The Equipment Leasing and Finance Association’s annual Legal Forum will be held from May 1 to May 3 in Washington, D.C., and feature a legal update on recent noteworthy cases and an agenda packed with topics ranging from workouts to workplace issues that arise in managing an equipment finance business.

Marc Hamroff, managing partner of Moritt Hock & Hamroff, will serve as a panelist for the legal update session. Hamroff said the panel will cover many new cases, including two that provide lessons learned since 2020: (1) the Texas Bankruptcy Court December 2021 decision in Bailey Tool & Manufacturing, from which the panel will share takeaways in avoiding lender control over a debtor’s business while navigating a distressed loan workout; and (2) the Shelbourne BRF LLC series of cases arising in New York in 2020 and 2021 that developed parameters around foreclosure sales during the COVID-19 pandemic and through the emergence from pandemic restrictions.

Julia Gavrilov and Robert S. Cohen, who are both partners in Moritt Hock & Hamroff’s secured lending, equipment and transportation finance practice and frequent industry presenters, are also serving on panels at the ELFA’s Legal Forum.

Gavrilov’s session will focus on diversity, equity and inclusion and will cover, among other things, the potential legal ramifications facing companies that do not commit to diversity. Gavrilov recently spoke on this topic at the National Equipment Finance Association’s Finance Summit in March.

“Regulators and investors are already prodding companies to make voluntary disclosures detailing data in their corporate diversity profiles,” Gavrilov said.

Cohen’s panel will cover legal issues in e-leasing that can be avoided, particularly what happens when an e-document is signed by all parties and then not properly placed in an e-vault. The panel will also provide an overview of the types of e-transactions in use today and a brief refresher and background on the use and implementation of e-transactions for those who are new to e-leasing.

Other sessions at the forum will address cross-border transactions, the Uniform Commercial Code and emerging technology. Among the roundtable sessions will be two that focus on specific markets, the air-rail-marine sector and, separately, motor vehicles.

This is the 50th year of the ELFA’s Legal Forum and the first one to be held in person since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.