New from OATH: Omnibus Status Conferences

Hearing season has come early this year. In years past, the earliest hearings would be typically held in February, but in the past December alone, Gottlieb & Wang LLP took 20 cases to hearing.?

This seems to be part of New York City’s transfer of IDEA cases to OATH — which has been rocky but manageable. Indeed, the DOE has yet to call a witness in its own defense at any of our hearings this year, and we anticipate that this unprecedented record will continue.?

Another OATH development has been omnibus status conferences. The law requires that every 30 days the parties have to appear before the hearing officer and update them as to the status of the case; whether it's likely to settle, and if not, to discuss the value of proceeding to hearing.

In the past, these would interrupt our days every half hour, from about eight o'clock in the morning until about 10:30, pulling us away from our work in bursts of 20 minutes for toothless discussions of the DOE’s settlement investigation. (Indeed, I would venture to say that 80% of the time we received no actionable intelligence and simply kicked the can down the road for another 30 days.) In contrast, OATH hearing officers have started — not all of them, but some — holding 30 discussions of 30 cases at a time.

On the one hand, this means that we have more time in our day to respond to your inquiries and follow up with the DOE, and pursue more meaningful work, but on the other hand, it means that those 10% of times where we actually received a meaningful update on settlement is no longer typically available to us. The DOE sends one person who may or may not be assigned to any one of the cases at hand, and updates are few and far between.

Sometimes it’s important to hire legal representation not only for litigation services, but also to keep track of your case, including any number of obstacles the DOE throws at you. To learn more about how Gottlieb & Wang can do this for you, contact us.?