Registration, Networking, and Breakfast Buffet

Please join us and meet with your colleagues at our breakfast buffet, featuring the following:

Assorted muffins, danishes and breads, scrambled eggs, bacon, and potatoes.

Coffee, tea, and assorted juices.

Welcome and Business

Keynote Speaker: Judge Michael Leavitt

Judge Leavitt will kindly open our conference, speaking about the history of the child welfare courts and professionalism and civility in the cu rent courts, specifically the importance of quality representation of all parties by the attorneys in the Courtroom.

Judge Michael F. Leavitt was appointed to the Fifth District Juvenile Court in 2014 by Gov. Gary R. Herbert. He serves Beaver, Iron, and Washington counties. Judge Leavitt graduated from University of Idaho College of Law in 2002. Prior to his appointment, Judge Leavitt worked as an attorney with the law firm of Durham Jones & Pinegar (formerly Snow Nuffer) from 2002 through 2014. At the time of his appointment, he was serving as a Bar Commissioner with the Utah State Bar and previously served as President of the Southern Utah Bar Association.

Discovery in Child Welfare Cases

Tyler Berg and Erin Hill will first provide a power point presentation on best discovery practices and useful motions in child welfare cases. Immediately following he power poin, Lisa Lokken will join Erin and Tyler to discuss current issues we see in discovery and the things we need to be requesting.

Tyler Berg started his legal career working at Utah Legal Services representing victims of domestic violence in protective orders, divorce and custody cases. From there he worked at the Wasatch County Attorney’s Office as a prosecutor in Justice Court, District Court and Juvenile Court. While at the County Attorney’s Office he also worked in their civil department representing the County in many areas including arguing a land use case before the Utility Facility Review Board and then the Court of Appeals. Next, he worked at the Attorney General’s Office in the Child Protection Division representing DCFS in child welfare cases. One day after court Margaret Lindsay called him and asked if he would consider working at the Public Defender’s Office. He decided to trade in the power of the State/Empire along with his red lightsaber for a blue lightsaber and joined the rebellion. He has been battling the Empire since.

Discovery in Child Welfare Cases

Tyler Berg and Erin Hill will first provide a power point presentation on best discovery practices and useful motions in child welfare cases. Immediately following he power poin, Lisa Lokken will join Erin and Tyler to discuss current issues we see in discovery and the things we need to be requesting.

Erin Hill attended the University of Utah for undergrad and law school, earning her juris doctorate in 2001. She has spent her entire legal career in the child welfare system; working as an Assistant Attorney General in Child Protection, as well as a Guardian ad Litem, before becoming a parental defense attorney over 10 years ago. She is the lead legal defender for the Second District in the Davis County juvenile court.

Discovery in Child Welfare Cases

Tyler Berg and Erin Hill will first provide a power point presentation on best discovery practices and useful motions in child welfare cases. Immediately following he power poin, Lisa Lokken will join Erin and Tyler to discuss current issues we see in discovery and the things we need to be requesting.

Lisa B. Lokken is president and owner of Lokken & Putnam, P.C. Ms. Lokken received her B.A. in Economics from Westminster College of Salt Lake City, and her J.D. from J. Reuben Clark Law School at Brigham Young University. Lokken & Putnam, P.C. provides representation for child welfare families in Salt Lake County, Utah.

Ms. Lokken has been a coordinator and a presenter in several Parental Defense Conferences and has provided training and resources to parental defense attorneys throughout the State of Utah. She has been a requested speaker at both state and national conferences pertaining to parental defense, child welfare and family recovery court related issues.

Ms. Lokken has nearly 30 years of experience relating to child welfare proceedings and parental defense. Ms. Lokken is involved in several committees and strives for ongoing improvement and support of the child welfare system as it relates to parents and the attorneys who represent them.

Snack and Beverage Break

Changing Dominant Paradigms in Child Welfare Law

Jason Richards and Alexa Mareschal will be presenting on permanency and permanent orders, particularly the shift away from termination of parental rights.

Jason has worked for years as a parent-defense attorney and is a passionate anti-racist advocate working to dismantle the family regulation system. Jason has worked for years in private practice specializing in child welfare, divorce, adoption, and complex custody cases. Last year Jason joined the Utah Indigent Appellate Defense Division as an appellate attorney representing parents with child-welfare cases on appeal.

Jason is a member of the Guardian ad Litem Oversight Committee and is a member of the juvenile law section, appellate section, and the Weber and Davis County Bar Associations.

Jason is an avid skier and is on the Board of Directors of the Snowbasin Ski Team. Jason and his family live in Farmington.

