On-Demand Video
CC

Election Law Update 2022


  • City:
  • Start Date:2022-04-10 20:00:00
  • End Date:2025-04-10 20:00:00
  • Length:
  • Level:Various
  • Topics:Government

$249.00 ProPass

[{"jurisdiction":"Supreme Court of Delaware Commission on Continuing Legal Education","status":"Self Apply","state":"Delaware","credits":"","expiration_date":"April 9, 2023","speciality_credit":[{"category":"General","state_category":"General","credit":"4.0"}]},{"jurisdiction":"Virginia State Bar","status":"Self Apply","state":"Virginia","credits":"","expiration_date":"October 31, 2022","speciality_credit":[{"category":"General","state_category":"General","credit":"4.0"}]},{"jurisdiction":"Supreme Court of New Jersey Board on Continuing Legal Education","status":"Reciprocity ","state":"New Jersey","credits":"","expiration_date":"April 9, 2025","speciality_credit":[{"category":"General","state_category":"General","credit":"4.8"}]},{"jurisdiction":"The Florida Bar","status":"Self Apply","state":"Florida","credits":"","expiration_date":"October 9, 2023","speciality_credit":[{"category":"General","state_category":"General","credit":"5.0"}]},{"jurisdiction":"New York CLE Board","status":"Approved","state":"New York","credits":"","expiration_date":"April 9, 2025","speciality_credit":[{"category":"General","state_category":"Areas of Professional Practice","credit":"4.5"}]},{"jurisdiction":"Supreme Court of Ohio","status":"Credit not available","state":"Ohio","credits":"","expiration_date":"December 31, 2022","speciality_credit":[{"category":"General","state_category":"General","credit":"0.0"}]},{"jurisdiction":"West Virginia State Bar Continuing Legal Education Commission","status":"Approved","state":"West Virginia","credits":"","expiration_date":"April 9, 2025","speciality_credit":[{"category":"General","state_category":"General","credit":"4.8"}]},{"jurisdiction":"Pennsylvania Continuing Legal Education Board","status":"Approved","state":"Pennsylvania","credits":"","expiration_date":"April 10, 2027","speciality_credit":[{"category":"General","state_category":"General","credit":"4.0"}]}]
Credit States Status Credits Earn credit until

Overview

An overview of election cyber security challenges and solutions, a review of election legislation and trends with a primary focus on Pennsylvania, and an examination of the redrawing of the Pennsylvania state and federal congressional districts. 

Panel discussions include:

Cyber Security and Democracy: An Overview of Election Security in the U.S.

An overview of the election cyber security ecosystem and how challenges and solutions are employed at the federal, state, and local level.

Voter Security or Voter Suppression?– An Examination of Election Legislation and Litigation Trends

A review of proposed and recently enacted legislation, with a focus on Pennsylvania and an examination of the issues covered in Pennsylvania legislation in the context of national trends.

Mapmaker, Mapmaker, Make Me a Map

The legal requirements for creating the new state and federal congressional districts; how the various maps were drawn; the court challenges and the final results, as of the date of the CLE.

Co-sponsored with the Pennsylvania Bar Association’s Civil and Equal Rights Committee and the Young Lawyers Division (YLD).

All attendees will receive the course book as a digital download. Course materials are not available for separate purchase but a printed copy is available to attendees for $40. If you wish to purchase the printed version of the course book, please call PBI Customer Service at 800-932-4637.

Recorded in April 2022.

Faculty

Yanai Siegel Esq.

