge, will provide an overview of the Act and offer practical insights for counsel and compliance colleagues who focus on areas most at risk for potential hazing activity on campus.

Speakers

Hailyn Chen

Hailyn Chen
Co-Managing Partner
Munger, Tolles & Olson

Hailyn Chen is a Munger, Tolles & Olson litigation partner and Co-Managing Partner of the firm.

Ms. Chen is known as a leader inside and outside the courtroom, with a practice focused on complex business litigation, white collar criminal defense, and government and internal investigations. She has earned a reputation as one of the nation’s leading lawyers, in particular for matters involving higher education institutions or allegations of sexual misconduct in a range of litigation matters and investigations. Ms. Chen has paved the way for other women attorneys of color to excel in their practices and drive initiatives for diversity and inclusion in the legal profession.

Ms. Chen is recognized in the 2025 edition of The Best Lawyers in America and in the Los Angeles Business Journal’s 2024 Leaders of Influence: Litigators and Trial Attorneys List. In 2023, Ms. Chen was recognized by the Daily Journal in its Top 100 Lawyers List for her investigations practice, including leading an internal investigation on behalf of UC Berkeley into allegations of abuse, bullying and discriminatory conduct by longtime head coach of UC Berkeley Women’s Swimming, Teri McKeever. She also served as lead counsel in an independent internal investigation into decades of alleged sexual abuse at the Thacher School, an elite boarding school in Ojai, California. In 2021, Ms. Chen was listed among California’s “Top Women Lawyers” by the Daily Journal for the fourth consecutive year and, in 2020, she was named “Managing Partner of the Year” by Corporate Counsel.

Ms. Chen is an immediate past member of the Board of Trustees of the State Bar of California, having served for seven years on the Board as an appointee of the California Supreme Court. She is a member of the State Bar Board’s Ad Hoc Committee on Oversight and Accountability Reforms and has testified on those topics at Joint Oversight Hearings of the Senate Judiciary and Assembly Judiciary Committees. She also serves on the UCLA School of Law Advisory Board, which advises the Dean of the UCLA Law School on significant issues. Ms. Chen is a member of the board of directors of the Attorney Liability Assurance Society (ALAS), the nation’s largest lawyer-owned mutual, insuring 222 premier law firms with over 76,000 lawyers around the world.

She has been quoted in numerous publications including The American Lawyer, the Daily Journal, and in 2022 co-authored an article published by the National Association of College and University Attorneys, “Sexual Misconduct Arising Out of Student Health, Athletic Medicine, and Academic Medical Centers,” the first-of-its-kind comprehensive overview of best practices in responding to sexual misconduct in the healthcare context.

Ms. Chen earned her undergraduate degree from Yale University, where she was one of the first female coxswains to lead the Yale varsity men’s crew and was awarded the MVP award in 1996.

Sonya Sanchez

Sonya Sanchez

Sonya Sanchez is Managing Counsel for Education Affairs and Governance at the University of California System. She joined the Office of the General Counsel as Senior Counsel for the Litigation group in November 2015, overseeing a wide variety of litigated matters, including personal injury, First Amendment, DACA and sexual misconduct litigation, including Title IX litigation. In addition to managing sexual misconduct litigation, she advises on complex policy, regulatory and crisis management issues arising in the sexual misconduct arena.

She received a B.A. in Philosophy from Wellesley College, a M. Ed. from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and a J.D. from Stanford Law School.

FAQs

Briefing Recording

This briefing recording is complimentary to NACUA members and is available for NACUA members to access on demand through Online Learning Center.

Please contact us at nacua@nacua.org if you have any issues accessing the briefing.

Access Recording

NACUA Annual Conference

Join us in the Music City June 29 – July 2 to connect, learn, and lead alongside higher education attorneys shaping policy, practice, and impact nationwide together.

Register

What Now? Title IX in the Aftermath of Tennessee v. Cardona
2025-01-24 12:00 - 12:30
Webinar

Time to Update the Playbook: The Expanded Lineup of Federal Higher Education Regulators

Event Details

About this Event

The policy pendulum of Title IX continues to swing, and this time it has swung back to 2020. On January 9, 2025, the U.S District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky issued its decision in Tennessee v. Cardona, granting summary judgment in favor of the plaintiff states of Kentucky, Virginia, Indiana, Tennessee, and West Virginia, and vacating the 2024 Final Rule. The Court found that that U.S. Department of Education exceeded its authority in implementing the regulations and that the Final Rule and its corresponding regulations also violate the U.S. Constitution. Although the primary thrust of the challenge was to the inclusion of “gender identity” as a protected category within sex-based harassment, the decision impacts additional changes brought about by the Final Rule including those pertaining to handling grievances, training, recordkeeping, processing complaints, as well as the extended protections for pregnancy and related conditions.

Please join us for a 30-minute briefing during which NACUA member-experts will provide an overview of Tennessee v. Cardona, its implications for Title IX in postsecondary education, and practical pointers for steps you can take now. The briefing will be of interest to counsel and their campus colleagues who work in Title IX and other antidiscrimination offices.

Speakers

Hailyn Chen

Hailyn Chen
Co-Managing Partner
Munger, Tolles & Olson

Hailyn Chen is a Munger, Tolles & Olson litigation partner and Co-Managing Partner of the firm.

Ms. Chen is known as a leader inside and outside the courtroom, with a practice focused on complex business litigation, white collar criminal defense, and government and internal investigations. She has earned a reputation as one of the nation’s leading lawyers, in particular for matters involving higher education institutions or allegations of sexual misconduct in a range of litigation matters and investigations. Ms. Chen has paved the way for other women attorneys of color to excel in their practices and drive initiatives for diversity and inclusion in the legal profession.

Ms. Chen is recognized in the 2025 edition of The Best Lawyers in America and in the Los Angeles Business Journal’s 2024 Leaders of Influence: Litigators and Trial Attorneys List. In 2023, Ms. Chen was recognized by the Daily Journal in its Top 100 Lawyers List for her investigations practice, including leading an internal investigation on behalf of UC Berkeley into allegations of abuse, bullying and discriminatory conduct by longtime head coach of UC Berkeley Women’s Swimming, Teri McKeever. She also served as lead counsel in an independent internal investigation into decades of alleged sexual abuse at the Thacher School, an elite boarding school in Ojai, California. In 2021, Ms. Chen was listed among California’s “Top Women Lawyers” by the Daily Journal for the fourth consecutive year and, in 2020, she was named “Managing Partner of the Year” by Corporate Counsel.

Ms. Chen is an immediate past member of the Board of Trustees of the State Bar of California, having served for seven years on the Board as an appointee of the California Supreme Court. She is a member of the State Bar Board’s Ad Hoc Committee on Oversight and Accountability Reforms and has testified on those topics at Joint Oversight Hearings of the Senate Judiciary and Assembly Judiciary Committees. She also serves on the UCLA School of Law Advisory Board, which advises the Dean of the UCLA Law School on significant issues. Ms. Chen is a member of the board of directors of the Attorney Liability Assurance Society (ALAS), the nation’s largest lawyer-owned mutual, insuring 222 premier law firms with over 76,000 lawyers around the world.

She has been quoted in numerous publications including The American Lawyer, the Daily Journal, and in 2022 co-authored an article published by the National Association of College and University Attorneys, “Sexual Misconduct Arising Out of Student Health, Athletic Medicine, and Academic Medical Centers,” the first-of-its-kind comprehensive overview of best practices in responding to sexual misconduct in the healthcare context.

Ms. Chen earned her undergraduate degree from Yale University, where she was one of the first female coxswains to lead the Yale varsity men’s crew and was awarded the MVP award in 1996.

Sonya Sanchez

Sonya Sanchez

Sonya Sanchez is Managing Counsel for Education Affairs and Governance at the University of California System. She joined the Office of the General Counsel as Senior Counsel for the Litigation group in November 2015, overseeing a wide variety of litigated matters, including personal injury, First Amendment, DACA and sexual misconduct litigation, including Title IX litigation. In addition to managing sexual misconduct litigation, she advises on complex policy, regulatory and crisis management issues arising in the sexual misconduct arena.

She received a B.A. in Philosophy from Wellesley College, a M. Ed. from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and a J.D. from Stanford Law School.

FAQs

Briefing Recording

This briefing recording is complimentary to NACUA members and is available for NACUA members to access on demand through NACUA’s Online Learning Center.

Please contact us at nacua@nacua.org if you have any issues accessing the briefing.

Access Recording

NACUA Annual Conference

Join us in the Music City June 29 – July 2 to connect, learn, and lead alongside higher education attorneys shaping policy, practice, and impact nationwide together.

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Winter 2025 Virtual CLE Workshop: AI and Higher Education Law
2025-01-29 00:00 - 2025-01-31 23:59 | Virtual

Winter 2025 Virtual CLE Workshop Pre-Workshop: What *IS* Artificial Intelligence and Why Should I Care?
2025-01-29 08:00 - 2025-01-31 17:00
Webinar

Time to Update the Playbook: The Expanded Lineup of Federal Higher Education Regulators

Event Details

About this Event

Those who attended the Winter 2025 Workshop and purchased this webinar as part of their original registration have access to this recording already and do not need to repurchase it here.

Members who did not attend the pre-workshop may purchase it here for $265.

January 29, 2025, from 11:00 A.M. to 1:00 P.M. ET

Counsel and their college and university clients are understandably anxious about increased attention to Artificial Intelligence (AI) on campus. And while there is no “app for that,” there is an innovative pre-Workshop to NACUA’s 2025 Virtual Winter Workshop on AI! This novel offering is designed to establish a shared vocabulary around AI in higher education to facilitate more effective conversations with cross-campus partners, equip counsel with a basic understanding of generative AI and where it may show up across campus silos, and help demystify the sources of emergent regulation that will intersect with more evergreen college and university law jurisprudence.

Who Should Attend?

This two-hour program is a fundamentals level CLE, intended to serve as primer for college and university attorneys. The pre-Workshop is available to campus counsel and their clients working on establishing legally compliant policies and practices surrounding AI use on campus. The pre-Workshop content will be accessible as both a standalone program, and an add-on to NACUA’s 2025 Virtual Winter Workshop: AI and Higher Education Law.

Speakers

Hailyn Chen

Hailyn Chen
Co-Managing Partner
Munger, Tolles & Olson

Hailyn Chen is a Munger, Tolles & Olson litigation partner and Co-Managing Partner of the firm.

Ms. Chen is known as a leader inside and outside the courtroom, with a practice focused on complex business litigation, white collar criminal defense, and government and internal investigations. She has earned a reputation as one of the nation’s leading lawyers, in particular for matters involving higher education institutions or allegations of sexual misconduct in a range of litigation matters and investigations. Ms. Chen has paved the way for other women attorneys of color to excel in their practices and drive initiatives for diversity and inclusion in the legal profession.

Ms. Chen is recognized in the 2025 edition of The Best Lawyers in America and in the Los Angeles Business Journal’s 2024 Leaders of Influence: Litigators and Trial Attorneys List. In 2023, Ms. Chen was recognized by the Daily Journal in its Top 100 Lawyers List for her investigations practice, including leading an internal investigation on behalf of UC Berkeley into allegations of abuse, bullying and discriminatory conduct by longtime head coach of UC Berkeley Women’s Swimming, Teri McKeever. She also served as lead counsel in an independent internal investigation into decades of alleged sexual abuse at the Thacher School, an elite boarding school in Ojai, California. In 2021, Ms. Chen was listed among California’s “Top Women Lawyers” by the Daily Journal for the fourth consecutive year and, in 2020, she was named “Managing Partner of the Year” by Corporate Counsel.

Ms. Chen is an immediate past member of the Board of Trustees of the State Bar of California, having served for seven years on the Board as an appointee of the California Supreme Court. She is a member of the State Bar Board’s Ad Hoc Committee on Oversight and Accountability Reforms and has testified on those topics at Joint Oversight Hearings of the Senate Judiciary and Assembly Judiciary Committees. She also serves on the UCLA School of Law Advisory Board, which advises the Dean of the UCLA Law School on significant issues. Ms. Chen is a member of the board of directors of the Attorney Liability Assurance Society (ALAS), the nation’s largest lawyer-owned mutual, insuring 222 premier law firms with over 76,000 lawyers around the world.

She has been quoted in numerous publications including The American Lawyer, the Daily Journal, and in 2022 co-authored an article published by the National Association of College and University Attorneys, “Sexual Misconduct Arising Out of Student Health, Athletic Medicine, and Academic Medical Centers,” the first-of-its-kind comprehensive overview of best practices in responding to sexual misconduct in the healthcare context.

Ms. Chen earned her undergraduate degree from Yale University, where she was one of the first female coxswains to lead the Yale varsity men’s crew and was awarded the MVP award in 1996.

Sonya Sanchez

Sonya Sanchez

Sonya Sanchez is Managing Counsel for Education Affairs and Governance at the University of California System. She joined the Office of the General Counsel as Senior Counsel for the Litigation group in November 2015, overseeing a wide variety of litigated matters, including personal injury, First Amendment, DACA and sexual misconduct litigation, including Title IX litigation. In addition to managing sexual misconduct litigation, she advises on complex policy, regulatory and crisis management issues arising in the sexual misconduct arena.

She received a B.A. in Philosophy from Wellesley College, a M. Ed. from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and a J.D. from Stanford Law School.

CLE

FAQs

Webinar Recording

Members who purchase the Live Webinar will receive access to the Post-Event Recording in the Online Learning Center at no additional charge. Non-members will not have post-event access to the recording or the materials and should plan to download materials during the live webinar.

If you are a member and couldn’t attend live, the event recording will be available for purchase in our Online Learning Center. The recording may be replayed at any time, but may not be copied, posted, or otherwise distributed within or outside of the institution, organization, or firm. The license entitles the purchaser to replay the recording at one campus or at one location of any organization or firm. You can purchase the Post-Event Recording here.

