If you have any interest in vastly improving your FMLA and ADA mojo, here are three can’t miss resources you need to make part of your professional reading and education each spring:

1.  Review the ABA’s Report of 2016 FMLA Cases.  Every February, the American Bar Association’s Federal Labor Standards Legislation Committee publishes a comprehensive report of FMLA decisions handed down by the federal courts in the previous year.  Could you imagine anything more scintillating?  Although our little FMLA blog catches some of the key FMLA cases as they occur throughout the year, the ABA’s annual report includes every FMLA decision from 2016. Seriously, every one of them.

The report can be accessed here (pdf). I highly recommend it as a valuable FMLA resource for HR professionals and employment attorneys. All the credit goes to Jim Paul and Maria Audero, who spearhead the annual summary.

2.  Attend NELI’s ADA & FMLA Compliance Update: For nearly 40 years, the National Employment Law Institute (NELI) has been the national leader in training professionals of all kinds in the ADA and FMLA (and in employment law generally).  NELI’s two-day ADA and FMLA Compliance Update is an event you should not miss.

These seminars are held in April in San Francisco (April 6-7), Washington, DC (April 13-14) and Chicago (April 20-21). This year’s seminar information can be accessed on its website here or in its brochure (pdf). Not to scare you away, but I will be presenting on the ADA at the Washington, DC session.  More importantly, I will be joining the stage with David Fram, who is the single best presenter on ADA issues in the history of the universe. Don’t believe me? Come find out. You won’t be disappointed.

NELI attendees also receive a binder of the very best substantive materials in the ADA and FMLA areas. There is no resource I keep closer to my side throughout the year.

3.  Head on Over to DMEC’s ADA & FMLA Compliance Conference:  You can’t do one without the other. Each year, the Disability Management Employer Coalition sponsors three days of FMLA and ADA goodness!  You leave there eating, drinking and sleeping these two very special laws, and let me tell you — that’s just fine by me.

DMEC has put together another gem of a compliance conference this spring.  At this year’s conference, which will be held May 1-3 in Minneapolis, I am delighted to co-present with my good friend, Marti Cardi, Vice President, Product Compliance at Matrix Absence Management.  Marti and I will in one hour highlight the key FMLA cases over the previous year and offer our insight on how they will impact employers.

See you in April. And May.