Course Preparation and the 800-Pound Gorilla in the Room

OK, so Jeff Lipshaw has clearly set  a torrid pace for guest bloggers on Prawfs.  Geesh, he made me feel guilty for not posting yesterday (I mean the guy is driving across country and apparently blogging as he's changing lanes).   And to think I really liked the guy when I met him in Baltimore in July.

In any event, and keeping with the spirit of discoursing on course preparation for the upcoming fall semester (alas, I am not lucky enough to teach Secured Transactions like Jeff), I will let everyone in on my prep situation. 

In a word: ERISA.  Yes, I am one those masochistic people who actually went into their Associate Dean's office and offered to teach employee benefits.  Unlike Article 9, ERISA does not only not make sense when you get to thorny little issues, but it is also maddeningly complex at a global level.

Things just got a lot more hectic though for employee benefits people.  I give you the 907-page Pension Protection Act (PPA) about to be signed into law by the President.  In short, I don't know how I am going to incorporate this new statutory bad-boy into the already confusing ERISA framework.

Everything from minimum funding of pension plans to automatic enrollments in 401(k) plans have been altered to a degree that will keep ERISA attorneys busy and rich for many years to come (to students, I refer to my employee benefits law class as "the guaranteed future employment in law" class.  Thinking back to Kim Roosevelt's recent post, however, the students in their evaluations of the class do not seem to appreciate the gift I am giving them).

So, I am interested in hearing whether other people are dealing with anything similar as they prepare for their classes this semester.    Any other 900-page statutory gorillas out there? 

At least for my other class, Labor Law, it really has now just come down to a situation which Stephen Colbert sums up best when he concludes: "It's time for management and labor to put aside their differences and come together as management to exploit labor."