Access Recording

Purchase Recording

NACUA Annual Conference

Join us in the Music City June 29 – July 2 to connect, learn, and lead alongside higher education attorneys shaping policy, practice, and impact nationwide together.

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The First 100 Days: What’s Happened So Far
2025-02-07 12:00 - 12:30
Webinar

Time to Update the Playbook: The Expanded Lineup of Federal Higher Education Regulators

Event Details

About this Event

The second Trump administration has quickly issued a series of sweeping executive orders impacting students, faculty, and staff, college and university operations, and the mission of higher education institutions. Several orders have attracted legal challenges, while administrative agencies have taken initial steps to implement those that have not been blocked by the courts. All the while, counsel have worked overtime to advise and communicate with college and university clients and to set the tone for calm and deliberate action to advance the interests of their institutions. As the third week of the new administration draws to a close, it is necessary to pause and reflect on where we find ourselves as a higher education community and to take stock of the landscape that is shifting beneath our feet.

Please join us for a 30-minute audio-only briefing during which NACUA member-experts, Danielle Conley and Kate Hudson, will provide an overview of the most impactful executive orders and what they mean for higher education.

This briefing is a part of NACUA’s Transition Updates: The First 100 Days series.

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Speakers

Hailyn Chen

Hailyn Chen
Co-Managing Partner
Munger, Tolles & Olson

Hailyn Chen is a Munger, Tolles & Olson litigation partner and Co-Managing Partner of the firm.

Ms. Chen is known as a leader inside and outside the courtroom, with a practice focused on complex business litigation, white collar criminal defense, and government and internal investigations. She has earned a reputation as one of the nation’s leading lawyers, in particular for matters involving higher education institutions or allegations of sexual misconduct in a range of litigation matters and investigations. Ms. Chen has paved the way for other women attorneys of color to excel in their practices and drive initiatives for diversity and inclusion in the legal profession.

Ms. Chen is recognized in the 2025 edition of The Best Lawyers in America and in the Los Angeles Business Journal’s 2024 Leaders of Influence: Litigators and Trial Attorneys List. In 2023, Ms. Chen was recognized by the Daily Journal in its Top 100 Lawyers List for her investigations practice, including leading an internal investigation on behalf of UC Berkeley into allegations of abuse, bullying and discriminatory conduct by longtime head coach of UC Berkeley Women’s Swimming, Teri McKeever. She also served as lead counsel in an independent internal investigation into decades of alleged sexual abuse at the Thacher School, an elite boarding school in Ojai, California. In 2021, Ms. Chen was listed among California’s “Top Women Lawyers” by the Daily Journal for the fourth consecutive year and, in 2020, she was named “Managing Partner of the Year” by Corporate Counsel.

Ms. Chen is an immediate past member of the Board of Trustees of the State Bar of California, having served for seven years on the Board as an appointee of the California Supreme Court. She is a member of the State Bar Board’s Ad Hoc Committee on Oversight and Accountability Reforms and has testified on those topics at Joint Oversight Hearings of the Senate Judiciary and Assembly Judiciary Committees. She also serves on the UCLA School of Law Advisory Board, which advises the Dean of the UCLA Law School on significant issues. Ms. Chen is a member of the board of directors of the Attorney Liability Assurance Society (ALAS), the nation’s largest lawyer-owned mutual, insuring 222 premier law firms with over 76,000 lawyers around the world.

She has been quoted in numerous publications including The American Lawyer, the Daily Journal, and in 2022 co-authored an article published by the National Association of College and University Attorneys, “Sexual Misconduct Arising Out of Student Health, Athletic Medicine, and Academic Medical Centers,” the first-of-its-kind comprehensive overview of best practices in responding to sexual misconduct in the healthcare context.

Ms. Chen earned her undergraduate degree from Yale University, where she was one of the first female coxswains to lead the Yale varsity men’s crew and was awarded the MVP award in 1996.

Sonya Sanchez

Sonya Sanchez

Sonya Sanchez is Managing Counsel for Education Affairs and Governance at the University of California System. She joined the Office of the General Counsel as Senior Counsel for the Litigation group in November 2015, overseeing a wide variety of litigated matters, including personal injury, First Amendment, DACA and sexual misconduct litigation, including Title IX litigation. In addition to managing sexual misconduct litigation, she advises on complex policy, regulatory and crisis management issues arising in the sexual misconduct arena.

She received a B.A. in Philosophy from Wellesley College, a M. Ed. from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and a J.D. from Stanford Law School.

FAQs

Briefing Recording

This briefing recording is complimentary to NACUA members and is available for NACUA members to access on demand through NACUA’s Online Learning Center.

Please contact us at nacua@nacua.org if you have any issues accessing the briefing.

NACUA Annual Conference

Join us in the Music City June 29 – July 2 to connect, learn, and lead alongside higher education attorneys shaping policy, practice, and impact nationwide together.

Register

Can You Hear Me Now? Hot Topics in the World of Faculty Free Speech and Academic Freedom
2025-02-10 12:00 - 14:00
Webinar

Time to Update the Playbook: The Expanded Lineup of Federal Higher Education Regulators

Event Details

About this Event

Faculty members occupy an important, albeit unique, position on college and university campuses. As we enter the new year, campuses will face challenges related to academic freedom and faculty discourse in response to the 2024 presidential election and the ongoing conflict in Israel and Gaza. They will also be tasked with managing backlash to these faculty activities by the greater campus community, media outlets, and donors. Counsel must balance these conflicting interests while maintaining a legally compliant campus environment.

Please join us for this two-hour webinar in which two experienced NACUA member-presenters will cover topics, including:

An overview and legal update of academic freedom on campus;

Updates on relevant faculty-related issues, including free speech and protest activities;

Faculty social media use;

Impact on external stakeholders;

Relevant policies and laws; and

Practical suggestions for managing these issues on campus.

Who Should Attend?

This webinar will interest in-house and outside college and university counsel who advise on matters related to faculty and academic freedom, as well as campus administrators and other professionals on campus who maintain responsibilities in these areas.

Speakers

Hailyn Chen

Hailyn Chen
Co-Managing Partner
Munger, Tolles & Olson

Hailyn Chen is a Munger, Tolles & Olson litigation partner and Co-Managing Partner of the firm.

Ms. Chen is known as a leader inside and outside the courtroom, with a practice focused on complex business litigation, white collar criminal defense, and government and internal investigations. She has earned a reputation as one of the nation’s leading lawyers, in particular for matters involving higher education institutions or allegations of sexual misconduct in a range of litigation matters and investigations. Ms. Chen has paved the way for other women attorneys of color to excel in their practices and drive initiatives for diversity and inclusion in the legal profession.

Ms. Chen is recognized in the 2025 edition of The Best Lawyers in America and in the Los Angeles Business Journal’s 2024 Leaders of Influence: Litigators and Trial Attorneys List. In 2023, Ms. Chen was recognized by the Daily Journal in its Top 100 Lawyers List for her investigations practice, including leading an internal investigation on behalf of UC Berkeley into allegations of abuse, bullying and discriminatory conduct by longtime head coach of UC Berkeley Women’s Swimming, Teri McKeever. She also served as lead counsel in an independent internal investigation into decades of alleged sexual abuse at the Thacher School, an elite boarding school in Ojai, California. In 2021, Ms. Chen was listed among California’s “Top Women Lawyers” by the Daily Journal for the fourth consecutive year and, in 2020, she was named “Managing Partner of the Year” by Corporate Counsel.

Ms. Chen is an immediate past member of the Board of Trustees of the State Bar of California, having served for seven years on the Board as an appointee of the California Supreme Court. She is a member of the State Bar Board’s Ad Hoc Committee on Oversight and Accountability Reforms and has testified on those topics at Joint Oversight Hearings of the Senate Judiciary and Assembly Judiciary Committees. She also serves on the UCLA School of Law Advisory Board, which advises the Dean of the UCLA Law School on significant issues. Ms. Chen is a member of the board of directors of the Attorney Liability Assurance Society (ALAS), the nation’s largest lawyer-owned mutual, insuring 222 premier law firms with over 76,000 lawyers around the world.

She has been quoted in numerous publications including The American Lawyer, the Daily Journal, and in 2022 co-authored an article published by the National Association of College and University Attorneys, “Sexual Misconduct Arising Out of Student Health, Athletic Medicine, and Academic Medical Centers,” the first-of-its-kind comprehensive overview of best practices in responding to sexual misconduct in the healthcare context.

Ms. Chen earned her undergraduate degree from Yale University, where she was one of the first female coxswains to lead the Yale varsity men’s crew and was awarded the MVP award in 1996.

Sonya Sanchez

Sonya Sanchez

Sonya Sanchez is Managing Counsel for Education Affairs and Governance at the University of California System. She joined the Office of the General Counsel as Senior Counsel for the Litigation group in November 2015, overseeing a wide variety of litigated matters, including personal injury, First Amendment, DACA and sexual misconduct litigation, including Title IX litigation. In addition to managing sexual misconduct litigation, she advises on complex policy, regulatory and crisis management issues arising in the sexual misconduct arena.

She received a B.A. in Philosophy from Wellesley College, a M. Ed. from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and a J.D. from Stanford Law School.

Program Schedule

TimeSession Topic12:00 – 12:10Welcome and IntroductionsLegal OverviewRelevant Policies and LawsHot Topics in the Faculty World Social Media UseImpact on External StakeholdersPractical Suggestions for Managing These Issues on Campus Q&A2:00 P.M.Conclusion

CLE

FAQs

Webinar Recording

Members who purchase the Live Webinar will receive access to the Post-Event Recording in the Online Learning Center at no additional charge. Non-members will not have post-event access to the recording or the materials and should plan to download materials during the live webinar.

If you are a member and couldn’t attend live, the event recording will be available for purchase in our Online Learning Center. The recording may be replayed at any time, but may not be copied, posted, or otherwise distributed within or outside of the institution, organization, or firm. The license entitles the purchaser to replay the recording at one campus or at one location of any organization or firm. You can purchase the Post-Event Recording here.

Access Recording

Purchase Recording

Cooperating Associations

2024-2025 Webinars Sponsored by

NACUA Annual Conference

Join us in the Music City June 29 – July 2 to connect, learn, and lead alongside higher education attorneys shaping policy, practice, and impact nationwide together.

Register

The First 100 Days: Immigration Law
2025-02-21 12:00 - 12:30
Webinar

Time to Update the Playbook: The Expanded Lineup of Federal Higher Education Regulators

Event Details

About this Event

A keystone of President Trump’s campaign was the promise to intensify immigration enforcement. The first weeks of his second administration included the issuance and implementation of executive orders to begin this work. Additionally, the acting U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary issued a directive rescinding longstanding policy on refraining from immigration enforcement actions at “sensitive locations” or “protected areas,” including educational institutions. At the same time, the Attorney General at the U.S. Department of Justice issued a memo directing the Department to restrict funding to jurisdictions and organizations that support or provide services to undocumented immigrants, among other mandates. Campus counsel must advise and communicate with various constituents across campus on these rapidly evolving developments.

Please join us for a 30-minute audio-only briefing during which NACUA member-experts, Leigh Cole and Michael Pfahl, will provide an overview of where the law stands, insights that can be gleaned from comparative realignment of immigration activities across previous administrations, and advice on how to counsel your clients now.

This briefing is part of NACUA’s Transition Updates: The First 100 Days Series.

Speakers

Hailyn Chen

Hailyn Chen
Co-Managing Partner
Munger, Tolles & Olson

Hailyn Chen is a Munger, Tolles & Olson litigation partner and Co-Managing Partner of the firm.

Ms. Chen is known as a leader inside and outside the courtroom, with a practice focused on complex business litigation, white collar criminal defense, and government and internal investigations. She has earned a reputation as one of the nation’s leading lawyers, in particular for matters involving higher education institutions or allegations of sexual misconduct in a range of litigation matters and investigations. Ms. Chen has paved the way for other women attorneys of color to excel in their practices and drive initiatives for diversity and inclusion in the legal profession.

Ms. Chen is recognized in the 2025 edition of The Best Lawyers in America and in the Los Angeles Business Journal’s 2024 Leaders of Influence: Litigators and Trial Attorneys List. In 2023, Ms. Chen was recognized by the Daily Journal in its Top 100 Lawyers List for her investigations practice, including leading an internal investigation on behalf of UC Berkeley into allegations of abuse, bullying and discriminatory conduct by longtime head coach of UC Berkeley Women’s Swimming, Teri McKeever. She also served as lead counsel in an independent internal investigation into decades of alleged sexual abuse at the Thacher School, an elite boarding school in Ojai, California. In 2021, Ms. Chen was listed among California’s “Top Women Lawyers” by the Daily Journal for the fourth consecutive year and, in 2020, she was named “Managing Partner of the Year” by Corporate Counsel.

Ms. Chen is an immediate past member of the Board of Trustees of the State Bar of California, having served for seven years on the Board as an appointee of the California Supreme Court. She is a member of the State Bar Board’s Ad Hoc Committee on Oversight and Accountability Reforms and has testified on those topics at Joint Oversight Hearings of the Senate Judiciary and Assembly Judiciary Committees. She also serves on the UCLA School of Law Advisory Board, which advises the Dean of the UCLA Law School on significant issues. Ms. Chen is a member of the board of directors of the Attorney Liability Assurance Society (ALAS), the nation’s largest lawyer-owned mutual, insuring 222 premier law firms with over 76,000 lawyers around the world.

She has been quoted in numerous publications including The American Lawyer, the Daily Journal, and in 2022 co-authored an article published by the National Association of College and University Attorneys, “Sexual Misconduct Arising Out of Student Health, Athletic Medicine, and Academic Medical Centers,” the first-of-its-kind comprehensive overview of best practices in responding to sexual misconduct in the healthcare context.

