Real estate industry representatives and lawyers from various jurisdictions will discuss interesting topics, including:

• Barriers and challenges that women face in the commercial real estate market career
• Mentoring and networking development are key issues for success?
• Positive impacts on having a gender balanced environment in the real estate transactions and market
• C-level role models and how to follow in their footsteps
• Post-covid homeschooling and homeworking period
• Gains in the hybrid workplace – redesigning commercial spaces and gender balance positive effects

What really defines our profession and distinguishes it from any other profession? Panelists have been requested to deep dive into their experience, elaborate and focus on just one quality that they believe is the most important for successfully conducting this profession.

HumanRightsThe International Bar Association (IBA), UC Berkeley Human Rights Center (Berkeley HRC), and Oxford Programme on International Peace and Security (Oxford IPS) are working collaboratively to address the need for greater preservation of and
access to social media evidence to strengthen legal accountability for human rights violations and atrocity crimes. Social media platforms have become the unintended archives of information with historical and evidentiary value, even though
social media companies do not necessarily have the incentives or infrastructure to properly and indefinitely identify and preserve this content. Indeed, the rate at which potentially relevant and probative content is removed is rapidly increasing as political and
public pressure to remove harmful content builds.

How do copyrights and smart contracts increase the value of non-fungible tokens (NFT), the new digital media asset?

SustainabilityFocusSustainable construction and project delivery methods are gaining significant importance across the world and marking a clear trend as governments and financiers toughen regulations and requirements aimed at meeting national and global environmental protection and social accountability policies.

Traditionally, law firms were owned and invested in by lawyers to ensure that the firm remained independent and unbiased.

Therefore, a forward-looking regulation is required in order to protect a humane society and human rights. Today, we can observe the rapid progression of self-driving cars or robots in healthcare.

In addition, the session will discuss some key elements and pit falls to consider in select jurisdictions. Generally, the session will focus on the potential considerations of a target hospitality operating asset that may arise or continue between signing and closing and how such considerations, risks and liabilities should be addressed by potential buyers and sellers in drafting the PSA; including governing brand relationships (management and franchise), employment considerations, underlying asset real estate considerations; mixed use and common area considerations, pre-existing liability, physical structural maintenance and repair issues, guest data protection exposure and intellectual property considerations.

Geospatial information is vital for national development, policy and decision-making, programs and projects, and to achieve sustainable social, environmental and economic development.

In this session the panel will debate on how we have evolved from the old and by all desired total secrecy and the adage “Vivons heureux, vivons cachés” in private wealth matters, to a form of total transparency towards the (tax) authorities and banks. In a world where “secrecy” is nowadays sometimes even seen as suspicious, the private client (tax) lawyer will have to guide and direct his client on how to abide by all the new and demanding regulations on information exchange and disclosure such as UBO registry, KYC compliance regulations, DAC6 and other comparable reporting obligations, thereby continuously protecting and safeguarding his client’s privacy within the legal limitations that remain.

SustainabilityFocusThe transition plans to carbon neutrality within an appropriate time frame recommended by the COP and domestic law and policymakers involve a number of risks inherent both in the implementation of the plans drawn up and in unforeseen factors.

Faced with substantive due diligence requirements, sanctions for non-compliance, and heightened scrutiny from stakeholders, companies are scrambling to understand and incorporate mHRDD into their business models and supply chains.

SustainabilityFocusAs energy storage technologies grow at a very fast pace, new legal, institutional and enforcement challenges are faced. Participants in the energy storage space involve developers, generators, network operators and consumers (ranging from large energy users through to domestic consumers) among others. This session will explore some of the main legal challenges in energy storage including: (a) incentive programmes, (b) development of an energy storage regulatory regime, (c) grid connection, (d) procurement and construction (“EPC”) contracts, operations and maintenance (“O&M”) agreements and asset management agreements, (e) land rights and (f) electricity supply and offtake arrangements.

SUSTAINABILITY FOCUS sessions marked as such are part of the IBA Annual Conference 2022 sustainability focus on Tuesday and Thursday, grouping sessions discussing different aspects of ESG and sustainability across the different legal fields.