The Must Exist FLOCK FOIA Clinic
$59
Sixty minutes, live on Zoom, twenty-five seats. We put a failed Flock camera records request on screen, work out why the agency answered with a fee quote, rebuild it in constraint-based language, and read the reply out loud. Bring your denial letter.
Sessions run every other Thursday at 1:00 PM Eastern. The next dates are listed under Additional information. Your Zoom link arrives 24 hours before the class.
Not legal advice. Not accredited CLE.
25 in stock
Description
Most people write a public records request the way they write an email. Broad, polite, and easy to answer with nothing. The agency sends back a fee quote or a no-records letter, and that is where it stops.
This class is the autopsy. We put a real Flock camera records request on screen, one that failed and deserved to, and work it through the whole lifecycle in front of you.
What the hour covers
The method, fast. Every request starts with a decision somebody made under a written rule. Find the rule, work out what paper it generates when it is followed, and ask for that. Not “all records relating to.” That single change is most of the difference between a request that gets answered and one that gets priced.
A bad request, on screen. One or two real examples, worked line by line. Where the scope invited the fee. Where a bullet asked a question instead of asking for a record, which is the most common way a good idea becomes a lawful refusal. Where a citation was unverified and handed the agency a reason to dismiss the whole thing.
The rebuild. Same target, rewritten in front of you. You watch the request get narrower and harder at the same time, which is the part people do not believe until they see it.
The filing. Why the retention schedule gets pulled before anything is written. How to find the custodian, and why filing with the wrong office costs you weeks.
The reply. What came back, read out loud. The stall patterns have names, and once you can name the one in front of you, the counter is a paragraph you send the same day rather than a week you spend being angry.
Questions. The last stretch is yours. Bring your agency, bring your denial letter, bring the fee quote you got last month.
Who this is for
Residents who found cameras or contracts in their town and want the paperwork. Commissioners facing a vote. Reporters who keep getting nothing back. Lawyers who want to see how a records campaign gets built before a client asks them to run one. Anybody who has filed a request and watched it die.
No experience needed. Everything taught here is paperwork any member of the public may file.
Who this is not for
People who want to understand the surveillance debate. The free material covers the argument and costs nothing.
People who want somebody to file for them. That is the engagement, not the class.
What this class is not
- It is not legal advice, and I will say so more than once while it is running.
- It is not a promise that your agency produces anything. Some produce records. Some certify that nothing exists. Both are useful and neither is guaranteed.
- It is not a course on whether surveillance is good or bad. We spend the hour on what an agency wrote down and whether it did what it said.
- It is not accredited continuing legal education. Lawyers are welcome. Do not expect to report hours.
I am not a lawyer. This class teaches records practice, not law. Where a question turns on your own facts or your own state, the answer is a lawyer in your state.