Mr. Siegel is Corporate Counsel, Planning & Development for Appliance Dealers Cooperative, a 12-state regional major home appliance buying group with substantial warehouse facilities in central NJ, Lewisberry PA (near Harrisburg) and Imperial PA (near Pittsburgh). He is also Counsel for the NY/NJ law firm of Shafer Partners, LLP, as well as associated with Your House Counsel®, a national consortium of insurance and corporate liability defense law firms. Mr. Siegel is the former Chair of the Aeronautical and Space Law Section of the Pennsylvania Bar Association, and is a former Chair of the Aerospace Law Division of the American Bar Association’s Science and Technology Law Section, and is the Co-Chair of the Your House Counsel Cyber Security and Data Privacy Practice Group. He is also a member of the PBA Business Law Section, the PBA Cybersecurity and Data Privacy Committee, the PBA In-House Counsel Committee, the American Bar Association, as well as the New York and New Jersey State Bar Associations. Mr. Siegel received his BS in Business Administration from Georgetown University for Accounting and Finance, MBA from Rutgers University for Marketing and Management, and his JD from the Rutgers-Camden Law School. He is admitted to practice law in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and the US District Court of New Jersey. Mr. Siegel has previously presented CLE sessions on drone law issues for both the Pennsylvania Bar Association and the American Bar Association, and CLE sessions on cyber security and data privacy law for the New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania State Bar Associations.

Deborah Gross Esq.

Ms. Gross is the CEO and President of Pennsylvanians for Modern Courts. She is also a member of the Minor Judiciary Education Board of Pennsylvania. She is a member of Drexel University Thomas R. Kline School of Law’s Advisory Board. Ms. Gross is an adjunct professor at Villanova University Charles Widger School of Law teaching a class in complex commercial and class action litigation as she had previously concentrated her legal practice her practice on plaintiffs’ securities fraud, antitrust and consumer class actions. She was previously Chancellor of the Philadelphia Bar Association and previously President of the Philadelphia Bar Foundation. Ms. Gross received her B.S. from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania in 1982 and her J.D. from Boston University School of Law in 1985.

Adam Bonin Esq.

Mr. Bonin extensively
represents clients in campaign finance, election law, pay-to-play, official
ethics, and lobbying compliance matters and has been a leader in efforts on
behalf of the rights of online speakers. He has been successful on both sides
of ballot access battles, successfully representing candidates for office in
defending their right to appear on the ballot as well as removing others from
the ballot whose signatures had been procured fraudulently or unlawfully, and
has successfully aided clients in post-election recounts and litigation as
well, including winning two tied elections for local office. His practice
today focuses on the representation of a variety of elected officials and
candidates for office on the federal, statewide, and local levels, as well as
corporate, labor, nonprofit, party entities, and other politically active
entities on federal, state and municipal campaign finance, election law and
regulatory compliance matters, including pay-to-play law and the regulation
of lobbying activities. He has represented and continues to represent
candidates for office ranging from President of the United States, United
States Senator, and Governor to City Council and Township Commissioner. In
2020, Mr. Bonin served as lead Philadelphia counsel to the Biden-Harris
campaign and coordinated the unprecedented Democratic voter protection
efforts in the city. Both before the election and thereafter, Mr. Bonin was
heavily involved in federal and state litigation protecting Pennsylvanians’
right to vote and defeating Republican efforts to disturb or delegitimize the
election results, and led the team which monitored the Philadelphia vote
canvass for weeks after Election Day.

Benjamin Hovland

Mr. Hovland was
confirmed by unanimous consent of the United States Senate on January 2,
2019, to serve on the U.S. Election Assistance Commission. In 2020,
Commissioner Hovland served as EAC Chairman and helped lead the agency during
an election year with unprecedented challenges. As EAC Chairman, Mr. Hovland
also served as Co-Chair of Election Infrastructure Subsector’s Government
Coordinating Council and Chair of the Joint Subsector COVID-19 Working Group
to coordinate pandemic response amongst state and local election officials,
federal partners, and the private sector. Mr. Hovland’s career in elections
spans over 20 years and includes service as Acting Chief Counsel for the U.S.
Senate Committee on Rules and Administration, where he focused on the federal
government’s role in election administration and campaign finance regulation.
Earlier in his career, as the Deputy General Counsel for the Missouri
Secretary of State’s office, he focused on legal issues related to the
administration of state and federal elections, including recounts, poll
worker training, voter registration list maintenance, statewide database
matching, voter education resources and ballot initiative litigation.