Ms. Chen earned her undergraduate degree from Yale University, where she was one of the first female coxswains to lead the Yale varsity men’s crew and was awarded the MVP award in 1996.

Sonya Sanchez

Sonya Sanchez

Sonya Sanchez is Managing Counsel for Education Affairs and Governance at the University of California System. She joined the Office of the General Counsel as Senior Counsel for the Litigation group in November 2015, overseeing a wide variety of litigated matters, including personal injury, First Amendment, DACA and sexual misconduct litigation, including Title IX litigation. In addition to managing sexual misconduct litigation, she advises on complex policy, regulatory and crisis management issues arising in the sexual misconduct arena.

She received a B.A. in Philosophy from Wellesley College, a M. Ed. from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and a J.D. from Stanford Law School.

FAQs

Briefing Recording

This briefing recording is complimentary to NACUA members and is available for NACUA members to access on demand through NACUA’s Online Learning Center.

Please contact us at nacua@nacua.org if you have any issues accessing the briefing.

NACUA Annual Conference

Join us in the Music City June 29 – July 2 to connect, learn, and lead alongside higher education attorneys shaping policy, practice, and impact nationwide together.

Register

Sharpening Your Skills: Best Practices for Conducting Internal Investigations
2025-03-06 12:00 - 14:00
Webinar

Time to Update the Playbook: The Expanded Lineup of Federal Higher Education Regulators

Event Details

About this Event

Compliance with laws and regulations, coordination with various stakeholders, and organization to ensure processes are followed are all needed to conduct just one internal investigation. However, a single incident at a postsecondary institution can trigger multiple investigations by different offices on campus and the discovery of unknown information during those investigations can lead to even more investigations. Additionally, public relations pressure can further complicate an already overwhelming, multifaceted investigative process. It is crucial that campus counsel and others involved in internal investigations have a solid grasp on when an investigation should be opened, the different stages of investigative processes, and how to maintain solid oversight of simultaneous internal investigations.

Please join us for this 2-hour webinar where presenters will explore:

The pre-investigations stage, such as fact gathering, jurisdictional issues, how to initiate the process, and other related issues;

How to manage oversight of multiple investigations, including ordering of investigations and determining how different stakeholders should coordinate and communicate with one another;

Privilege issues and other privacy laws implicated by investigations; and

Hypotheticals illustrating how to think through these concepts.

Who should attend?

This webinar will be of interest to college and university counsel who conduct internal investigations, as well as campus administrators with responsibilities related to internal investigations.

Speakers

Hailyn Chen

Hailyn Chen
Co-Managing Partner
Munger, Tolles & Olson

Hailyn Chen is a Munger, Tolles & Olson litigation partner and Co-Managing Partner of the firm.

Ms. Chen is known as a leader inside and outside the courtroom, with a practice focused on complex business litigation, white collar criminal defense, and government and internal investigations. She has earned a reputation as one of the nation’s leading lawyers, in particular for matters involving higher education institutions or allegations of sexual misconduct in a range of litigation matters and investigations. Ms. Chen has paved the way for other women attorneys of color to excel in their practices and drive initiatives for diversity and inclusion in the legal profession.

Ms. Chen is recognized in the 2025 edition of The Best Lawyers in America and in the Los Angeles Business Journal’s 2024 Leaders of Influence: Litigators and Trial Attorneys List. In 2023, Ms. Chen was recognized by the Daily Journal in its Top 100 Lawyers List for her investigations practice, including leading an internal investigation on behalf of UC Berkeley into allegations of abuse, bullying and discriminatory conduct by longtime head coach of UC Berkeley Women’s Swimming, Teri McKeever. She also served as lead counsel in an independent internal investigation into decades of alleged sexual abuse at the Thacher School, an elite boarding school in Ojai, California. In 2021, Ms. Chen was listed among California’s “Top Women Lawyers” by the Daily Journal for the fourth consecutive year and, in 2020, she was named “Managing Partner of the Year” by Corporate Counsel.

Ms. Chen is an immediate past member of the Board of Trustees of the State Bar of California, having served for seven years on the Board as an appointee of the California Supreme Court. She is a member of the State Bar Board’s Ad Hoc Committee on Oversight and Accountability Reforms and has testified on those topics at Joint Oversight Hearings of the Senate Judiciary and Assembly Judiciary Committees. She also serves on the UCLA School of Law Advisory Board, which advises the Dean of the UCLA Law School on significant issues. Ms. Chen is a member of the board of directors of the Attorney Liability Assurance Society (ALAS), the nation’s largest lawyer-owned mutual, insuring 222 premier law firms with over 76,000 lawyers around the world.

She has been quoted in numerous publications including The American Lawyer, the Daily Journal, and in 2022 co-authored an article published by the National Association of College and University Attorneys, “Sexual Misconduct Arising Out of Student Health, Athletic Medicine, and Academic Medical Centers,” the first-of-its-kind comprehensive overview of best practices in responding to sexual misconduct in the healthcare context.

Ms. Chen earned her undergraduate degree from Yale University, where she was one of the first female coxswains to lead the Yale varsity men’s crew and was awarded the MVP award in 1996.

Sonya Sanchez

Sonya Sanchez

Sonya Sanchez is Managing Counsel for Education Affairs and Governance at the University of California System. She joined the Office of the General Counsel as Senior Counsel for the Litigation group in November 2015, overseeing a wide variety of litigated matters, including personal injury, First Amendment, DACA and sexual misconduct litigation, including Title IX litigation. In addition to managing sexual misconduct litigation, she advises on complex policy, regulatory and crisis management issues arising in the sexual misconduct arena.

She received a B.A. in Philosophy from Wellesley College, a M. Ed. from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and a J.D. from Stanford Law School.

CLE

FAQs

Webinar Recording

Members who purchase the Live Webinar will receive access to the Post-Event Recording in the Online Learning Center at no additional charge. Non-members will not have post-event access to the recording or the materials and should plan to download materials during the live webinar.

If you are a member and couldn’t attend live, the event recording will be available for purchase in our Online Learning Center. The recording may be replayed at any time, but may not be copied, posted, or otherwise distributed within or outside of the institution, organization, or firm. The license entitles the purchaser to replay the recording at one campus or at one location of any organization or firm. You can purchase the Post-Event Recording here.

Access Recording

Purchase Recording

NACUA Annual Conference

Join us in the Music City June 29 – July 2 to connect, learn, and lead alongside higher education attorneys shaping policy, practice, and impact nationwide together.

Register

Sharpening Your Skills: Best Practices for Conducting Internal Investigations
2025-03-06 12:00 - 14:00
Webinar

Time to Update the Playbook: The Expanded Lineup of Federal Higher Education Regulators

Event Details

About this Event

Compliance with laws and regulations, coordination with various stakeholders, and organization to ensure processes are followed are all needed to conduct just one internal investigation. However, a single incident at a postsecondary institution can trigger multiple investigations by different offices on campus and the discovery of unknown information during those investigations can lead to even more investigations. Additionally, public relations pressure can further complicate an already overwhelming, multifaceted investigative process. It is crucial that campus counsel and others involved in internal investigations have a solid grasp on when an investigation should be opened, the different stages of investigative processes, and how to maintain solid oversight of simultaneous internal investigations.

Please join us for this 2-hour webinar where presenters will explore:

The pre-investigations stage, such as fact gathering, jurisdictional issues, how to initiate the process, and other related issues;

How to manage oversight of multiple investigations, including ordering of investigations and determining how different stakeholders should coordinate and communicate with one another;

Privilege issues and other privacy laws implicated by investigations; and

Hypotheticals illustrating how to think through these concepts.

Who should attend?

This webinar will be of interest to college and university counsel who conduct internal investigations, as well as campus administrators with responsibilities related to internal investigations.

Speakers

Hailyn Chen

Hailyn Chen
Co-Managing Partner
Munger, Tolles & Olson

Hailyn Chen is a Munger, Tolles & Olson litigation partner and Co-Managing Partner of the firm.

Ms. Chen is known as a leader inside and outside the courtroom, with a practice focused on complex business litigation, white collar criminal defense, and government and internal investigations. She has earned a reputation as one of the nation’s leading lawyers, in particular for matters involving higher education institutions or allegations of sexual misconduct in a range of litigation matters and investigations. Ms. Chen has paved the way for other women attorneys of color to excel in their practices and drive initiatives for diversity and inclusion in the legal profession.

Ms. Chen is recognized in the 2025 edition of The Best Lawyers in America and in the Los Angeles Business Journal’s 2024 Leaders of Influence: Litigators and Trial Attorneys List. In 2023, Ms. Chen was recognized by the Daily Journal in its Top 100 Lawyers List for her investigations practice, including leading an internal investigation on behalf of UC Berkeley into allegations of abuse, bullying and discriminatory conduct by longtime head coach of UC Berkeley Women’s Swimming, Teri McKeever. She also served as lead counsel in an independent internal investigation into decades of alleged sexual abuse at the Thacher School, an elite boarding school in Ojai, California. In 2021, Ms. Chen was listed among California’s “Top Women Lawyers” by the Daily Journal for the fourth consecutive year and, in 2020, she was named “Managing Partner of the Year” by Corporate Counsel.

Ms. Chen is an immediate past member of the Board of Trustees of the State Bar of California, having served for seven years on the Board as an appointee of the California Supreme Court. She is a member of the State Bar Board’s Ad Hoc Committee on Oversight and Accountability Reforms and has testified on those topics at Joint Oversight Hearings of the Senate Judiciary and Assembly Judiciary Committees. She also serves on the UCLA School of Law Advisory Board, which advises the Dean of the UCLA Law School on significant issues. Ms. Chen is a member of the board of directors of the Attorney Liability Assurance Society (ALAS), the nation’s largest lawyer-owned mutual, insuring 222 premier law firms with over 76,000 lawyers around the world.

She has been quoted in numerous publications including The American Lawyer, the Daily Journal, and in 2022 co-authored an article published by the National Association of College and University Attorneys, “Sexual Misconduct Arising Out of Student Health, Athletic Medicine, and Academic Medical Centers,” the first-of-its-kind comprehensive overview of best practices in responding to sexual misconduct in the healthcare context.

Ms. Chen earned her undergraduate degree from Yale University, where she was one of the first female coxswains to lead the Yale varsity men’s crew and was awarded the MVP award in 1996.

Sonya Sanchez

Sonya Sanchez

Sonya Sanchez is Managing Counsel for Education Affairs and Governance at the University of California System. She joined the Office of the General Counsel as Senior Counsel for the Litigation group in November 2015, overseeing a wide variety of litigated matters, including personal injury, First Amendment, DACA and sexual misconduct litigation, including Title IX litigation. In addition to managing sexual misconduct litigation, she advises on complex policy, regulatory and crisis management issues arising in the sexual misconduct arena.

She received a B.A. in Philosophy from Wellesley College, a M. Ed. from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and a J.D. from Stanford Law School.

Program Schedule

TimeSession Topic12:00 P.M.Welcome and IntroductionsPre-Investigation Planning and ConsiderationsHypotheticals Outlining Investigative ProcessesQ&AHypotheticals Outlining Investigative Processes Electronically Stored Information, Statutes, and Other Issues to Keep in Mind Q&A2:00 P.M.Conclusion

CLE

FAQs

Webinar Recording

Members who purchase the Live Webinar will receive access to the Post-Event Recording in the Online Learning Center at no additional charge. Non-members will not have post-event access to the recording or the materials and should plan to download materials during the live webinar.

If you are a member and couldn’t attend live, the event recording will be available for purchase in our Online Learning Center. The recording may be replayed at any time, but may not be copied, posted, or otherwise distributed within or outside of the institution, organization, or firm. The license entitles the purchaser to replay the recording at one campus or at one location of any organization or firm. You can purchase the Post-Event Recording here.

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Join us in the Music City June 29 – July 2 to connect, learn, and lead alongside higher education attorneys shaping policy, practice, and impact nationwide together.

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The First 100 Days: A Discussion on DEI with Dear Colleagues
2025-03-07 12:00 - 12:30
Webinar

Time to Update the Playbook: The Expanded Lineup of Federal Higher Education Regulators

Event Details

About this Event

Since taking office in January, the Trump administration has issued Executive Order 14151: Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing, Executive Order 14173: Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity, and the February 14th Dear Colleague Letter directing institutions to end programs related to diversity, equity, and inclusion. In response, several lawsuits have been filed challenging the Executive Orders and Dear Colleague Letter. On February 21, 2025, a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction blocking several provisions of the Executive Orders. With additional litigation and guidance expected, campus counsel must keep abreast of these developments to understand and deliver the best possible advice and counsel to your campus.

Please join us for a 30-minute audio-only briefing during which NACUA presenters, Dwight J. Draughon, Jr. and Lauren Schoenthaler, will provide an overview of the Executive Orders and the February 14 DCL relating to DEI, as well as legal challenges to those initiatives. The program will also cover practical discussions to have with your Presidents and Boards.

This briefing is part of NACUA’s Transition Updates: The First 100 Days Series.

Speakers

Hailyn Chen

Hailyn Chen
Co-Managing Partner
Munger, Tolles & Olson

Hailyn Chen is a Munger, Tolles & Olson litigation partner and Co-Managing Partner of the firm.

Ms. Chen is known as a leader inside and outside the courtroom, with a practice focused on complex business litigation, white collar criminal defense, and government and internal investigations. She has earned a reputation as one of the nation’s leading lawyers, in particular for matters involving higher education institutions or allegations of sexual misconduct in a range of litigation matters and investigations. Ms. Chen has paved the way for other women attorneys of color to excel in their practices and drive initiatives for diversity and inclusion in the legal profession.

