By Jody Godoy

Law360 (March 4, 2020, 4:34 PM EST ) The American Bar Association announced Wednesday that it is canceling its National Institute on White Collar Crime for the first time in 34 years amid a wave of law firms canceling side events and barring attorney travel in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak.

The decision comes less than a week before the three-day event was scheduled to begin in San Diego. The ABA made its decision after speakers canceled and law firms called off side events that are one of the hallmarks of the conference.

The ABA cited "restrictions on travel placed on a significant number of speakers and attendees by their employers" in its brief announcement on Wednesday afternoon.

The event is a major gathering for the white collar bar and typically includes high-profile speakers from the U.S. Department of Justice, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the federal judiciary. Panels also feature in-house attorneys and lawyers from across the country who are experts in subjects ranging from securities enforcement to sanctions law.

The conference planning committee behind the event urged the ABA and its Criminal Justice Section on Wednesday afternoon to cancel and instead offer a series of half-day webinars.

Raymond Banoun, a white collar defense attorney who organized the first event in 1986 and chairs the conference, said that there was no choice but to make the last-minute call as speakers started canceling one after another on Monday night.

"It could be a financial hit. It was a very difficult decision," Banoun said of the costs already incurred by the ABA to put together the conference. "I just don't think there was a choice."

While the conference takes nearly a year to plan, its organizers were faced with a conundrum in recent days. Companies, firms and even U.S. attorney's offices have started to limit their employees' nonessential domestic travel as the number of coronavirus infections in the U.S. ticks upward by the day.

The ultimate decision was driven both by uncertainty around how the situation could change within a week to potentially affect the health of participants and by the number of speakers who have already pulled out, making for a less robust lineup.

"We were down to almost no government people, and several panels would have had to be canceled," Banoun said.

Usually, participants are drawn as much to the conference as to the after-hours parties hosted by law firms and forensic consulting companies where people mingle, brush up their connections and informally hunt for work. Some of those events were canceled before the conference itself.

Ernst & Young and Morrison & Foerster LLP were among those who canceled their events on Tuesday. The Women's White Collar Defense Association also called off its annual attorney meeting and leadership retreat, which was scheduled to be held ahead of the conference.

Karen Popp, the global chair of WWCDA and a partner at Sidley Austin LLP, said the organization is waiting to see how things unfold before deciding whether to hold a conference in Japan planned for September.

Banoun said he hopes there will be local receptions in conjunction with the seminars that will replace the conference, since the aim of the conference is not just to educate but to be a "reunion of the white collar bar."

"That is why we try to do it in places where people are away from their office, so they don't feel the need to go back," he said.

The next ABA white collar conference is scheduled for March 2021 in Miami.

--Editing by Haylee Pearl.

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