Al Schmidt

Mr. Schmidt joined
the Committee of Seventy as President & CEO in January 2022 after
serving ten years as City Commissioner of Philadelphia. The Committee of
Seventy is a nonprofit and nonpartisan good government organization focused
on strengthening democracy and combating political corruption. As City
Commissioner, he was one of three members on the bipartisan Board of
Elections where he served as Vice Chairman. Since first being elected in
November 2011, Mr. Schmidt worked to modernize election operations, improve
efficiency, and bring greater integrity to the election process. He is an
advocate of open data initiatives and releasing previously unavailable
election data to the public. He has also produced a number of
election-related reports, including investigations that have exposed
vulnerabilities in the election process and voting irregularities. Mr.
Schmidt is a former senior analyst at the non-partisan U.S. Government
Accountability Office (GAO) and served as a policy analyst for the Presidential
Commission on Holocaust Assets in the United States. Originally from
Pittsburgh, PA, he holds a Ph.D. in history from Brandeis University and a
B.A. in history from Allegheny College.

Michael Dimino

Prof. Dimino is Professor of Law at Widener University Commonwealth Law School, where he teaches courses related to constitutional law, election law, federal courts, statutory interpretation, and criminal law. Prof. Dimino graduated summa cum laude from the State University of New York at Buffalo in 1998 with degrees in political science and history. He then attended Harvard Law School, where he was Articles Editor of the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, and from which he graduated cum laude in 2001. Prof. Dimino served as Chief Clerk to Associate Judge Albert M. Rosenblatt of the New York State Court of Appeals, and then clerked for Senior Circuit Judge Laurence H. Silberman of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and Judge Paul L. Friedman of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, before joining Widener in 2004. A two-time recipient of Widener’s Douglas E. Ray Award for Faculty Scholarship, a two-time recipient of Widener’s Outstanding Professor Award, a member of the American Law Institute, and a Fulbright Scholar, Prof. Dimino has written extensively on constitutional law, election law, and judicial behavior, and has co-authored Voting Rights and Election Law (3d ed. 2020); The Best Candidate: Presidential Nomination in Polarized Times (2020); Understanding Election Law and Voting Rights (2016); The Mueller Investigation and Beyond (2020); and Sports Law: Cases and Materials (2d ed. 2007). Prof. Dimino and his wife, Jennifer, live with their four children in Carlisle. In his spare time, Prof. Dimino referees hockey and umpires baseball. 

Kathryn Boockvar Esq.

Kathy Boockvar is President of Athena Strategies LLC, working with a broad base of organizations, government officials, and academic institutions to fortify election security, strengthen democracy, and amplify understanding and civil discourse about elections in the U.S.. Formerly Vice President of Election Operations for the Center for Internet Security (CIS), Kathy led its election security initiatives, working closely with federal, state, and local government to provide the highest standards of election security and cybersecurity practices and systems.

Eliza Sweren-Becker Esq.

Eliza Sweren-Becker serves as counsel & manager in the Voting Rights & Elections Program at the Brennan Center for Justice. She litigates voting rights cases, counsels lawmakers and administrators on voting legislation and policy, researches voting law trends, and comments on voting issues in a variety of media outlets. Eliza has testified before Congress and several state legislatures. She has served as an adjunct professor at St. John’s Law School, where she taught a voting rights seminar. Prior to joining the Brennan Center, Eliza was a litigation associate in private practice. Sweren-Becker previously served as a legal fellow in the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, and as a law clerk in federal district court in California. She received a JD from Harvard Law School, a master’s degree in public policy from the Harvard Kennedy School, and a bachelor’s degree in international relations from Brown University.

Matthew Haverstick Esq.

