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View 2024 MACA Legislative Update Agenda
Criminal Law Update
Matthew Hartung
Matthew Hartung is an Assistant City Attorney for the City of Minneapolis. Matthew works in the criminal division as a prosecutor. Matthew has ten years of experience as a trial attorney and has litigated a variety of cases and issues. Matthew is a graduate from Marquette University Law School.
De-Escalation Through Language and Law
Aimee Gourlay
Aimee Gourlay, JD is the Collaboration Services Manager for the League of Minnesota Cities Insurance Trust. Her specialties include understanding systemic roots of conflict and supporting people to communicate across worldviews. She is well known for facilitating processes that involve high emotions and multiple stakeholder groups. Her work for the League includes conflict assessments, consulting, facilitation, and mediation to help cities manage risk. She is also a Senior Fellow at the nationally ranked Dispute Resolution Institute at Mitchell Hamline Law School, teaching Mediation and Organizational Conflict Management Systems Design.
Jason Kuboushek
Jason is a Partner at Iverson Reuvers and has been with the firm since its inception. His practice involves helping clients throughout Minnesota. This includes cities, counties, townships, individuals, and businesses. He has handled numerous trials and appeals involving individual owners, contractors, subcontractors, and design professionals.
Jason enjoys working with companies and entrepreneurs with a broad range of business-related services. Specifically, he advises clients on business law, start-up assistance relating to the formation of an entity, the protection of a trademark or license agreement and assist with buying or selling a business and estate planning.
Prior to law school, Jason worked as an environmental consultant and in the construction industry. This has provided him the knowledge to provide comprehensive assistance in these industries. Jason is also a frequent lecturer on land use and environmental law topics (including the intricacies of environmental review) and is involved in many related organizations. At the present time, he is a member of the Minnesota State Bar Association, Minnesota Defense Lawyers Association, Governmental Liability Committee, and the Defense Research Institute. He also volunteers for Junior Achievement and coaches youth basketball, baseball, and softball. At the end of the day, he enjoys relaxing with his wife and four children.
Melissa Manderschied
Melissa Manderschied has been the city attorney for Bloomington since 2016. Prior to serving Bloomington, she was a shareholder at Kennedy & Graven. Melissa worked for the Metropolitan Council and was an AmeriCorps VISTA before attending law school.
Pamela Whitmore
Pam has over twenty years of experience in the areas of local government law, municipal litigation and conflict management services. She currently serves as city attorney for the City of Mankato, City of Marshall, City of Olivia, City of Wells, and City of West St. Paul.
Civil Law Update
Craig Johnson
Craig Johnson is a senior intergovernmental relations representative with the League of Minnesota Cities. He primarily handles issues related to environmental, energy, and land use policy and has been in this role with LMC since 2003. Prior to working for LMC, Mr. Johnson has been a Policy Manager for Governor Ventura, the Legislative Coordinator for the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, and the Legislative Director for two state-wide environmental organizations in Minnesota. Showing the flexibility of a liberal arts background, Mr. Johnson graduated from Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, MN with a BA in Classics and Philosophy.
The Ethics and Biases of Artificial Intelligence and Large Language Models
Farah Famouri
Farah works with Greene Espel and has deep experience and extensive knowledge of our state court system, having clerked for four judges on the Minnesota Court of Appeals. Farah calls upon her clerkship experience as well as her outstanding research and analytic skills to help defend client interests and further client goals in all phases of litigation.
Farah graduated from the University of Wisconsin Law School, where she received the Mary Kelly Quakenbush Memorial Award for the Most Outstanding Student Note for her writing on free speech in the U.S. and U.K. During law school, Farah worked as an extern for the Center for the Integrity in Forensic Sciences, a clinical intern for the Wisconsin State Public Defender, and as a clinical research assistant for the Wisconsin Innocence Project.
Judicial Update
Paul Merwin
Paul Merwin has been a defense attorney at the League of Minnesota Cities since 2005, with an emphasis on land use law. He has recently taken over management of the League’s Minnesota Amicus Program. He previously served as an Assistant Attorney General in the Office of the Minnesota Attorney General. From 2005-2013, he taught Environmental Law as an adjunct professor of law at Hamline School of Law. Paul is a 1998 graduate of the University of Minnesota School of Law.
Just Deeds Training and Workshop
Corrine Heine
Corrine Heine is the city attorney for Minnetonka. The city has been a member of Just Deeds since 2021, and the city staff handles and processes all Just Deeds requests made by city property owners. In addition, Corrine is one of several people who train the volunteer attorneys who process requests for other Just Deeds member cities.