Ms. Chen is recognized in the 2025 edition of The Best Lawyers in America and in the Los Angeles Business Journal’s 2024 Leaders of Influence: Litigators and Trial Attorneys List. In 2023, Ms. Chen was recognized by the Daily Journal in its Top 100 Lawyers List for her investigations practice, including leading an internal investigation on behalf of UC Berkeley into allegations of abuse, bullying and discriminatory conduct by longtime head coach of UC Berkeley Women’s Swimming, Teri McKeever. She also served as lead counsel in an independent internal investigation into decades of alleged sexual abuse at the Thacher School, an elite boarding school in Ojai, California. In 2021, Ms. Chen was listed among California’s “Top Women Lawyers” by the Daily Journal for the fourth consecutive year and, in 2020, she was named “Managing Partner of the Year” by Corporate Counsel.

Ms. Chen is an immediate past member of the Board of Trustees of the State Bar of California, having served for seven years on the Board as an appointee of the California Supreme Court. She is a member of the State Bar Board’s Ad Hoc Committee on Oversight and Accountability Reforms and has testified on those topics at Joint Oversight Hearings of the Senate Judiciary and Assembly Judiciary Committees. She also serves on the UCLA School of Law Advisory Board, which advises the Dean of the UCLA Law School on significant issues. Ms. Chen is a member of the board of directors of the Attorney Liability Assurance Society (ALAS), the nation’s largest lawyer-owned mutual, insuring 222 premier law firms with over 76,000 lawyers around the world.

She has been quoted in numerous publications including The American Lawyer, the Daily Journal, and in 2022 co-authored an article published by the National Association of College and University Attorneys, “Sexual Misconduct Arising Out of Student Health, Athletic Medicine, and Academic Medical Centers,” the first-of-its-kind comprehensive overview of best practices in responding to sexual misconduct in the healthcare context.

Ms. Chen earned her undergraduate degree from Yale University, where she was one of the first female coxswains to lead the Yale varsity men’s crew and was awarded the MVP award in 1996.

Sonya Sanchez

Sonya Sanchez

Sonya Sanchez is Managing Counsel for Education Affairs and Governance at the University of California System. She joined the Office of the General Counsel as Senior Counsel for the Litigation group in November 2015, overseeing a wide variety of litigated matters, including personal injury, First Amendment, DACA and sexual misconduct litigation, including Title IX litigation. In addition to managing sexual misconduct litigation, she advises on complex policy, regulatory and crisis management issues arising in the sexual misconduct arena.

She received a B.A. in Philosophy from Wellesley College, a M. Ed. from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and a J.D. from Stanford Law School.

FAQs

Briefing Recording

This briefing recording is complimentary to NACUA members and is available for NACUA members to access on demand through NACUA’s Online Learning Center.

Please contact us at nacua@nacua.org if you have any issues accessing the briefing.

NACUA Annual Conference

Join us in the Music City June 29 – July 2 to connect, learn, and lead alongside higher education attorneys shaping policy, practice, and impact nationwide together.

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2025 Cybersecurity Law Update
2025-03-14 12:00 - 14:00
Webinar

Time to Update the Playbook: The Expanded Lineup of Federal Higher Education Regulators

Event Details

About this Event

Rapid advancements in technology provide tremendous opportunities but also carry significant risks to the mission-critical operations of colleges and universities. The vast amount of student, patient, and research data make higher education institutions increasingly attractive targets for criminals and bad actors, who are constantly improving their capabilities to carry out acts of intrusion, theft, and disruption. The ensuing security and data breaches carry significant legal and reputational risk for institutions. However, the preventive measures required to stay one step ahead of the bad actors and to comply with the expanding patchwork of data security and privacy laws and regulations carry notable costs and nuanced considerations of their own. In light of these substantial risks and evolving threat landscape, counsel must remain informed on the current state of cybersecurity law.

Please join us for this two-hour webinar featuring expert presenters with deep knowledge and practical experience in the cybersecurity issues impacting higher education. The webinar will include:

Overview of the current cyber threat landscape, including high-profile incidents and enforcement;

Overview of the cybersecurity compliance framework, including new and emerging laws and regulations;

Discussion of privilege considerations in cyber threat responses, investigations, and post-incident analysis; and

Consideration of several practical cybersecurity challenges for higher education institutions including the top stressors and challenges for IT personnel and resources, as well as emerging trends and considerations in procurement, contracting, and cyber insurance.

Who Should Attend?

This webinar will be of interest to college and university counsel who advise on cybersecurity, data security, and/or compliance issues, as well as campus administrators with responsibilities in those areas such as compliance officers, procurement officers, risk managers, and IT and technology leaders.

Speakers

Hailyn Chen

Hailyn Chen
Co-Managing Partner
Munger, Tolles & Olson

Hailyn Chen is a Munger, Tolles & Olson litigation partner and Co-Managing Partner of the firm.

Ms. Chen is known as a leader inside and outside the courtroom, with a practice focused on complex business litigation, white collar criminal defense, and government and internal investigations. She has earned a reputation as one of the nation’s leading lawyers, in particular for matters involving higher education institutions or allegations of sexual misconduct in a range of litigation matters and investigations. Ms. Chen has paved the way for other women attorneys of color to excel in their practices and drive initiatives for diversity and inclusion in the legal profession.

Ms. Chen is recognized in the 2025 edition of The Best Lawyers in America and in the Los Angeles Business Journal’s 2024 Leaders of Influence: Litigators and Trial Attorneys List. In 2023, Ms. Chen was recognized by the Daily Journal in its Top 100 Lawyers List for her investigations practice, including leading an internal investigation on behalf of UC Berkeley into allegations of abuse, bullying and discriminatory conduct by longtime head coach of UC Berkeley Women’s Swimming, Teri McKeever. She also served as lead counsel in an independent internal investigation into decades of alleged sexual abuse at the Thacher School, an elite boarding school in Ojai, California. In 2021, Ms. Chen was listed among California’s “Top Women Lawyers” by the Daily Journal for the fourth consecutive year and, in 2020, she was named “Managing Partner of the Year” by Corporate Counsel.

Ms. Chen is an immediate past member of the Board of Trustees of the State Bar of California, having served for seven years on the Board as an appointee of the California Supreme Court. She is a member of the State Bar Board’s Ad Hoc Committee on Oversight and Accountability Reforms and has testified on those topics at Joint Oversight Hearings of the Senate Judiciary and Assembly Judiciary Committees. She also serves on the UCLA School of Law Advisory Board, which advises the Dean of the UCLA Law School on significant issues. Ms. Chen is a member of the board of directors of the Attorney Liability Assurance Society (ALAS), the nation’s largest lawyer-owned mutual, insuring 222 premier law firms with over 76,000 lawyers around the world.

She has been quoted in numerous publications including The American Lawyer, the Daily Journal, and in 2022 co-authored an article published by the National Association of College and University Attorneys, “Sexual Misconduct Arising Out of Student Health, Athletic Medicine, and Academic Medical Centers,” the first-of-its-kind comprehensive overview of best practices in responding to sexual misconduct in the healthcare context.

Ms. Chen earned her undergraduate degree from Yale University, where she was one of the first female coxswains to lead the Yale varsity men’s crew and was awarded the MVP award in 1996.

Sonya Sanchez

Sonya Sanchez

Sonya Sanchez is Managing Counsel for Education Affairs and Governance at the University of California System. She joined the Office of the General Counsel as Senior Counsel for the Litigation group in November 2015, overseeing a wide variety of litigated matters, including personal injury, First Amendment, DACA and sexual misconduct litigation, including Title IX litigation. In addition to managing sexual misconduct litigation, she advises on complex policy, regulatory and crisis management issues arising in the sexual misconduct arena.

She received a B.A. in Philosophy from Wellesley College, a M. Ed. from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and a J.D. from Stanford Law School.

Program Schedule

TimeSession Topic12:00 P.M.Welcome and IntroductionsOverview of Cyber Threat Landscape Compliance Framework Q&APractical Challenges and Approaches for Higher Education Q&A2:00 P.M.Conclusion

CLE

FAQs

Webinar Recording

Members who purchase the Live Webinar will receive access to the Post-Event Recording in the Online Learning Center at no additional charge. Non-members will not have post-event access to the recording or the materials and should plan to download materials during the live webinar.

If you are a member and couldn’t attend live, the event recording will be available for purchase in our Online Learning Center. The recording may be replayed at any time, but may not be copied, posted, or otherwise distributed within or outside of the institution, organization, or firm. The license entitles the purchaser to replay the recording at one campus or at one location of any organization or firm. You can purchase the Post-Event Recording here.

Access Recording

Purchase Recording

2024-2025 Webinars Sponsored by

NACUA Annual Conference

Join us in the Music City June 29 – July 2 to connect, learn, and lead alongside higher education attorneys shaping policy, practice, and impact nationwide together.

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Fireside Chat: Farewell to the Department of Education?
2025-03-21 12:00 - 12:45
Webinar

Time to Update the Playbook: The Expanded Lineup of Federal Higher Education Regulators

Event Details

About this Event

On March 3, newly confirmed U.S. Department of Education Secretary Linda McMahon issued her statement regarding the Department’s “Final Mission.” That same day the Task Force on Antisemitism announced its initial investigations regarding alleged violations of Title VI and shortly thereafter announced that it was withholding $400 million in federal funding from Columbia University. On March 10, the Task Force on Antisemitism announced an additional 60 investigations into postsecondary institutions across the United States; March 14 saw the announcement of another 45 investigations, pertaining to enforcement of the February 14 Dear Colleague Letter.

The continued viability of the Department itself may also be in question. On March 6, a draft executive order leaked to the public, which sets forth steps the Trump Administration anticipates taking to “facilitate the closure of the Department of Education and return authority over education to the States and local communities,” just before thousands of Department staff were laid off via a mass reduction in force.

To parse the nuance of these myriad actions and their impacts on the practice of higher education law, please join NACUA for a 45-minute fireside chat featuring NACUA Board Chair Traevena Byrd, Vice President, General Counsel & Secretary to the Board at American University, in conversation with Lisa Brown, Partner and Higher Education Practice Group Head at WilmerHale and former U.S. Department of Education General Counsel. This fireside chat is being held in collaboration with the National Association of Independent Colleges & Universities (NAICU), and the event will only be open to members of NACUA and NAICU.

This fireside chat is a part of NACUA’s Transition Updates: The First 100 Days series.

Speakers

Hailyn Chen

Hailyn Chen
Co-Managing Partner
Munger, Tolles & Olson

Hailyn Chen is a Munger, Tolles & Olson litigation partner and Co-Managing Partner of the firm.

Ms. Chen is known as a leader inside and outside the courtroom, with a practice focused on complex business litigation, white collar criminal defense, and government and internal investigations. She has earned a reputation as one of the nation’s leading lawyers, in particular for matters involving higher education institutions or allegations of sexual misconduct in a range of litigation matters and investigations. Ms. Chen has paved the way for other women attorneys of color to excel in their practices and drive initiatives for diversity and inclusion in the legal profession.

Ms. Chen is recognized in the 2025 edition of The Best Lawyers in America and in the Los Angeles Business Journal’s 2024 Leaders of Influence: Litigators and Trial Attorneys List. In 2023, Ms. Chen was recognized by the Daily Journal in its Top 100 Lawyers List for her investigations practice, including leading an internal investigation on behalf of UC Berkeley into allegations of abuse, bullying and discriminatory conduct by longtime head coach of UC Berkeley Women’s Swimming, Teri McKeever. She also served as lead counsel in an independent internal investigation into decades of alleged sexual abuse at the Thacher School, an elite boarding school in Ojai, California. In 2021, Ms. Chen was listed among California’s “Top Women Lawyers” by the Daily Journal for the fourth consecutive year and, in 2020, she was named “Managing Partner of the Year” by Corporate Counsel.

Ms. Chen is an immediate past member of the Board of Trustees of the State Bar of California, having served for seven years on the Board as an appointee of the California Supreme Court. She is a member of the State Bar Board’s Ad Hoc Committee on Oversight and Accountability Reforms and has testified on those topics at Joint Oversight Hearings of the Senate Judiciary and Assembly Judiciary Committees. She also serves on the UCLA School of Law Advisory Board, which advises the Dean of the UCLA Law School on significant issues. Ms. Chen is a member of the board of directors of the Attorney Liability Assurance Society (ALAS), the nation’s largest lawyer-owned mutual, insuring 222 premier law firms with over 76,000 lawyers around the world.

She has been quoted in numerous publications including The American Lawyer, the Daily Journal, and in 2022 co-authored an article published by the National Association of College and University Attorneys, “Sexual Misconduct Arising Out of Student Health, Athletic Medicine, and Academic Medical Centers,” the first-of-its-kind comprehensive overview of best practices in responding to sexual misconduct in the healthcare context.

Ms. Chen earned her undergraduate degree from Yale University, where she was one of the first female coxswains to lead the Yale varsity men’s crew and was awarded the MVP award in 1996.

Sonya Sanchez

Sonya Sanchez

Sonya Sanchez is Managing Counsel for Education Affairs and Governance at the University of California System. She joined the Office of the General Counsel as Senior Counsel for the Litigation group in November 2015, overseeing a wide variety of litigated matters, including personal injury, First Amendment, DACA and sexual misconduct litigation, including Title IX litigation. In addition to managing sexual misconduct litigation, she advises on complex policy, regulatory and crisis management issues arising in the sexual misconduct arena.

She received a B.A. in Philosophy from Wellesley College, a M. Ed. from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and a J.D. from Stanford Law School.

FAQs

Briefing Recording

This recording is complimentary to NACUA members and is available for NACUA members to access on demand through NACUA’s Online Learning Center.

Please contact us at nacua@nacua.org if you have any issues accessing the briefing.

Access Recording

Cooperating Associations

NACUA Annual Conference

Join us in the Music City June 29 – July 2 to connect, learn, and lead alongside higher education attorneys shaping policy, practice, and impact nationwide together.

