Elder law online certificate program launched

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Mitchell Hamline School of Law is set to launch an online course designed to provide people working in the elder-care industry with the tools to deal with the legal complexities surrounding the aging population.

Elder Law and Chronic Care, which will start April 3, is the fourth certificate course to be added to the school’s Professional Legal Education program, which provides legal training outside the boundaries of traditional J.D. programs.

Kathryn Russell, director of the PLE program, said the addition of elder law and chronic care to the course offerings was largely a response to demographics. As the number of older Americans increases, she said, a greater variety of professionals are responding to their needs.

“There are so many people that elder law touches in a variety of different segments of the population,” she said. “We wanted to make sure that this program reaches out and touches on all of those.”

The 12-week course is being taught by Mitchell Hamline adjunct professors Iris Freeman, founding chair of the Minnesota Elder Justice Center, and Suzanne Scheller, an attorney with the Minneapolis elder law firm Scheller Legal Solutions. According to Russell, the two women approached her about 18 months ago to broach the subject of adding elder law to the PLE course offerings.

“They thought Professional Legal Education would be a perfect avenue for developing this type of programming,” she said. “They saw a real gap in the marketplace when it came to understanding all the complicated regulations surrounding the elder-law environment.”

Freeman said the population of potential students for the course is wide-ranging and would include caregivers, social workers, people in the medical field, and law enforcement.

“The intent is not to train non-lawyers to be lawyers on the spot,” she said. “It’s simply to provide people a clear understanding of what the rules are in terms of eligibility for assistance, what kinds of options are available for making those decisions, what kind of surrogate decision-making opportunities arise in Minnesota law to give individuals and families other tools like guardianship or conservatorship or health care powers of attorney.”

As the number of older Americans increases, there’s greater awareness of their susceptibility to abuse—whether physical, emotional, or financial in nature.

“We’re increasingly seeing an interest among people in financial services—bankers and investment advisers—to think about that line that connects their ethical duties of confidentiality to their ethical and legal duties to intervene in some way  when they suspect an elder is being influenced to give their money away for someone else’s benefit,” Freeman said.

The course will cover four areas—overview of aging and elder law, government benefits and long-term care regulation, assisted decision-making and end-of-life considerations, and harm and remedies. Using the school’s online learning management system, students will be able to interact and collaborate with each other as well as faculty in discussions and hands-on exercises.

“The whole point of professional education is to educate non-attorneys,” Russell said. “We’ve had a lot of response from conservators and guardians and people who work in long-term care facilities. They’re the ones who have immediately gravitated toward this program.”

She noted that there’s also been interest from general-practice attorneys who see a need to learn more about elder law. Sixteen CLE credits have been requested for the program.

Russell noted that that besides providing tools and knowledge for people in the elder-care industry, it also might serve a social function.

“This program can bring together social workers, lawyers, law-enforcement personnel, and government workers and give them more of a holistic look at all the different issues that affect the aging and vulnerable communities.”

The PLE program at Mitchell Hamline launched in 2016 with its first certificate course, Cybersecurity and Privacy Law, and the next two years saw the additions of HR Compliance and Health Care Compliance. Russell said that as of last fall, 133 students had taken, or were taking, the certificate classes.