Changing Dominant Paradigms in Child Welfare Law

Jason Richards and Alexa Mareschal will be presenting on permanency and permanent orders, particularly the shift away from termination of parental rights.

Alexandra Mareschal is an appellate attorney specializing in family and child welfare law. Since graduating from the S.J. Quinney College of Law, she has been a full-time appellate attorney at Zimmerman Booher and clerked for Justice Paige Petersen at the Utah Supreme Court. Recently, she joined the Indigent Appellate Defense Division of the IDC as the Senior Child Welfare Appellate Attorney and looks forward to improving the child welfare justice system to better serve Utah's families.

She prefers to go by Alexa even though a certain ecommerce titan has since usurped the name for their AI.

Lunch and Networking

Join us for the lunch buffet and speak with your colleagues

Permanent Custody and Guardianship Panel

Sara Pfrommer, Ryan Petersen, Candace Reid, and Erin Byington will form a panel, discussing permanency, the current state of the law, and what happens when juvenile court jurisdiction ends. We need to be careful in ensuring what we ask for in the permanent orders coming out of juvenile court.

Erin Byington is the Executive Director and handles the administrative responsibilities for the UFDA.

Erin has been a licensed attorney practicing law in the State of Utah since 2011 in all aspects of family law, criminal defense, juvenile defense, DCFS matters, family law, commercial litigation, business formation, estate planning and probate. Erin is a founding partner of Byington & Goble, PLLC with a primary office in Logan, Utah and a satellite office in Salt Lake City. Early in Erin’s career, she participated in DCFS matters under a conflict contract for parental defense for about 5 years, and has continued to provide private parental and juvenile defense since.

Erin is a member of the Utah State Bar, Utah Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, Utah Family Defenders Association, the National Council of Juvenile and FAmily Court Judges, and is a boad member of the American Family and Conciliation Courts. Erin has been selected as a Super Lawyers Rising Stars Honoree in 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2024; likewise, Erin’s firm has been selected as Best of Northern Utah in the areas of Family Law, Criminal Defense, and overall Law Firm for 2021, with repeat awards in 2022, 2023, and 2024. When not at work, Erin can be found spending time with her husband and two young daughters.

Permanent Custody and Guardianship Panel

Sara Pfrommer, Ryan Petersen, Candace Reid, and Erin Byington will form a panel, discussing permanency, the current state of the law, and what happens when juvenile court jurisdiction ends. We need to be careful in ensuring what we ask for in the permanent orders coming out of juvenile court.

Ryan Petersen attended law school in Tulsa, Oklahoma, at University of Tulsa College of Law, graduating in 2007 following receiving his undergrad Degree from The University of Utah with a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science. He also participated in the Muscogee (Creek) Nation Legal Clinic, representing clients in family law cases in tribal court. Before entering law school Ryan worked as a Deputy Court Clerk in the Fourth District Court in Utah County working with Commissioner Patton. Ryan has practiced in Juvenile Court since 2010 representing both parents and children in child welfare and delinquency cases. Ryan and his wife are the parents of four children. He grew up in Cache Valley enjoys spending time with his family, especially at various sporting events and loves activities such as golf, basketball, racquetball or water-skiing.

Permanent Custody and Guardianship Panel

Sara Pfrommer, Ryan Petersen, Candace Reid, and Erin Byington will form a panel, discussing permanency, the current state of the law, and what happens when juvenile court jurisdiction ends. We need to be careful in ensuring what we ask for in the permanent orders coming out of juvenile court.

Candace is a longtime Parental Defense Alliance member, and is currently serving on UFDA’s board of directors She practices in Cedar City and holds a parental defense contract for Iron County.

Sara Pfrommer enjoys working with her friends and colleagues at The Appellate Group. She used to be a partner in the AmLaw 100 firm of Shepherd, Mullen, Richter & Hampton in Los Angeles, until she came to her senses and moved to Utah, where she has specialized in appellate practice for the last 20 years. In her former life, she was a bankruptcy and financial fraud litigator and has been in the trenches with several complex trials and many evidentiary hearings under her belt. She knows business law and is a procedural and jurisdictional goddess. In Utah, she has specialized in family law and child welfare appeals, winning the Parental Defense Alliance’s Appellate Lawyer of the Year award in 2014 for In re C.C., a case that changed how Utah courts dealt with competing adoption petitions between foster parents and a family member. She has argued thirteen cases in the Utah Supreme Court and numerous others in the Utah Court of Appeals. She’s admitted to practice in Utah, California, the Ninth Circuit, the Federal Circuit and the United States Supreme Court.