Mr. Haverstick is a managing partner of Kleinbard LLC and a partner in the Litigation Department. He represents government officials, private entities, and individuals in high-profile, media intensive litigation and appeals, ranging from major grand jury investigations to Pennsylvania Supreme Court arguments over the constitutionality of state laws. Referred to in media reports as “counsel of choice for state Republicans in a number of recent policy fights” for his work on matters that garner national press attention, Mr. Haverstick has a strong understanding of local, state, and federal governments, their stakeholders, and the media. Mr. Haverstick is well known for his appellate advocacy on matters involving important government, public policy issues, Pennsylvania constitutional law, and state grand jury practice. He has argued before the Pennsylvania Supreme Court numerous times, and he has argued and briefed upwards of 100 matters in Pennsylvania’s Commonwealth Court. Mr. Haverstick also frequently represents both private and public entities in white collar criminal matters, regulatory investigations, and high-stakes civil litigation. In addition, Mr. Haverstick has successfully handled various newsworthy legal matters, including his representation of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Harrisburg and the Roman Catholic Diocese of Greensburg, which were both included in the grand jury report on child sex abuse in Catholic churches. He has represented State Senate Republicans and congressmen in legal fights such as redistricting, gubernatorial COVID-19 emergency orders, and election outcomes; as well as the Pennsylvania Treasury in a multi-million-dollar dispute with the State of Delaware that is pending in the U.S. Supreme Court’s original jurisdiction. Mr. Haverstick also handled litigation against the NCAA, which overturned all sanctions against Penn State and caused the NCAA to cede control of a $60 million trust, resulting in the funds being solely spent in Pennsylvania to combat child abuse. Mr. Haverstick understands the critical importance of serving as a trusted advisor and counselor to his clients and is adept at handling media inquiries and often serves as a spokesman on behalf of his clients. He has been featured in various television and print outlets, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, NPR, Time, and the BBC.

Clifford Levine Esq.

Mr. Levine is a shareholder in Dentons Cohen & Grigsby, PC, based in Pittsburgh. He works at the intersection of law, government and politics. With his extensive litigation and appellate experience, as well as his fluency with the governmental and regulatory process, Mr. Levine provides businesses, developers, governments and organizations with a sophisticated, problem-solving approach to address issues such as land use and real estate development, environmental regulation and governmental permitting, administrative law and commercial matters. Cliff chairs the firm’s  Government Law and Regulatory Practices Group and its Appellate Advocacy Group and is a member of its Litigation and Dispute Resolution and Real Estate Groups. Mr. Levine is a skilled courtroom and appellate advocate as reflected by well over 100 published opinions from   federal and state appellate courts. His outstanding record of success includes landmark decisions in election and redistricting law; land use and energy law, and various aspects of regulatory law, ranging from  the constitutionality of the medical marijuana program; preemption issues involving federal, state and local law; the interplay between a state’s program to right-size fiscally distressed communities and collective bargaining statutes; the authority of public utility commissions  to modify independent power contracts; and the tax status of colleges and universities. This experience – and his well-earned credibility and reputation with opposing counsel, judges, governmental officials and regulatory agencies – enhances his ability to negotiate and resolve matters, often avoiding the need to engage in litigation. Mr. Levine has served in leadership roles with numerous political campaigns for presidential, gubernatorial, senatorial and judicial candidates, and with transition teams for local and state elected officials, including as State Counsel to Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama during their presidential campaigns. In 2019-2020, while serving as Joe Biden’s State Counsel, where he was involved in over a dozen cases reflecting Pennsylvania’s status as a critical battleground state, most of which were ultimately decided by the United States and Pennsylvania Supreme Courts. In 2022, Mr. Levine served as counsel in the congressional redistricting litigation and as counsel to the Democratic Senate Caucus in respect to the reapportionment of the Pennsylvania State Senate. He has served as a delegate  in the last four national Democratic conventions, and twice as a presidential elector, in 2020, and in 2012, when he served as President of the Pennsylvania Electoral College. Governor Josh Shapiro recently appointed him to his transition team, focusing on economic development initiatives. An active member of Pittsburgh’s civic, legal and political communities, Mr. Levine has served on governmental commissions, including the Southwest Planning Commission, the Pittsburgh Planning Commission and the Pittsburgh Zoning Board, where he was instrumental in redrafting Pittsburgh’s zoning code to reflect the contemporary landscape of modern cities. He has acted as counsel to numerous municipal authorities, including the Pittsburgh Water & Sewer Authority, the Pittsburgh Urban Redevelopment Authority, and the Pennsylvania Department of Revenue. Mr. Levine is a member of the Academy of Trial Lawyers and the Litigation Counsel of America. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court appointed him to the Pennsylvania CLE Board, where he served for six years, including as Chair from 2017-2021.  As Chair, he initiated and implemented a statewide diversity and inclusion program and worked with the state Supreme Court to adjust the delivery of courses during Covid-19. Mr. Levine also serves as a federal and court-appointed special master, mediator and arbitrator. Mr. Levine has been recognized as a Pennsylvania Super Lawyer for two decades and was identified this year as the best Land Use attorney in Pittsburgh.  He is regularly listed in The Best Lawyers in America© and enjoys the highest ratings, both substantively and ethically in Martindale-Hubbell (AV), where he is a top rated lawyer for Energy, Environmental and Land Use Law. He was recently nominated by his peers as one of Philadelphia Magazine’s top  attorneys in Pittsburgh. Mr. Levine is a graduate of Duke Law School and the State University of New York at Albany, magna cum laude.