Register

Spring 2025 CLE Workshop: Discrimination Law
2025-03-26 00:00 - 2025-03-28 23:59 | The Westin Denver Downtown, Denver, CO, Denver, CO
Virtual, Webinar

Time to Update the Playbook: The Expanded Lineup of Federal Higher Education Regulators

Event Details

About this Event

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Speakers

Hailyn Chen

Hailyn Chen
Co-Managing Partner
Munger, Tolles & Olson

Hailyn Chen is a Munger, Tolles & Olson litigation partner and Co-Managing Partner of the firm.

Ms. Chen is known as a leader inside and outside the courtroom, with a practice focused on complex business litigation, white collar criminal defense, and government and internal investigations. She has earned a reputation as one of the nation’s leading lawyers, in particular for matters involving higher education institutions or allegations of sexual misconduct in a range of litigation matters and investigations. Ms. Chen has paved the way for other women attorneys of color to excel in their practices and drive initiatives for diversity and inclusion in the legal profession.

Ms. Chen is recognized in the 2025 edition of The Best Lawyers in America and in the Los Angeles Business Journal’s 2024 Leaders of Influence: Litigators and Trial Attorneys List. In 2023, Ms. Chen was recognized by the Daily Journal in its Top 100 Lawyers List for her investigations practice, including leading an internal investigation on behalf of UC Berkeley into allegations of abuse, bullying and discriminatory conduct by longtime head coach of UC Berkeley Women’s Swimming, Teri McKeever. She also served as lead counsel in an independent internal investigation into decades of alleged sexual abuse at the Thacher School, an elite boarding school in Ojai, California. In 2021, Ms. Chen was listed among California’s “Top Women Lawyers” by the Daily Journal for the fourth consecutive year and, in 2020, she was named “Managing Partner of the Year” by Corporate Counsel.

Ms. Chen is an immediate past member of the Board of Trustees of the State Bar of California, having served for seven years on the Board as an appointee of the California Supreme Court. She is a member of the State Bar Board’s Ad Hoc Committee on Oversight and Accountability Reforms and has testified on those topics at Joint Oversight Hearings of the Senate Judiciary and Assembly Judiciary Committees. She also serves on the UCLA School of Law Advisory Board, which advises the Dean of the UCLA Law School on significant issues. Ms. Chen is a member of the board of directors of the Attorney Liability Assurance Society (ALAS), the nation’s largest lawyer-owned mutual, insuring 222 premier law firms with over 76,000 lawyers around the world.

She has been quoted in numerous publications including The American Lawyer, the Daily Journal, and in 2022 co-authored an article published by the National Association of College and University Attorneys, “Sexual Misconduct Arising Out of Student Health, Athletic Medicine, and Academic Medical Centers,” the first-of-its-kind comprehensive overview of best practices in responding to sexual misconduct in the healthcare context.

Ms. Chen earned her undergraduate degree from Yale University, where she was one of the first female coxswains to lead the Yale varsity men’s crew and was awarded the MVP award in 1996.

Sonya Sanchez

Sonya Sanchez

Sonya Sanchez is Managing Counsel for Education Affairs and Governance at the University of California System. She joined the Office of the General Counsel as Senior Counsel for the Litigation group in November 2015, overseeing a wide variety of litigated matters, including personal injury, First Amendment, DACA and sexual misconduct litigation, including Title IX litigation. In addition to managing sexual misconduct litigation, she advises on complex policy, regulatory and crisis management issues arising in the sexual misconduct arena.

She received a B.A. in Philosophy from Wellesley College, a M. Ed. from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and a J.D. from Stanford Law School.

Program Schedule

TimeSession Topic12:00 – 12:10Welcome and Introductions13:00 – 13:10Grants v. Contracts14:00 – 14:10Funding Termination

CLE

FAQs

Webinar Recording

Members who purchase the Live Webinar will receive access to the Post-Event Recording in the Online Learning Center at no additional charge. Non-members will not have post-event access to the recording or the materials and should plan to download materials during the live webinar.

If you are a member and couldn’t attend live, the event recording will be available for purchase in our Online Learning Center. The recording may be replayed at any time, but may not be copied, posted, or otherwise distributed within or outside of the institution, organization, or firm. The license entitles the purchaser to replay the recording at one campus or at one location of any organization or firm. You can purchase the Post-Event Recording here.

Access Recording

Purchase Recording

Cooperating Associations

2024-2025 Webinars Sponsored by

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Join us in the Music City June 29 – July 2 to connect, learn, and lead alongside higher education attorneys shaping policy, practice, and impact nationwide together.

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Washington Update
2025-03-26 12:00 - 12:45
Webinar

Time to Update the Playbook: The Expanded Lineup of Federal Higher Education Regulators

Event Details

About this Event

NACUA’s Spring Discrimination Law Workshop in San Antonio, TX included a session on the latest developments in Washington relative to higher education. Please enjoy this complimentary briefing that discusses the current landscape as of the time of the recording on March 26, 2025. The session provided updates on Washington executive, legislative, and regulatory activity from experts in Washington.

Speakers

Hailyn Chen

Hailyn Chen
Co-Managing Partner
Munger, Tolles & Olson

Hailyn Chen is a Munger, Tolles & Olson litigation partner and Co-Managing Partner of the firm.

Ms. Chen is known as a leader inside and outside the courtroom, with a practice focused on complex business litigation, white collar criminal defense, and government and internal investigations. She has earned a reputation as one of the nation’s leading lawyers, in particular for matters involving higher education institutions or allegations of sexual misconduct in a range of litigation matters and investigations. Ms. Chen has paved the way for other women attorneys of color to excel in their practices and drive initiatives for diversity and inclusion in the legal profession.

Ms. Chen is recognized in the 2025 edition of The Best Lawyers in America and in the Los Angeles Business Journal’s 2024 Leaders of Influence: Litigators and Trial Attorneys List. In 2023, Ms. Chen was recognized by the Daily Journal in its Top 100 Lawyers List for her investigations practice, including leading an internal investigation on behalf of UC Berkeley into allegations of abuse, bullying and discriminatory conduct by longtime head coach of UC Berkeley Women’s Swimming, Teri McKeever. She also served as lead counsel in an independent internal investigation into decades of alleged sexual abuse at the Thacher School, an elite boarding school in Ojai, California. In 2021, Ms. Chen was listed among California’s “Top Women Lawyers” by the Daily Journal for the fourth consecutive year and, in 2020, she was named “Managing Partner of the Year” by Corporate Counsel.

Ms. Chen is an immediate past member of the Board of Trustees of the State Bar of California, having served for seven years on the Board as an appointee of the California Supreme Court. She is a member of the State Bar Board’s Ad Hoc Committee on Oversight and Accountability Reforms and has testified on those topics at Joint Oversight Hearings of the Senate Judiciary and Assembly Judiciary Committees. She also serves on the UCLA School of Law Advisory Board, which advises the Dean of the UCLA Law School on significant issues. Ms. Chen is a member of the board of directors of the Attorney Liability Assurance Society (ALAS), the nation’s largest lawyer-owned mutual, insuring 222 premier law firms with over 76,000 lawyers around the world.

She has been quoted in numerous publications including The American Lawyer, the Daily Journal, and in 2022 co-authored an article published by the National Association of College and University Attorneys, “Sexual Misconduct Arising Out of Student Health, Athletic Medicine, and Academic Medical Centers,” the first-of-its-kind comprehensive overview of best practices in responding to sexual misconduct in the healthcare context.

Ms. Chen earned her undergraduate degree from Yale University, where she was one of the first female coxswains to lead the Yale varsity men’s crew and was awarded the MVP award in 1996.

Sonya Sanchez

Sonya Sanchez

Sonya Sanchez is Managing Counsel for Education Affairs and Governance at the University of California System. She joined the Office of the General Counsel as Senior Counsel for the Litigation group in November 2015, overseeing a wide variety of litigated matters, including personal injury, First Amendment, DACA and sexual misconduct litigation, including Title IX litigation. In addition to managing sexual misconduct litigation, she advises on complex policy, regulatory and crisis management issues arising in the sexual misconduct arena.

She received a B.A. in Philosophy from Wellesley College, a M. Ed. from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and a J.D. from Stanford Law School.

FAQs

Briefing Recording

This briefing recording is complimentary to NACUA members and is available for NACUA members to access on demand through NACUA’s Online Learning Center.

Please contact us at nacua@nacua.org if you have any issues accessing the briefing.

Access Recording

NACUA Annual Conference

Join us in the Music City June 29 – July 2 to connect, learn, and lead alongside higher education attorneys shaping policy, practice, and impact nationwide together.

Register

The First 100 Days | Federal Grants: What Counsel Need to Know Today
2025-04-11 13:00 - 13:30
Webinar

Time to Update the Playbook: The Expanded Lineup of Federal Higher Education Regulators

Event Details

About this Event

The Trump administration’s shift in policy priorities has led to wide-scale rescission of grant funds awarded by a range of federal agencies, deeply impacting the research and educational activities of colleges and universities. Even where funding has not been terminated, wide-ranging demands and certifications, presenting a high degree of risk to individuals and institutions, are being required to maintain eligibility for funds. Counsel are being called upon to advise on institutions’ responses and compliance activities related to the rapidly changing landscape for grant funding, often under extraordinary circumstances testing the already-stretched bandwidth of the legal function. As this situation continues to unfold, it is crucial for counsel to have a strong grounding in the basics of federal grant awards, particularly the options available for responding to a termination of funds, as well as considerations and strategies for communications and certifications related to ongoing grant awards.

Please join us for a 30-minute audio-only briefing during which NACUA member-experts, William Ferreira and Michelle Gluck, will provide an overview of the recent activity related to federal grant funding and the top considerations for effectively representing and advising your institution on this critical issue.

This briefing is a part of NACUA’s Transition Updates: The First 100 Days series.

Speakers

Hailyn Chen

Hailyn Chen
Co-Managing Partner
Munger, Tolles & Olson

Hailyn Chen is a Munger, Tolles & Olson litigation partner and Co-Managing Partner of the firm.

Ms. Chen is known as a leader inside and outside the courtroom, with a practice focused on complex business litigation, white collar criminal defense, and government and internal investigations. She has earned a reputation as one of the nation’s leading lawyers, in particular for matters involving higher education institutions or allegations of sexual misconduct in a range of litigation matters and investigations. Ms. Chen has paved the way for other women attorneys of color to excel in their practices and drive initiatives for diversity and inclusion in the legal profession.

Ms. Chen is recognized in the 2025 edition of The Best Lawyers in America and in the Los Angeles Business Journal’s 2024 Leaders of Influence: Litigators and Trial Attorneys List. In 2023, Ms. Chen was recognized by the Daily Journal in its Top 100 Lawyers List for her investigations practice, including leading an internal investigation on behalf of UC Berkeley into allegations of abuse, bullying and discriminatory conduct by longtime head coach of UC Berkeley Women’s Swimming, Teri McKeever. She also served as lead counsel in an independent internal investigation into decades of alleged sexual abuse at the Thacher School, an elite boarding school in Ojai, California. In 2021, Ms. Chen was listed among California’s “Top Women Lawyers” by the Daily Journal for the fourth consecutive year and, in 2020, she was named “Managing Partner of the Year” by Corporate Counsel.

Ms. Chen is an immediate past member of the Board of Trustees of the State Bar of California, having served for seven years on the Board as an appointee of the California Supreme Court. She is a member of the State Bar Board’s Ad Hoc Committee on Oversight and Accountability Reforms and has testified on those topics at Joint Oversight Hearings of the Senate Judiciary and Assembly Judiciary Committees. She also serves on the UCLA School of Law Advisory Board, which advises the Dean of the UCLA Law School on significant issues. Ms. Chen is a member of the board of directors of the Attorney Liability Assurance Society (ALAS), the nation’s largest lawyer-owned mutual, insuring 222 premier law firms with over 76,000 lawyers around the world.

She has been quoted in numerous publications including The American Lawyer, the Daily Journal, and in 2022 co-authored an article published by the National Association of College and University Attorneys, “Sexual Misconduct Arising Out of Student Health, Athletic Medicine, and Academic Medical Centers,” the first-of-its-kind comprehensive overview of best practices in responding to sexual misconduct in the healthcare context.

Ms. Chen earned her undergraduate degree from Yale University, where she was one of the first female coxswains to lead the Yale varsity men’s crew and was awarded the MVP award in 1996.

Sonya Sanchez

Sonya Sanchez

Sonya Sanchez is Managing Counsel for Education Affairs and Governance at the University of California System. She joined the Office of the General Counsel as Senior Counsel for the Litigation group in November 2015, overseeing a wide variety of litigated matters, including personal injury, First Amendment, DACA and sexual misconduct litigation, including Title IX litigation. In addition to managing sexual misconduct litigation, she advises on complex policy, regulatory and crisis management issues arising in the sexual misconduct arena.

She received a B.A. in Philosophy from Wellesley College, a M. Ed. from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and a J.D. from Stanford Law School.

FAQs

Briefing Recording

This briefing recording is complimentary to NACUA members and is available for NACUA members to access on demand through NACUA’s Online Learning Center.

Please contact us at nacua@nacua.org if you have any issues accessing the briefing.

Access Recording

NACUA Annual Conference

Join us in the Music City June 29 – July 2 to connect, learn, and lead alongside higher education attorneys shaping policy, practice, and impact nationwide together.

Register

Title IX, One Year Later
2025-05-02 12:00 - 14:00
Webinar

Time to Update the Playbook: The Expanded Lineup of Federal Higher Education Regulators

Event Details

About this Event

Title IX remains a socio-political and legal football.

On April 19, 2024, the U.S. Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights (the Department), released its 2024 Title IX regulations, which included significant departures from the 2020 Rule, including expanding the definition of sex-based discrimination and harassment, and broadening what triggers an institutional response obligation. It also introduced a level of institutional discretion absent in the 2020 Final Rule.

Litigation ensued, challenging various aspects of the 2024 Final Rule, in particular the inclusion of “gender identity” as a protected category within sex-based harassment. On January 9, 2025, the U.S District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky issued its decision in Tennessee v. Cardona, vacating the 2024 Final Rule by ruling that that the Department exceeded its authority in implementing the regulations and that the 2024 Final Rule and its corresponding regulations also violated the U.S. Constitution.