When Ms. Pfrommer is not busy wrestling some thorny question to the ground, she is obsessed with tennis and loves to travel.

Mike Isom from Beechtree Diagnostics will be speaking on the ins andouts f drug testing, wha levels can occur or cannot be detected, what testing results mean, the accuracy of results, and taking Q&A.

Mike Isom has a Bachelor of Science in Nursing from the University of Utah, and is an Active Registered Nurse.

Worked as a Post-acute care nurse in: LTAC, Skilled Nursing and Home Health. Primary focus on managed care and case management. He is currently working as a Clinical Consultant providing Toxicology Education by providing clinical education to clients and prospective clients in the use of lab results. Compliance vs non-compliance and adherence to prescribed medication using toxicology results. His Clients include Inpatient and outpatient substance abuse, court appointed, or court referred, medical clinics, mental and behavioral health programs.

He has provided Court Testimony and training in 7 states: Alaska, Arizona, Alabama, California, Georgia, Missouri and Utah. Court training on laboratory results and the objective data collected is part of his: Toxicology 101 training. Conference training in California, Georgia and Utah. He is a member of National Association of Drug Court Professionals (NADCP) and am being currently evaluated to become associate faculty. Faculty role to include clinical toxicology education to association members.

Toxicology 101 is currently being evaluated by IACET (International Accreditors for Continuing Education and Training). He currently Holds 3 patents related to medication management and distribution of medication, and laboratory database aggregation. He produced, “Above Ground”. A short film about addiction and mental health. Above Ground is currently being shown in film festivals around the country, with the intent of making the film available for treatment.

Break, UFDA Business, and Awards!

Game of Ethics

Grant Dickinson will lead us in an interactive and educational game on attorney ethics.

D. Grant Dickinson has been with Moody Brown Law Firm since 2008. He earned his juris doctorate at Willamette University. He was previously employed at the District Court as a clerk for Commissioner Patton. Grant was inducted into Order of the Barristers in 2010, and is the author of the Utah Family Blawg. Grant was also named Appellate Attorney of the Year for 2012 by the Parental Defense Alliance of Utah. Grant was recognized as a Top Attorney in 2020 in Criminal Defense and Divorce Law by Super Lawyers.

Grant’s areas of practice include: Family Law: Divorce, Custody Disputes, Child Support, Petitions to Modify, Orders to Show Cause, Contempt, Interstate Child Custody Cases, Appeals Child Welfare: Termination of parental rights, Challenges to Administrative Findings by DCFS, State Removal of Children, Reunification, Appeals Criminal Defense: DUI, Drug Possession, Child Abuse, Theft, Retail Theft, Assault, Witness Tampering, Impaired Driving, etc...

Notable Cases:

• L.G. v. State

• Mota v. Mota, 2016 UT App 201

• Osborne v. Osborne, 2016 UT App 29

Registration, Networking, and Breakfast Buffet

Join us while visiting with colleagues at our breakfast buffet.

UFDA Business and Announcements

Key Note Speaker: The Importance of Family Defense and Some Recurring Injustices in Child Welfare

Martin Guggenheim of NYU Law will clarify why providing parents with well-resourced and trained lawyers is so important to serving families. The discussion will also identify features of current practice that are unacceptable and demonstrate the need for significant change to ensure that children and families living on the margins are better served.

One of the nation’s foremost experts on children’s rights and family law, Martin Guggenheim ’71 has taught at NYU School of Law, where he now co-directs the Family Defense Clinic, since 1973. From 1998 to 2002, he was director of Clinical and Advocacy Programs. Guggenheim has been an active litigator in the area of children and the law and has argued leading cases on juvenile delinquency and termination of parental rights in the US Supreme Court. He is also a well-known scholar, having published more than 50 articles and book chapters, plus six books, including What’s Wrong with Children’s Rights (2005). His research has focused on adolescent abortion, First Amendment rights in schools, the role of counsel for children in court proceedings, and empirical research on child welfare practice, juvenile justice, and family law. As a student at NYU Law, he was an Arthur Garfield Hays Civil Liberties Scholar. Guggenheim is a Founding Organizer of the National Alliance for Parent Representation, American Bar Association. He also is currently serving as an advisor for the American Law Institute’s Restatement on Children and the Law.

Types of Mental Evaluations and When to use Them

Dr. Marina Money will discuss various types of mental evaluations, what they do, and the times they might bM useful in a child welfare context (mental health, pscyh, SBRA, psycho-sexual, bonding assessments etc.).