Emma Shoucair Esq.

Ms. Shoucair is an associate in the Dentons Cohen & Grigsby Litigation and Dispute Resolution group. In law school, she was a judicial intern for the Hon. John D. Bates on the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. Her second summer as a law student, she was a summer associate at a Washington, DC-based law firm. She was also an Executive Editor on the Michigan Law Review. At graduation, she received the 2018 Women Lawyers Association of Michigan’s Julia D. Darlow Award and she was named a Next Generation Leader by the American Constitution Society. After law school, she continued her law practice before clerking for the Hon. Ellen L. Hollander on the United States District Court for the District of Maryland, and the Hon. Jane B. Stranch on the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. Ms. Shoucair was pleased to return home to Pittsburgh and join Dentons Cohen & Grigsby. After less than five months at the firm, Ms. Shoucair second-chaired the congressional redistricting trial in front of the Commonwealth Court as counsel for the Pennsylvania Senate Democratic Caucus. She also served as counsel to the Senate Democratic Caucus during the state reapportionment before the Legislative Reapportionment Commission and subsequent appeals to the Supreme Court. She has been involved in additional litigation before the Pa. Commonwealth and Supreme Courts as counsel for the Pennsylvania Senate Democratic Caucus, the Pennsylvania Democratic Party, and the Democratic National Committee. 

Jason Torchinsky Esq.

Mr. Torchinsky is a partner at Holtzman Vogel, specializing in campaign finance, election law, lobbying disclosure and issue advocacy groups. Mr. Torchinsky has been recognized by Chambers USA as one of the top “Government Law” attorneys in the country. He’s also been honored by Politico as one of the “50 Politicos to Watch,” and Campaigns and Elections Magazine named Mr. Torchinsky a “Rising Star of Politics.” In addition to his practice counseling clients on compliance with campaign finance, ethics laws, lobbying disclosure and election laws, Mr. Torchinsky has served as lead counsel in a number of litigation matters dealing with First Amendment freedoms and election law and redistricting issues. He has filed numerous amicus briefs, cert petitions and jurisdictional statements with the U.S. Supreme Court, including a victory for the Michigan legislature where the U.S. Supreme Court summarily reversed a three-judge district court opinion, and one on behalf of the NRSC and NRCC cited in the Court’s opinion in McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission. Mr. Torchinsky has also represented candidates across the country during post-election canvass and recount processes. Mr. Torchinsky is a frequent speaker on campaign finance and election law matters, including appearances before the National Conference of State Legislators, the Republican National Lawyers Association, the Federalist Society, and the American Association of Political Consultants. Additionally, Mr. Torchinsky serves as an adjunct professor at the College of William and Mary School of Law, where he teaches about the IRS and political campaigns. He is also a Fellow of the American Bar Association Foundation. Prior to joining the firm, Mr. Torchinsky was Counsel to the Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division at the United States Department of Justice. During the 2004 election cycle, Mr. Torchinsky served as Deputy General Counsel to Bush-Cheney ’04 and Deputy General Counsel to the 2005 Presidential Inaugural Committee. He holds a B.A. in Government and Public Policy from the College of William and Mary and a J.D. from the College of William and Mary School of Law. He is a member of the Virginia Bar, the District of Columbia Bar, the Republican National Lawyers Association and the Federalist Society.

Karen Grethlein Esq.