Nine days later, Donald J. Trump was sworn in as the 47th President of the United States, and thereafter the Department issued a new Dear Colleague Letter announcing its intention to enforce the 2020 Final Rule. In the weeks since, the Department has made enforcement of a narrow definition of gender in both investigations and athletics participation a keystone priority, most recently announcing an interagency task force toward that end.

Please join NACUA for a 2-hour webinar, in which our member experts will provide an in-depth exploration of the rapid transformation of Title IX over the last twelve months. This webinar will equip you with the knowledge to navigate confidently in the current era of Title IX enforcement.

Note: This webinar is a follow-up to a webinar that was presented on May 17, 2024, and a complimentary briefing that was presented on January 24, 2025. It will be of interest to postsecondary counsel who handle sexual misconduct matters, Title IX coordinators and investigators, student affairs professionals, human resources professionals, and other campus administrators responsible for student and employee misconduct matters.

Speakers

Hailyn Chen

Hailyn Chen
Co-Managing Partner
Munger, Tolles & Olson

Hailyn Chen is a Munger, Tolles & Olson litigation partner and Co-Managing Partner of the firm.

Ms. Chen is known as a leader inside and outside the courtroom, with a practice focused on complex business litigation, white collar criminal defense, and government and internal investigations. She has earned a reputation as one of the nation’s leading lawyers, in particular for matters involving higher education institutions or allegations of sexual misconduct in a range of litigation matters and investigations. Ms. Chen has paved the way for other women attorneys of color to excel in their practices and drive initiatives for diversity and inclusion in the legal profession.

Ms. Chen is recognized in the 2025 edition of The Best Lawyers in America and in the Los Angeles Business Journal’s 2024 Leaders of Influence: Litigators and Trial Attorneys List. In 2023, Ms. Chen was recognized by the Daily Journal in its Top 100 Lawyers List for her investigations practice, including leading an internal investigation on behalf of UC Berkeley into allegations of abuse, bullying and discriminatory conduct by longtime head coach of UC Berkeley Women’s Swimming, Teri McKeever. She also served as lead counsel in an independent internal investigation into decades of alleged sexual abuse at the Thacher School, an elite boarding school in Ojai, California. In 2021, Ms. Chen was listed among California’s “Top Women Lawyers” by the Daily Journal for the fourth consecutive year and, in 2020, she was named “Managing Partner of the Year” by Corporate Counsel.

Ms. Chen is an immediate past member of the Board of Trustees of the State Bar of California, having served for seven years on the Board as an appointee of the California Supreme Court. She is a member of the State Bar Board’s Ad Hoc Committee on Oversight and Accountability Reforms and has testified on those topics at Joint Oversight Hearings of the Senate Judiciary and Assembly Judiciary Committees. She also serves on the UCLA School of Law Advisory Board, which advises the Dean of the UCLA Law School on significant issues. Ms. Chen is a member of the board of directors of the Attorney Liability Assurance Society (ALAS), the nation’s largest lawyer-owned mutual, insuring 222 premier law firms with over 76,000 lawyers around the world.

She has been quoted in numerous publications including The American Lawyer, the Daily Journal, and in 2022 co-authored an article published by the National Association of College and University Attorneys, “Sexual Misconduct Arising Out of Student Health, Athletic Medicine, and Academic Medical Centers,” the first-of-its-kind comprehensive overview of best practices in responding to sexual misconduct in the healthcare context.

Ms. Chen earned her undergraduate degree from Yale University, where she was one of the first female coxswains to lead the Yale varsity men’s crew and was awarded the MVP award in 1996.

Sonya Sanchez

Sonya Sanchez

Sonya Sanchez is Managing Counsel for Education Affairs and Governance at the University of California System. She joined the Office of the General Counsel as Senior Counsel for the Litigation group in November 2015, overseeing a wide variety of litigated matters, including personal injury, First Amendment, DACA and sexual misconduct litigation, including Title IX litigation. In addition to managing sexual misconduct litigation, she advises on complex policy, regulatory and crisis management issues arising in the sexual misconduct arena.

She received a B.A. in Philosophy from Wellesley College, a M. Ed. from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and a J.D. from Stanford Law School.

Program Schedule

Schedule Coming Soon!

CLE

FAQs

Webinar Recording

Members who purchase the Live Webinar will receive access to the Post-Event Recording in the Online Learning Center at no additional charge. Non-members will not have post-event access to the recording or the materials and should plan to download materials during the live webinar.

If you are a member and couldn’t attend live, the event recording will be available for purchase in our Online Learning Center. The recording may be replayed at any time, but may not be copied, posted, or otherwise distributed within or outside of the institution, organization, or firm. The license entitles the purchaser to replay the recording at one campus or at one location of any organization or firm. You can purchase the Post-Event Recording here.

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2024-2025 Webinars Sponsored by

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Executive Branch Updates: What to Know About the Federal Grant Termination Trend
2025-05-22 12:30 - 13:15
Webinar

Time to Update the Playbook: The Expanded Lineup of Federal Higher Education Regulators

Event Details

About this Event

Federal grant terminations used to be rare. Under an Office of Management and Budget rule implemented during President Donald J. Trump’s first term, the second Trump Administration has prioritized cancellation of grants, which it has determined “no longer effectuates… the program goals or agency priorities.” When grants are abruptly terminated by federal agencies, postsecondary institutions can lose millions of dollars, setting off a cascade of on campus impacts related to the loss and wind-down of particular research, as well as the jobs and infrastructure supported by indirect cost funds. Today’s campus counsel must be prepared to advise their clients on the nuances of unique grant termination regulations for different federal agencies, including the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), National Science Foundation (NSF), and Department of Energy (DOE).

Please join us for this 45-minute audio-only briefing in which NACUA experts Steve Sencer, Counsel at Ropes & Gray LLP, and Nicole Picard, Associate General Counsel at Brown University will:

Provide an update on the latest federal grant termination trends;

Review the latest considerations for institutional appeal rights and related processes; and

Offer insight on the most important steps colleges and universities should take both before and immediately after they receive a notice of termination.

Who Should Attend?

This briefing will be of interest to college and university counsel who advise on federal research grants, as well as colleagues in offices of sponsored research and grant managers.

Note: This program is the first in NACUA’s “Executive Branch Updates” series, which follows the Transition Updates: The First 100 Days series. This content of this audio-only briefing builds on the First 100 Days series briefing, Federal Grants: What Counsel Need to Know Today (April 11, 2025). Members seeking further, in-depth, CLE-eligible content are also encouraged to sign up for NACUA’s upcoming two-hour Executive Branch Updates webinar, A New World of Federal Fun(?)ding (June 4, 2025).

Speakers

Hailyn Chen

Hailyn Chen
Co-Managing Partner
Munger, Tolles & Olson

Hailyn Chen is a Munger, Tolles & Olson litigation partner and Co-Managing Partner of the firm.

Ms. Chen is known as a leader inside and outside the courtroom, with a practice focused on complex business litigation, white collar criminal defense, and government and internal investigations. She has earned a reputation as one of the nation’s leading lawyers, in particular for matters involving higher education institutions or allegations of sexual misconduct in a range of litigation matters and investigations. Ms. Chen has paved the way for other women attorneys of color to excel in their practices and drive initiatives for diversity and inclusion in the legal profession.

Ms. Chen is recognized in the 2025 edition of The Best Lawyers in America and in the Los Angeles Business Journal’s 2024 Leaders of Influence: Litigators and Trial Attorneys List. In 2023, Ms. Chen was recognized by the Daily Journal in its Top 100 Lawyers List for her investigations practice, including leading an internal investigation on behalf of UC Berkeley into allegations of abuse, bullying and discriminatory conduct by longtime head coach of UC Berkeley Women’s Swimming, Teri McKeever. She also served as lead counsel in an independent internal investigation into decades of alleged sexual abuse at the Thacher School, an elite boarding school in Ojai, California. In 2021, Ms. Chen was listed among California’s “Top Women Lawyers” by the Daily Journal for the fourth consecutive year and, in 2020, she was named “Managing Partner of the Year” by Corporate Counsel.

Ms. Chen is an immediate past member of the Board of Trustees of the State Bar of California, having served for seven years on the Board as an appointee of the California Supreme Court. She is a member of the State Bar Board’s Ad Hoc Committee on Oversight and Accountability Reforms and has testified on those topics at Joint Oversight Hearings of the Senate Judiciary and Assembly Judiciary Committees. She also serves on the UCLA School of Law Advisory Board, which advises the Dean of the UCLA Law School on significant issues. Ms. Chen is a member of the board of directors of the Attorney Liability Assurance Society (ALAS), the nation’s largest lawyer-owned mutual, insuring 222 premier law firms with over 76,000 lawyers around the world.

She has been quoted in numerous publications including The American Lawyer, the Daily Journal, and in 2022 co-authored an article published by the National Association of College and University Attorneys, “Sexual Misconduct Arising Out of Student Health, Athletic Medicine, and Academic Medical Centers,” the first-of-its-kind comprehensive overview of best practices in responding to sexual misconduct in the healthcare context.

Ms. Chen earned her undergraduate degree from Yale University, where she was one of the first female coxswains to lead the Yale varsity men’s crew and was awarded the MVP award in 1996.

Sonya Sanchez

Sonya Sanchez

Sonya Sanchez is Managing Counsel for Education Affairs and Governance at the University of California System. She joined the Office of the General Counsel as Senior Counsel for the Litigation group in November 2015, overseeing a wide variety of litigated matters, including personal injury, First Amendment, DACA and sexual misconduct litigation, including Title IX litigation. In addition to managing sexual misconduct litigation, she advises on complex policy, regulatory and crisis management issues arising in the sexual misconduct arena.

She received a B.A. in Philosophy from Wellesley College, a M. Ed. from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and a J.D. from Stanford Law School.

FAQs

Briefing Recording

This briefing recording is complimentary to NACUA members and is available for NACUA members to access on demand through Online Learning Center.

Please contact us at nacua@nacua.org if you have any issues accessing the briefing.

Access Recording

NACUA Annual Conference

Join us in the Music City June 29 – July 2 to connect, learn, and lead alongside higher education attorneys shaping policy, practice, and impact nationwide together.

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Executive Branch Updates: DOJ’s Civil Rights Fraud Initiative
2025-05-29 15:00 - 15:30
Webinar

Time to Update the Playbook: The Expanded Lineup of Federal Higher Education Regulators

Event Details

About this Event

On May 19, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche announced that the U.S. Department of Justice was establishing “the Civil Rights Fraud Initiative, which will utilize the False Claims Act to investigate and, as appropriate, pursue claims against any recipient of federal funds that knowingly violates federal civil rights laws.” Notably, the announcement “strongly encourages anyone with knowledge of discrimination by federal funding recipients to consider filing a qui tam action under the False Claims Act.” This development further highlights the need for colleges and universities to seek the advice of counsel and take expeditious steps to comply with federal civil rights laws and assess areas of risk for False Claims Act litigation.

Please join us for this 45-minute audio-only briefing in which NACUA experts Hailyn Chen, Partner at Munger, Tolles & Olson LLP, and Michael Vernick, Partner at Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP will:

Provide an update on the objective, scope, and potential impacts of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Fraud Initiative on colleges and universities;

Review the basic tenets of the False Claims Act (FCA), its qui tam provision, and potential defenses; and

Highlight practical considerations and approaches for identifying and lawfully addressing areas of heightened FCA risk at your institution.

Who Should Attend?

This briefing will be of interest to all in-house and outside college and university counsel.

Note: This program is part of NACUA’s “Executive Branch Updates” series, which follows the Transition Updates: The First 100 Days series.

Speakers

Hailyn Chen

Hailyn Chen
Co-Managing Partner
Munger, Tolles & Olson

Hailyn Chen is a Munger, Tolles & Olson litigation partner and Co-Managing Partner of the firm.

Ms. Chen is known as a leader inside and outside the courtroom, with a practice focused on complex business litigation, white collar criminal defense, and government and internal investigations. She has earned a reputation as one of the nation’s leading lawyers, in particular for matters involving higher education institutions or allegations of sexual misconduct in a range of litigation matters and investigations. Ms. Chen has paved the way for other women attorneys of color to excel in their practices and drive initiatives for diversity and inclusion in the legal profession.

Ms. Chen is recognized in the 2025 edition of The Best Lawyers in America and in the Los Angeles Business Journal’s 2024 Leaders of Influence: Litigators and Trial Attorneys List. In 2023, Ms. Chen was recognized by the Daily Journal in its Top 100 Lawyers List for her investigations practice, including leading an internal investigation on behalf of UC Berkeley into allegations of abuse, bullying and discriminatory conduct by longtime head coach of UC Berkeley Women’s Swimming, Teri McKeever. She also served as lead counsel in an independent internal investigation into decades of alleged sexual abuse at the Thacher School, an elite boarding school in Ojai, California. In 2021, Ms. Chen was listed among California’s “Top Women Lawyers” by the Daily Journal for the fourth consecutive year and, in 2020, she was named “Managing Partner of the Year” by Corporate Counsel.

Ms. Chen is an immediate past member of the Board of Trustees of the State Bar of California, having served for seven years on the Board as an appointee of the California Supreme Court. She is a member of the State Bar Board’s Ad Hoc Committee on Oversight and Accountability Reforms and has testified on those topics at Joint Oversight Hearings of the Senate Judiciary and Assembly Judiciary Committees. She also serves on the UCLA School of Law Advisory Board, which advises the Dean of the UCLA Law School on significant issues. Ms. Chen is a member of the board of directors of the Attorney Liability Assurance Society (ALAS), the nation’s largest lawyer-owned mutual, insuring 222 premier law firms with over 76,000 lawyers around the world.

