Real estate professionals will gather at the Benjamin S. Crocker Symposium on Real Estate Law and Business 2008 to confront issues currently facing their field.
Participants will look at issues relating to both business and law within real estate, said Tim Kawahara, executive director of the Richard S. Ziman Center for Real Estate and member of the symposium planning committee.
The symposium is being presented by the Los Angeles County Bar Association and the Ziman Center at UCLA and will take place today.
The combined business and law focus of the symposium meshes well with the Ziman Center at UCLA, which is a joint institution of both UCLA Law and the UCLA Anderson School of Management, Kawahara said.
Professionals such as attorneys, lawyers, and accountants who are required to continue their education in their respective fields in order to maintain their licenses will receive credit for attending the symposium.
“Real estate law and business … are quickly evolving, and professionals need to stay up to speed,” Kawahara said.
The event will also be open to the public. People may register online at or at the door, and students receive a discounted rate for entry, Kawahara said.
The symposium will include addresses by California Attorney General Edmund Gerald “Jerry” Brown Jr., Henry Cisneros, former secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, and several panels on specific topics.
“A lot of (panels are about) what’s going on with real estate capital market, how you manage through recessions. There are issues of global warming and sustainability … and there are some general things about where we see the real estate markets going in the future, say through 2012,” Kawahara said.
Several panels focus on environmentally friendly building and on dealing in real estate during an economic recession.
“Basically, the panel that we’re doing is about the ways in which climate change and other sustainability issues are going to affect development and planning,” said Sean Hecht, executive director of the UCLA Environmental Law Center and panel member.
It will cover environmental building regulations and efficiency ideas.
Green building is also important for businesses as consumers demand more environmentally-conscious practices, Hecht said.
Ken Klee, UCLA law professor and panelist, will be discussing the problems facing landlords after the subprime mortgage crisis.
The strategies the panel will propose include guarantees, letters of credit and deposits, Klee said.
The final section of the symposium will focus on predicting the next five years in real estate.
“I’m going to talk about … the change in the kinds of employment in LA … growth in international trade and growth in office-using employment,” said Jerry Nickelsburg, a member of the final panel and economist for Anderson Forecast.
Dean Michael Schill of the UCLA School of Law and Dean Judy Olian of the Anderson School will also attend in the symposium.