Karen Grethlein is an Executive Council Member at Large with the Pennsylvania Bar Association’s Women in the Profession Commission. Karen completed the Pennsylvania Bar Association’s Bar Leadership Institute, Class of 2018-2019. She was an associate attorney in the professional liability department of Marshall Dennehey Warner Coleman & Goggin before becoming an Insurance Claim Director at Chubb. Karen is the President of the National Association of Women in Construction (NAWIC) Philadelphia Chapter. She is licensed in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. 

Robert Wiygul Esq.

Mr. Wiygul is a shareholder and trial and appellate lawyer in the Philadelphia office of Hangley Aronchick Segal Pudlin & Schiller. His practice spans a number of disciplines, including election law, commercial litigation, environmental law, and complex insurance coverage litigation.  He has represented state and local officials in a wide array of election-law matters—including redistricting litigation and multiple cases related to Pennsylvania’s mail-in voting statute—at the trial and appellate levels in both state and federal courts.  Mr. Wiygul is a member of the Pennsylvania and American Bar Associations. He holds a J.D. from Yale Law School, a C.Phil. from the University of California, Berkeley; an M.Phil from the University of Cambridge; and a B.A. from Williams College.  Following law school, he served for two years as a law clerk to the Honorable Anthony J. Scirica of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. 

Sozi Tulante Esq.

Mr. Tulante is a litigation partner in Dechert LLP’s Philadelphia office. He has litigated election law cases during his career, including in the 2020 election cycle. Before joining Dechert, Mr. Tulante was Philadelphia City Solicitor and in charge of all of the City’s legal affairs. As Solicitor, he led over 200 lawyers of the Philadelphia Law Department and worked on a variety of critical issues, including efforts to reform the police department. He also created an affirmative litigation unit and led the lawsuit against the Department of Justice to safeguard critical law-enforcement funding. Before coming to the City, Mr. Tulante was an Assistant US Attorney in Philadelphia, where he focused his work on criminal investigations and prosecutions. A political refugee from then Zaire (now Democratic Republic of Congo), Mr. Tulante graduated from Harvard College and Harvard Law School, both times with honors. 

Timothy Ford Esq.

Mr. Ford is a partner in the Philadelphia office of Dilworth Paxson LLP, where he founded his firm’s political and election law practice. In his practice, he represents elected officials, candidates, and political committees with respect to ballot access challenges and defenses, election protection and recounts, federal and state campaign finance and other financial disclosures, public official and employee ethics compliance, and political advertising compliance and defamation litigation. Mr. Ford regularly appears in the Pennsylvania Supreme Court and the Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court in election cases, and has also served as Pennsylvania counsel to a campaign for U.S. Senate. In addition to his practice, he also serves as Solicitor to the Montgomery County Democratic Committee and helped lead election protection efforts in Pennsylvania’s third-largest county in the 2020 presidential election. In that role, Mr. Ford’s argument before the Montgomery County Board of Elections contributed to counting all but 16 out of 4,233 provisional ballots challenged. He is a graduate of Stanford University and the University of Michigan Law School, cum laude, where he served as Executive Editor of the Michigan Law Review. Before entering private practice in Philadelphia, Mr. Ford served as a law clerk to the Honorable Timothy J. Savage on the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.

Elisabeth S. Shuster, Esq.

