La Jolla Bar Association, March MCLE Luncheon

Reminder of the LJBA’s lunch meeting on Thursday, March 10th at 12:00 noon, at the Manhattan of La Jolla restaurant, located within the Empress Hotel, 7766 Fay Avenue (at Fay & Silverado).

Our speaker for March is Michael Wakshull, who will be presenting “Will Bias Cost You Your Next Case?” in which he will address the various types of biases that are at play in the courtroom during trial and other proceedings.  Mr. Wakshull will provide an overview of these various forms of bias, to include actual bias; implied bias; judicial bias; advocate’s bias; witness motivational bias; and cognitive and contextual biases. The program will also include discussion of how biases in forensics influence expert witness testimony, and in turn influence the judge or jury hearing such testimony.

Mr. Wakshull’s presentation is structured to provide 1.00 Hours of CLE credit in the area of “Bias”, as required by the California State Bar.  His presentation has been approved by the California State Bar.

We hope that you will be able to attend this program on March 10th.

About Our Speaker:

Michael Wakshull has studied the science and discipline of document examination and handwriting analysis for 30 years. He has been qualified as an expert witness in state and federal trial courts throughout California, testifying in cases involving will contests, contract disputes, altered deeds and mortgage documents, altered handwritten documents, electronic documents and other types of questioned documents, and he has served as an expert in forensic document examination cases throughout thirteen states.

He has authored two books on the topic of forensic document examination, and has given presentations at several  forensics conferences, including the National Association of Document Examiners (NADE) annual conference; the Association of Forensic Document Examiners (AFDE); the World Congress of Forensics in Chongqing, China; and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).    He has chaired  the National Association of Document Examiners 2012 conference,  the Scientific Association of Forensic Examiners 2014 Conference, and the Forensic Expert Witness Association 2015 conference. 

Mr. Wakshull’s interest in the role of bias and its impact on dynamics of human interaction is lifelong, starting when he was a graduate student and continuing over the years in his career as questioned documents examiner and handwriting analyst.