*Free for SWABC members. SWABC use Promo Code SWABCMEM2024 at checkout to apply your discount."

*Zoom link provided to registrants in the confirmation e-mail, and any presentation materials will be sent the afternoon before the event.  If you sign up the night before or the day of the event, you will receive the materials approximately one hour before the event begins.*

*Event submitted to the Texas bar for 1 hour of CLE credit. If you would like this event submitted for any additional CE credit, please e-mail [email protected]. The bar course number will be provided to those in attendance as soon as possible*

Presenter: Bessie Daschbach, Hinshaw & Culbertson

Bessie Antin Daschbach spearheads the firm's multi-disciplinary Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) team, helping clients and the firm navigate ESG issues in support of sustainable growth. For over two decades, Bessie has steered her clients' cases to successful resolutions in litigation. She applies that deep experience to orient clients towards proactive sustainability and ESG solutions, including mitigating environmental and social risks.

Bessie holds a certificate in Sustainable Capitalism & ESG from the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, Executive Education. She is a long-standing adjunct environmental law professor at Tulane University School of Law, where she designed and teaches the Tulane Masters of Jurisprudence course on sustainability and ESG.

Bessie's long record in high-risk litigation strongly positions her to anticipate and resolve client sustainability and ESG issues. She began her career as a trial and appellate lawyer and accumulated more than twenty years of experience in litigation and arbitration around environmental, international, commercial, and construction disputes. She helped Louisiana landowners resolve claims against some of the largest oil and gas operators in land and groundwater contamination cases. She also led the landmark Southeast Louisiana Flood Protection Authority–East case against nearly 100 oil and gas companies.

Before joining the firm, Bessie handled construction and commercial litigation at a national New Orleans-based firm and a full-service firm in New York City. For more than ten years, Bessie managed the environmental practice at another New Orleans-based firm and was instrumental in launching the firm's international arbitration practice. She also worked with the International Labor Organization in Bangkok, the United Nations Legal Affairs Codification Division, and the Open Society Justice Initiative in New York City.

Description:

There have been several milestone developments around Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) as of late, and even others are visible on the horizon. Frameworks mandating entities "do" ESG are firming up. Some of those frameworks have already come under fire, testing whether they will hold. Shareholder activity around ESG issues continues- both in support and opposition to ESG issues. Meanwhile, the patchwork of state level anti-ESG legislation grows; scrutiny as to what businesses are calling ESG heightens; and the focus of what comes within the ambit of ESG might be broadening. Taking all those developments together, this much seems true: The shape of doing business is changing rapidly and markedly, and businesses would do well to ensure they are ready to meet it. Bessie will outline some of these recent ESG developments and their implications.