Currently in private practice, Ms. Shuster was Chief Counsel of the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission from 1983-2005. She was admitted to the Pennsylvania Bar in 1974 and to the United States Supreme Court in 1978. She served as a Deputy Attorney General, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Office of Civil Litigation, from 1978-83, as an Assistant Attorney General, Pennsylvania Department of Health, 1977-78, and as an Assistant General Counsel, Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission, 1974-77. Ms. Shuster has done nation-wide training on employment discrimination for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and for numerous legal and business organizations. She has been a course planner and faculty member for several Pennsylvania Bar Institute courses, including the three previous CERC CLEs on Election Law, the annual CERC Civil Rights Symposia, Practice Before the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission, Whose Constitution Is It, Anyway?, Errant Judges and Lawyers: What to Do? and Civil Rights: To Preserve and Protect, and many discrimination law courses, covering the Pennsylvania Human Relations Act, general discrimination law, sexual harassment, age discrimination and discrimination on the basis of disability. Her discrimination law publications include “The Commonwealth Court and the Interpretation of the Pennsylvania Human Relations Act,” Widener Law Journal, 2011, and “Service/Support Animals,” Pennsylvania Bar Quarterly, 2006. Ms. Shuster served as the Civil and Equal Rights Committee’s ambassador to the PBA Diversity Team from 2010-2015. She served on the “Paths to Leadership” panel at the 2012 YLD Summer Meeting, as a member of the PBA Task Force on the Interbranch Commission on Juvenile Justice, and as a member of the “Court as Employer Gender Bias Subcommittee Work Group” of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court Committee on Racial and Gender Bias in the Justice System. Ms. Shuster received her B.A. from Temple University in 1971 and her J.D. from Villanova School of Law in 1974. She is admitted to the bars of the United States Supreme Court, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, the Middle and Eastern District Courts of Pennsylvania and the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. Ms. Shuster is a member of the American Bar Association, the Pennsylvania Bar Association, where she is a member of the Civil and Equal Rights (Chair of the CLE Committee, past Chair & Co-Chair of CERC), Women in the Profession (Member of the Executive Committee, Co-Chair of the Book Club), Minority Bar, Statutory Law, and Immigration Law Committees. She is a Bencher in the James S. Bowman American Inn of Court and a past president of the Harrisburg Area Women Lawyers Association. In November 2023, Ms. Shuster was the first recipient of the PBA Women in the Profession’s Special Achievement Award which recognizes achievements by a female member of the legal profession whose actions and work have promoted the betterment of women in the law and have enhanced services to women in general. She was included in the 2021 Women in the Profession Report Card’s “Profiles of Women Advocating for Social Change.” In 2020, Ms. Shuster was awarded the PBA Civil & Equal Rights Champion Award, an annual award established by the Civil & Equal Rights Committee to honor an individual who champions civil rights for all Pennsylvanians.

Jada S. Greenhowe, Esq.

Jada S. Greenhowe joined the Pennsylvania Housing Finance Agency (“PHFA”) as Assistant Counsel in 2014. In her role as Assistant Counsel, Jada provides legal advice regarding an array of topics such as bankruptcy, credit reporting and third-party vendor management and oversight. She counsels PHFA’s secondary mortgage program, the Homeowner’s Emergency Mortgage Assistance Program, and represents the Agency in civil litigation matters including Actions to Quiet Title and Commonwealth Court appeals. She oversees federal and state regulatory compliance pertaining to the mortgage servicing industry, such as Act 91 (Homeowner’s Emergency Assistance Act), Act 6 (the Loan Interest and Protection Law) and the Fair Credit Reporting Act for PHFA’s Single Family mortgage program. In addition, she handles multi-party transactional real estate closings involving investor partnerships and Low-Income Housing Tax Credits in connection with PHFA’s Multifamily program. In 2013, Ms. Greenhowe obtained her Juris Doctor from the University Of Pittsburgh School Of Law. She earned a B.A. in Communication Rhetoric from the University of Pittsburgh in 2009. Ms. Greenhowe is admitted to practice in the Western, Middle and Eastern District Courts of Pennsylvania. In addition, she is a member of the American Bar Association, the Dauphin County Bar Association and the Pennsylvania Bar Association where she is a member of the PBA House of Delegates and where she also serves as co- Chair of the Civil and Equal Rights Committee (CERC), and is the co-Chair of CERC’s CLE Subcommittee, as well as its Young Lawyer’s Division (“YLD”) Liaison. In addition, she serves as the At-Large Chair to Diversity for the YLD, is co-Vice Chair of the In-House Counsel Committee and is the YLD Liaison to the Environmental and Energy Law Section. In 2019, Jada was selected as a member of the 2019-2020 class of the PBA’s Bar Leadership Institute.  She is also the 2021 recipient of the Minority Bar Committee’s (“MBC”) Rising Star award and is the current Chair of the MBC Houston’s Rising Star Award Committee.


You have a lot on your plate. We’ll help you stay on top of your compliance — in PA and beyond.