She has been quoted in numerous publications including The American Lawyer, the Daily Journal, and in 2022 co-authored an article published by the National Association of College and University Attorneys, “Sexual Misconduct Arising Out of Student Health, Athletic Medicine, and Academic Medical Centers,” the first-of-its-kind comprehensive overview of best practices in responding to sexual misconduct in the healthcare context.

Ms. Chen earned her undergraduate degree from Yale University, where she was one of the first female coxswains to lead the Yale varsity men’s crew and was awarded the MVP award in 1996.

Sonya Sanchez

Sonya Sanchez

Sonya Sanchez is Managing Counsel for Education Affairs and Governance at the University of California System. She joined the Office of the General Counsel as Senior Counsel for the Litigation group in November 2015, overseeing a wide variety of litigated matters, including personal injury, First Amendment, DACA and sexual misconduct litigation, including Title IX litigation. In addition to managing sexual misconduct litigation, she advises on complex policy, regulatory and crisis management issues arising in the sexual misconduct arena.

She received a B.A. in Philosophy from Wellesley College, a M. Ed. from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and a J.D. from Stanford Law School.

FAQs

Briefing Recording

This briefing recording is complimentary to NACUA members and is available for NACUA members to access on demand through Online Learning Center.

Please contact us at nacua@nacua.org if you have any issues accessing the briefing.

Access Recording

NACUA Annual Conference

Join us in the Music City June 29 – July 2 to connect, learn, and lead alongside higher education attorneys shaping policy, practice, and impact nationwide together.

Register

Executive Branch Updates: A New World of Federal Fun(?)ding
2025-06-04 12:00 - 14:00
Webinar

Time to Update the Playbook: The Expanded Lineup of Federal Higher Education Regulators

Event Details

About this Event

The academic year may be winding down, but federal grants and contracts continue to pose major challenges for colleges and universities. The Trump Administration has put research funding under a spotlight, greatly affecting the sponsored projects ecosystem within higher education. As the situation evolves, additional developments emerge from the administration, and litigation winds through the courts, campus counsel are called upon to address a high volume of questions about federal award termination, administrative appeals, litigation, and certifications, among others. Given the various stakeholders and fundamental institutional interests in play, it is now imperative that counsel advise and assist institutional leaders in developing communication strategies around these issues.

Please join us for this two-hour webinar in which three experienced practitioners will cover topics to aid counsel in advising clients and advocating for the interests of the institutional research enterprise, including:

Distinctions between federal grants and contracts;

Overview of grant and contract terminations, including considerations for the awardee;

Considerations and strategies regarding administrative appeals, litigation, and certifications; and

Discussion of communication strategies to consider on your campus.

Who Should Attend?

This webinar will be of interest to college and university counsel who advise research clients, and/or advise on federal awards, as well as campus administrators with responsibilities related to this area of the law.

Note: This webinar is an in-depth expansion of content initially presented in a briefing titled “The First 100 Days | Federal Grants: What Counsel Need to Know Today” that was presented on April 11, 2025.

Speakers

Hailyn Chen

Hailyn Chen
Co-Managing Partner
Munger, Tolles & Olson

Hailyn Chen is a Munger, Tolles & Olson litigation partner and Co-Managing Partner of the firm.

Ms. Chen is known as a leader inside and outside the courtroom, with a practice focused on complex business litigation, white collar criminal defense, and government and internal investigations. She has earned a reputation as one of the nation’s leading lawyers, in particular for matters involving higher education institutions or allegations of sexual misconduct in a range of litigation matters and investigations. Ms. Chen has paved the way for other women attorneys of color to excel in their practices and drive initiatives for diversity and inclusion in the legal profession.

Ms. Chen is recognized in the 2025 edition of The Best Lawyers in America and in the Los Angeles Business Journal’s 2024 Leaders of Influence: Litigators and Trial Attorneys List. In 2023, Ms. Chen was recognized by the Daily Journal in its Top 100 Lawyers List for her investigations practice, including leading an internal investigation on behalf of UC Berkeley into allegations of abuse, bullying and discriminatory conduct by longtime head coach of UC Berkeley Women’s Swimming, Teri McKeever. She also served as lead counsel in an independent internal investigation into decades of alleged sexual abuse at the Thacher School, an elite boarding school in Ojai, California. In 2021, Ms. Chen was listed among California’s “Top Women Lawyers” by the Daily Journal for the fourth consecutive year and, in 2020, she was named “Managing Partner of the Year” by Corporate Counsel.

Ms. Chen is an immediate past member of the Board of Trustees of the State Bar of California, having served for seven years on the Board as an appointee of the California Supreme Court. She is a member of the State Bar Board’s Ad Hoc Committee on Oversight and Accountability Reforms and has testified on those topics at Joint Oversight Hearings of the Senate Judiciary and Assembly Judiciary Committees. She also serves on the UCLA School of Law Advisory Board, which advises the Dean of the UCLA Law School on significant issues. Ms. Chen is a member of the board of directors of the Attorney Liability Assurance Society (ALAS), the nation’s largest lawyer-owned mutual, insuring 222 premier law firms with over 76,000 lawyers around the world.

She has been quoted in numerous publications including The American Lawyer, the Daily Journal, and in 2022 co-authored an article published by the National Association of College and University Attorneys, “Sexual Misconduct Arising Out of Student Health, Athletic Medicine, and Academic Medical Centers,” the first-of-its-kind comprehensive overview of best practices in responding to sexual misconduct in the healthcare context.

Ms. Chen earned her undergraduate degree from Yale University, where she was one of the first female coxswains to lead the Yale varsity men’s crew and was awarded the MVP award in 1996.

Sonya Sanchez

Sonya Sanchez

Sonya Sanchez is Managing Counsel for Education Affairs and Governance at the University of California System. She joined the Office of the General Counsel as Senior Counsel for the Litigation group in November 2015, overseeing a wide variety of litigated matters, including personal injury, First Amendment, DACA and sexual misconduct litigation, including Title IX litigation. In addition to managing sexual misconduct litigation, she advises on complex policy, regulatory and crisis management issues arising in the sexual misconduct arena.

She received a B.A. in Philosophy from Wellesley College, a M. Ed. from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and a J.D. from Stanford Law School.

Program Schedule

TimeSession Topic12:00 P.M.Welcome and IntroductionsGrants v. ContractsFunding TerminationCommunication StrategiesConsiderations and Strategies for Administrative Appeals12:45 PMQ&A1:00 PMLitigation ConsiderationsOverview and Strategies for Certifications1:45 PMQ&A2:00 PMConclusion

CLE

FAQs

Webinar Recording

Members who purchase the Live Webinar will receive access to the Post-Event Recording in the Online Learning Center at no additional charge. Non-members will not have post-event access to the recording or the materials and should plan to download materials during the live webinar.

If you are a member and couldn’t attend live, the event recording will be available for purchase in our Online Learning Center. The recording may be replayed at any time, but may not be copied, posted, or otherwise distributed within or outside of the institution, organization, or firm. The license entitles the purchaser to replay the recording at one campus or at one location of any organization or firm. You can purchase the Post-Event Recording here.

Access Recording

Purchase Recording

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2024-2025 Webinars Sponsored by

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Join us in the Music City June 29 – July 2 to connect, learn, and lead alongside higher education attorneys shaping policy, practice, and impact nationwide together.

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2025 Lawyers New to Higher Education Workshop
2025-06-21 00:00 - 2025-06-22 23:59 | Seattle Convention Center, Seattle, WA, Seattle, WA

2025 Annual Conference
2025-06-22 00:00 - 2025-06-25 23:59 | Seattle Convention Center, Seattle, WA, Seattle, WA

Campus on Trial: Litigation Management for Busy College Counsel
2025-07-23 13:00 - 15:00
Webinar

Time to Update the Playbook: The Expanded Lineup of Federal Higher Education Regulators

Event Details

About this Event

Litigation is increasingly an inevitability in the postsecondary world. Even when college and university attorneys do everything right and their clients follow the law, institutions may still find themselves defending their decisions in court. Strategic pre-planning is key to successfully meeting the moment when a complaint and service waiver comes through the door.

Please join NACUA for a 2-hour webinar, in which our member experts Lauren Peach, First Assistant Attorney General, Colorado Department of Law, David Corry, General Counsel, Liberty University, and Leslie Bissinger Golden, Assistant General Counsel, Valencia College, will provide a soup to nuts overview of all things litigation management.

This webinar will equip you with the knowledge to navigate confidently when your client is sued and you are called upon to manage the litigation process from initiation to resolution – and the best practices for navigating the various procedural and substantive complexities between.

Speakers

Hailyn Chen

Hailyn Chen
Co-Managing Partner
Munger, Tolles & Olson

Hailyn Chen is a Munger, Tolles & Olson litigation partner and Co-Managing Partner of the firm.

Ms. Chen is known as a leader inside and outside the courtroom, with a practice focused on complex business litigation, white collar criminal defense, and government and internal investigations. She has earned a reputation as one of the nation’s leading lawyers, in particular for matters involving higher education institutions or allegations of sexual misconduct in a range of litigation matters and investigations. Ms. Chen has paved the way for other women attorneys of color to excel in their practices and drive initiatives for diversity and inclusion in the legal profession.

Ms. Chen is recognized in the 2025 edition of The Best Lawyers in America and in the Los Angeles Business Journal’s 2024 Leaders of Influence: Litigators and Trial Attorneys List. In 2023, Ms. Chen was recognized by the Daily Journal in its Top 100 Lawyers List for her investigations practice, including leading an internal investigation on behalf of UC Berkeley into allegations of abuse, bullying and discriminatory conduct by longtime head coach of UC Berkeley Women’s Swimming, Teri McKeever. She also served as lead counsel in an independent internal investigation into decades of alleged sexual abuse at the Thacher School, an elite boarding school in Ojai, California. In 2021, Ms. Chen was listed among California’s “Top Women Lawyers” by the Daily Journal for the fourth consecutive year and, in 2020, she was named “Managing Partner of the Year” by Corporate Counsel.

Ms. Chen is an immediate past member of the Board of Trustees of the State Bar of California, having served for seven years on the Board as an appointee of the California Supreme Court. She is a member of the State Bar Board’s Ad Hoc Committee on Oversight and Accountability Reforms and has testified on those topics at Joint Oversight Hearings of the Senate Judiciary and Assembly Judiciary Committees. She also serves on the UCLA School of Law Advisory Board, which advises the Dean of the UCLA Law School on significant issues. Ms. Chen is a member of the board of directors of the Attorney Liability Assurance Society (ALAS), the nation’s largest lawyer-owned mutual, insuring 222 premier law firms with over 76,000 lawyers around the world.

She has been quoted in numerous publications including The American Lawyer, the Daily Journal, and in 2022 co-authored an article published by the National Association of College and University Attorneys, “Sexual Misconduct Arising Out of Student Health, Athletic Medicine, and Academic Medical Centers,” the first-of-its-kind comprehensive overview of best practices in responding to sexual misconduct in the healthcare context.

Ms. Chen earned her undergraduate degree from Yale University, where she was one of the first female coxswains to lead the Yale varsity men’s crew and was awarded the MVP award in 1996.

Sonya Sanchez

Sonya Sanchez

Sonya Sanchez is Managing Counsel for Education Affairs and Governance at the University of California System. She joined the Office of the General Counsel as Senior Counsel for the Litigation group in November 2015, overseeing a wide variety of litigated matters, including personal injury, First Amendment, DACA and sexual misconduct litigation, including Title IX litigation. In addition to managing sexual misconduct litigation, she advises on complex policy, regulatory and crisis management issues arising in the sexual misconduct arena.

She received a B.A. in Philosophy from Wellesley College, a M. Ed. from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and a J.D. from Stanford Law School.

Program Schedule

TimeSession Topic1:03 P.M.Introduction to Litigation Management1:15 P.M.Before You Get Sued1:30 P.M.When the Complaint is Filed1:45 P.M.Discovery and Motions Practice2:00 P.M.Negotiated Resolutions2:15 P.M.Trial and Appeal2:30 P.M.Tips and Tricks to Stay Organized and Manage Client Expectations2:45 P.M.Q&A2:59 PMClosing Remarks

CLE

FAQs

Webinar Recording

Members who purchase the Live Webinar will receive access to the Post-Event Recording in the Online Learning Center at no additional charge. Non-members will not have post-event access to the recording or the materials and should plan to download materials during the live webinar.

If you are a member and couldn’t attend live, the event recording will be available for purchase in our Online Learning Center. The recording may be replayed at any time, but may not be copied, posted, or otherwise distributed within or outside of the institution, organization, or firm. The license entitles the purchaser to replay the recording at one campus or at one location of any organization or firm. You can purchase the Post-Event Recording here.

Access Recording

Purchase Recording

2024-2025 Webinars Sponsored by

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Join us in the Music City June 29 – July 2 to connect, learn, and lead alongside higher education attorneys shaping policy, practice, and impact nationwide together.

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Executive Branch Updates: A New Executive Order on "Saving College Sports"
2025-08-01 13:00 - 13:30
Webinar

Time to Update the Playbook: The Expanded Lineup of Federal Higher Education Regulators

Event Details

About this Event

President Trump signed an executive order (EO) titled “Saving College Sports” on July 24, 2025, intended to address the rapidly changing landscape of collegiate athlete compensation. The EO focuses on third-party and pay-for-play payments, preserving and expanding opportunities in non-revenue and women’s sports, and protecting college athletics from antitrust and other legal challenges. Notably, the EO also directs the Secretary of Labor and the National Labor Relations Board to clarify the status of student-athletes.

Please join us for a 30-minute audio-only briefing during which NACUA member-experts, Jason Montgomery and Kasey Havekost, will provide an in-depth overview of the EO and share their thoughts on how this EO impacts the current state of collegiate athlete compensation.