Dr. Marina Money received her Doctorate degree from Brigham Young University, specializing in assessment and treatment of children, adolescents, and families. For the past 25 years she had provided over 2,000 evaluations used in Juvenile or District Court. This included Dr. Money holding the Court contract for the 4th District Juvenile Court for a decade and a half, wherein she witnessed first hand the devastating effects of parental dysfunction and high conflict divorce upon children. Dr. Money then began providing Family Systems Therapy and Parental Fitness evaluations, which further developed into providing Custody Evaluations. Dr. Money is involved in the Association of Family and Conciliation Courts (AFCC) at a state and national level, attending training whenever possible (see you in Boston!). She also has completed Bill Eddy’s New Ways for Parenting training and continually seeks out methods of providing assessment and treatment for the best interests of children of high conflict divorce.

Mid Morning Break and Snacks

The Expedited Reuinification Program

Brittany Randall, LCSW will be discussing the expedited reunification programs, its pros and cons, and/or how to involve experts to increase parent time.

Brittany Randall has been drawn to social work since she was a young girl. At the age of 8 years old, she opened her first treatment facility where she rehabilitated injured turtles and cared for them until they were healthy enough to be released back into the wild. In her high school years, she co-founded a social work outreach program along with her high school teacher, that provided aide for those within the special needs community.

Brittany has been working towards reunifying families and teaching parenting skills for over 25 years. She received her formal education from Utah State University where she received her Master’s Degree in Social Work and is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker. She has been able to create unique and meaningful connections with families who need extra support and resources to become healthy, safe, and loving home environments.

Brittany is the owner of Touchstone Therapy Center which specializes in attachment, trauma, and family reunification, leading a team of 22 clinical and support staff members. She has also co-founded a 501c3 called Healing Simply with her husband Greg where they will offer equine assisted services, eco/green space therapy, and focusing on the horse & human bond. In her “free” time, she loves to teach and educate other professionals, gardening, collecting glassware and trinkets that remind her of her Grandmother, spending time with her family, horseback riding, traveling, and also serves on the Guardian Ad Litem oversight committee and Parent Work Time group committee.

Lunch Buffet

Please grab your lunch quickly and take your seat as we will be eating during the next CLE

Legislative Updates

Adam Trupp of the Indigent Defense Commission will be discussing recent changes in legislation impacting child welfare cases, along with succeses, failures, and hopes for the next legislative session.

Adam is the Deputy Director of the Utah Indigent Defense Commission. He started with the IDC In January 2020 and his focus is on Juvenile Court defense. Prior to this role, he spent eleven years working in different positions in the Utah Child Welfare system before moving on to a different type of work. During those years he was an Attorney guardian ad litem, a juvenile court administrator for child welfare at the Utah AOC and then director of policy and planning for the Utah Division of Child and Family Services. After leaving DCFS, he worked for the Utah Association of Counties as legal counsel and CEO until 2019.

Adam is the father of two amazingly talented and athletic children. It is a mystery to him as to where the children go their athletic skills. He is comforted, however, by the fact the children bear a strong resemblance to their parents and that babies being switched at birth occurs very rarely.

Case Law Update

Alexa Mareschal and Kirstin Norman from IADD will be discussing updates and changes in appellate child welfare case law that occurred over this past year.

Kirstin Norman is a child welfare appellate attorney with the Indigent Appellate Defense Division. Prior to joining IADD, she served as the Executive Director of the Utah Family Defenders Association(formerly Parental Defense Alliance of Utah) for seven years. She received a J.D. from the J. Reuben Clark Law School at BYU, and following law school, practiced law in Utah County, focusing on family law and juvenile court cases before discovering child welfare law and the UFDA. She is passionate about advocating for Utah’s most vulnerable families, as her greatest joy comes from her own.

Outside of work, she’s a formidable dance and sport mom, a rabid Seattle Seahawks fan, and fervent consumer of Diet Dr. Pepper.

Case Law Update

Alexa Mareschal and Kirstin Norman from IADD will be discussing updates and changes in appellate child welfare case law that occurred over this past year. The summary can be found here.

Alexa is an appellate attorney specializing in family and child welfare law. Since graduating from the S.J. Quinney College of Law, she has been a full-time appellate attorney at Zimmerman Booher and clerked for Justice Paige Petersen at the Utah Supreme Court. Recently, she joined the Indigent Appellate Defense Division of the IDC as the Senior Child Welfare Appellate Attorney and looks forward to improving the child welfare justice system to better serve Utah’s families.

She prefers to go by Alexa even though a certain e-commerce titan has since usurped the name for their AI.