Speakers

Hailyn Chen

Hailyn Chen
Co-Managing Partner
Munger, Tolles & Olson

Hailyn Chen is a Munger, Tolles & Olson litigation partner and Co-Managing Partner of the firm.

Ms. Chen is known as a leader inside and outside the courtroom, with a practice focused on complex business litigation, white collar criminal defense, and government and internal investigations. She has earned a reputation as one of the nation’s leading lawyers, in particular for matters involving higher education institutions or allegations of sexual misconduct in a range of litigation matters and investigations. Ms. Chen has paved the way for other women attorneys of color to excel in their practices and drive initiatives for diversity and inclusion in the legal profession.

Ms. Chen is recognized in the 2025 edition of The Best Lawyers in America and in the Los Angeles Business Journal’s 2024 Leaders of Influence: Litigators and Trial Attorneys List. In 2023, Ms. Chen was recognized by the Daily Journal in its Top 100 Lawyers List for her investigations practice, including leading an internal investigation on behalf of UC Berkeley into allegations of abuse, bullying and discriminatory conduct by longtime head coach of UC Berkeley Women’s Swimming, Teri McKeever. She also served as lead counsel in an independent internal investigation into decades of alleged sexual abuse at the Thacher School, an elite boarding school in Ojai, California. In 2021, Ms. Chen was listed among California’s “Top Women Lawyers” by the Daily Journal for the fourth consecutive year and, in 2020, she was named “Managing Partner of the Year” by Corporate Counsel.

Ms. Chen is an immediate past member of the Board of Trustees of the State Bar of California, having served for seven years on the Board as an appointee of the California Supreme Court. She is a member of the State Bar Board’s Ad Hoc Committee on Oversight and Accountability Reforms and has testified on those topics at Joint Oversight Hearings of the Senate Judiciary and Assembly Judiciary Committees. She also serves on the UCLA School of Law Advisory Board, which advises the Dean of the UCLA Law School on significant issues. Ms. Chen is a member of the board of directors of the Attorney Liability Assurance Society (ALAS), the nation’s largest lawyer-owned mutual, insuring 222 premier law firms with over 76,000 lawyers around the world.

She has been quoted in numerous publications including The American Lawyer, the Daily Journal, and in 2022 co-authored an article published by the National Association of College and University Attorneys, “Sexual Misconduct Arising Out of Student Health, Athletic Medicine, and Academic Medical Centers,” the first-of-its-kind comprehensive overview of best practices in responding to sexual misconduct in the healthcare context.

Ms. Chen earned her undergraduate degree from Yale University, where she was one of the first female coxswains to lead the Yale varsity men’s crew and was awarded the MVP award in 1996.

Sonya Sanchez

Sonya Sanchez

Sonya Sanchez is Managing Counsel for Education Affairs and Governance at the University of California System. She joined the Office of the General Counsel as Senior Counsel for the Litigation group in November 2015, overseeing a wide variety of litigated matters, including personal injury, First Amendment, DACA and sexual misconduct litigation, including Title IX litigation. In addition to managing sexual misconduct litigation, she advises on complex policy, regulatory and crisis management issues arising in the sexual misconduct arena.

She received a B.A. in Philosophy from Wellesley College, a M. Ed. from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and a J.D. from Stanford Law School.

FAQs

Briefing Recording

This briefing recording is complimentary to NACUA members and is available for NACUA members to access on demand through Online Learning Center.

Please contact us at nacua@nacua.org if you have any issues accessing the briefing.

Access Recording

NACUA Annual Conference

Join us in the Music City June 29 – July 2 to connect, learn, and lead alongside higher education attorneys shaping policy, practice, and impact nationwide together.

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Preparing for Kick Off: Athletics Issues for 2025-2026
2025-08-27 13:00 - 15:00
Webinar

Time to Update the Playbook: The Expanded Lineup of Federal Higher Education Regulators

Event Details

About this Event

The first college games and competitions of the academic year are kicking off, but that doesn’t mean legal issues surrounding college sports had an off-season. Institutions are working on implementation of the House settlement along with quick-moving legal issues surrounding NIL and NCAA policies, the Saving College Sports Executive Order from the White House, and the SCORE Act moving through the U.S. House of Representatives. Outside of the major headlines, campus counsel continue to work on other legal issues keeping athletics departments running and compliant with various laws and regulations.

Please join us for this 2-hour webinar where presenters will explore and provide a legal and regulatory landscape overview, including:

Federal, NCAA, and litigation updates, including enforcement expectations and issues related to the House settlement, federal legislation and activity, and ongoing antitrust litigation;

NIL 2.0 institutional involvement, the evolving marketplace, and the College Sports Commission;

NIL contract issues and best practices; and

Gender equity and Title IX compliance.

Who Should Attend?

This webinar will be of interest to college and university counsel who advise on athletics issues, as well as campus administrators with responsibilities related to this area of the law.

Speakers

Hailyn Chen

Hailyn Chen
Co-Managing Partner
Munger, Tolles & Olson

Hailyn Chen is a Munger, Tolles & Olson litigation partner and Co-Managing Partner of the firm.

Ms. Chen is known as a leader inside and outside the courtroom, with a practice focused on complex business litigation, white collar criminal defense, and government and internal investigations. She has earned a reputation as one of the nation’s leading lawyers, in particular for matters involving higher education institutions or allegations of sexual misconduct in a range of litigation matters and investigations. Ms. Chen has paved the way for other women attorneys of color to excel in their practices and drive initiatives for diversity and inclusion in the legal profession.

Ms. Chen is recognized in the 2025 edition of The Best Lawyers in America and in the Los Angeles Business Journal’s 2024 Leaders of Influence: Litigators and Trial Attorneys List. In 2023, Ms. Chen was recognized by the Daily Journal in its Top 100 Lawyers List for her investigations practice, including leading an internal investigation on behalf of UC Berkeley into allegations of abuse, bullying and discriminatory conduct by longtime head coach of UC Berkeley Women’s Swimming, Teri McKeever. She also served as lead counsel in an independent internal investigation into decades of alleged sexual abuse at the Thacher School, an elite boarding school in Ojai, California. In 2021, Ms. Chen was listed among California’s “Top Women Lawyers” by the Daily Journal for the fourth consecutive year and, in 2020, she was named “Managing Partner of the Year” by Corporate Counsel.

Ms. Chen is an immediate past member of the Board of Trustees of the State Bar of California, having served for seven years on the Board as an appointee of the California Supreme Court. She is a member of the State Bar Board’s Ad Hoc Committee on Oversight and Accountability Reforms and has testified on those topics at Joint Oversight Hearings of the Senate Judiciary and Assembly Judiciary Committees. She also serves on the UCLA School of Law Advisory Board, which advises the Dean of the UCLA Law School on significant issues. Ms. Chen is a member of the board of directors of the Attorney Liability Assurance Society (ALAS), the nation’s largest lawyer-owned mutual, insuring 222 premier law firms with over 76,000 lawyers around the world.

She has been quoted in numerous publications including The American Lawyer, the Daily Journal, and in 2022 co-authored an article published by the National Association of College and University Attorneys, “Sexual Misconduct Arising Out of Student Health, Athletic Medicine, and Academic Medical Centers,” the first-of-its-kind comprehensive overview of best practices in responding to sexual misconduct in the healthcare context.

Ms. Chen earned her undergraduate degree from Yale University, where she was one of the first female coxswains to lead the Yale varsity men’s crew and was awarded the MVP award in 1996.

Sonya Sanchez

Sonya Sanchez

Sonya Sanchez is Managing Counsel for Education Affairs and Governance at the University of California System. She joined the Office of the General Counsel as Senior Counsel for the Litigation group in November 2015, overseeing a wide variety of litigated matters, including personal injury, First Amendment, DACA and sexual misconduct litigation, including Title IX litigation. In addition to managing sexual misconduct litigation, she advises on complex policy, regulatory and crisis management issues arising in the sexual misconduct arena.

She received a B.A. in Philosophy from Wellesley College, a M. Ed. from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and a J.D. from Stanford Law School.

Program Schedule

TimeSession TopicWelcome and IntroductionsNCAA, Litigation, and Legislative UpdatesGender Equity and Title IX ComplianceNIL Contracts Issues and Best PracticesQ&AClosing Remarks

CLE

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Webinar Recording

Members who purchase the Live Webinar will receive access to the Post-Event Recording in the Online Learning Center at no additional charge. Non-members will not have post-event access to the recording or the materials and should plan to download materials during the live webinar.

If you are a member and couldn’t attend live, the event recording will be available for purchase in our Online Learning Center. The recording may be replayed at any time, but may not be copied, posted, or otherwise distributed within or outside of the institution, organization, or firm. The license entitles the purchaser to replay the recording at one campus or at one location of any organization or firm. You can purchase the Post-Event Recording here.

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Executive Branch Updates: NIH v. APHA and Federal Grant Terminations
2025-09-05 12:00 - 12:30
Webinar

Time to Update the Playbook: The Expanded Lineup of Federal Higher Education Regulators

Event Details

About this Event

In a 5-4 ruling on August 21st, the Supreme Court lifted a stay on the cancellation of approximately $783 billion in NIH grants. The Trump Administration linked the canceled grants to DEI efforts. Notably, the fractured ruling held that legal challenges to the grant terminations were “contract disputes” which should be brought in the Court of Federal Claims. Also in a 5-4 outcome, the Court left in place a separate portion of the lower court ruling, which vacated internal NIH guidance documents surrounding the agency’s policy priorities that were used to justify grant terminations. This development further highlights the need for colleges and university counsel to continue to plan for and respond to funder requests and determinations, including future grant terminations.

Please enjoy this complimentary 45-minute audio-only briefing that discusses the current landscape as of the time of the recording on September 5, 2025. In this on-demand briefing, NACUA experts, Michelle Gluck, Associate General Counsel at The Pennsylvania State University, William Ferreira, Partner at Hogan Lovells, and Aleks Sverdlov, Counsel at Hogan Lovells will:

Outline the meaning and impact of the Supreme Court ruling;

Provide updated insights on the process and considerations for challenging grant terminations;

Focus on practical effects for the research enterprise and institutional support of impacted researchers.

Note: This briefing was pre-recorded on September 5, 2025. This briefing is a follow-up to the April 11 Briefing, “The First 100 Days | Federal Grants: What Counsel Need to Know Today” and June 4 webinar, “Executive Branch Updates: A New World of Federal Funding.

Speakers

Hailyn Chen

Hailyn Chen
Co-Managing Partner
Munger, Tolles & Olson

Hailyn Chen is a Munger, Tolles & Olson litigation partner and Co-Managing Partner of the firm.

Ms. Chen is known as a leader inside and outside the courtroom, with a practice focused on complex business litigation, white collar criminal defense, and government and internal investigations. She has earned a reputation as one of the nation’s leading lawyers, in particular for matters involving higher education institutions or allegations of sexual misconduct in a range of litigation matters and investigations. Ms. Chen has paved the way for other women attorneys of color to excel in their practices and drive initiatives for diversity and inclusion in the legal profession.

Ms. Chen is recognized in the 2025 edition of The Best Lawyers in America and in the Los Angeles Business Journal’s 2024 Leaders of Influence: Litigators and Trial Attorneys List. In 2023, Ms. Chen was recognized by the Daily Journal in its Top 100 Lawyers List for her investigations practice, including leading an internal investigation on behalf of UC Berkeley into allegations of abuse, bullying and discriminatory conduct by longtime head coach of UC Berkeley Women’s Swimming, Teri McKeever. She also served as lead counsel in an independent internal investigation into decades of alleged sexual abuse at the Thacher School, an elite boarding school in Ojai, California. In 2021, Ms. Chen was listed among California’s “Top Women Lawyers” by the Daily Journal for the fourth consecutive year and, in 2020, she was named “Managing Partner of the Year” by Corporate Counsel.

Ms. Chen is an immediate past member of the Board of Trustees of the State Bar of California, having served for seven years on the Board as an appointee of the California Supreme Court. She is a member of the State Bar Board’s Ad Hoc Committee on Oversight and Accountability Reforms and has testified on those topics at Joint Oversight Hearings of the Senate Judiciary and Assembly Judiciary Committees. She also serves on the UCLA School of Law Advisory Board, which advises the Dean of the UCLA Law School on significant issues. Ms. Chen is a member of the board of directors of the Attorney Liability Assurance Society (ALAS), the nation’s largest lawyer-owned mutual, insuring 222 premier law firms with over 76,000 lawyers around the world.

She has been quoted in numerous publications including The American Lawyer, the Daily Journal, and in 2022 co-authored an article published by the National Association of College and University Attorneys, “Sexual Misconduct Arising Out of Student Health, Athletic Medicine, and Academic Medical Centers,” the first-of-its-kind comprehensive overview of best practices in responding to sexual misconduct in the healthcare context.

Ms. Chen earned her undergraduate degree from Yale University, where she was one of the first female coxswains to lead the Yale varsity men’s crew and was awarded the MVP award in 1996.

Sonya Sanchez

Sonya Sanchez

Sonya Sanchez is Managing Counsel for Education Affairs and Governance at the University of California System. She joined the Office of the General Counsel as Senior Counsel for the Litigation group in November 2015, overseeing a wide variety of litigated matters, including personal injury, First Amendment, DACA and sexual misconduct litigation, including Title IX litigation. In addition to managing sexual misconduct litigation, she advises on complex policy, regulatory and crisis management issues arising in the sexual misconduct arena.

She received a B.A. in Philosophy from Wellesley College, a M. Ed. from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and a J.D. from Stanford Law School.

FAQs

Briefing Recording

This briefing recording is complimentary to NACUA members and is available for NACUA members to access on demand through Online Learning Center.

Please contact us at nacua@nacua.org if you have any issues accessing the briefing.

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NACUA Annual Conference

Join us in the Music City June 29 – July 2 to connect, learn, and lead alongside higher education attorneys shaping policy, practice, and impact nationwide together.

Register
