There are many areas of a job applicant’s life that a person may be curious about, but an employer should steer clear of. This article identifies some of the questions employers should avoid (Interview Don’ts) and things employers you should remember and do when interviewing applicants. Interview Don’ts: Don’t ask questions about membership in protected...

  Introduction So, you’ve been nominated as a Personal Representative of someone’s estate. Chances are that the estate you’ve been asked to administer belongs to one of your parents. You, as the most responsible (or physically closest) child, want to honor the decedent’s wishes and fairly administer the estate. Do you accept or decline the...

The Road to Legalization? The road to our current legal field began with the federal 2018 Farm Bill, which legalized the cultivation and sale of hemp at the federal level. Specifically, any hemp containing a maximum of 0.3% THC by weight was now considered “legal” at the federal level. Importantly to Minnesota, the Farm Bill...

The H-2A program allows foreign workers to perform agricultural labor or services of a temporary or seasonal nature in the United States. This program, however, has stringent rules carrying substantial civil and criminal penalties for employers violating the program. Five common employer compliance issues are reviewed below. 1. H-2A Workers Should Only Perform Work Identified...

Carbon markets (either voluntary or mandatory through government regulation) have emerged in recent years as a practical means to use free-market economic principles to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and mitigate global climate change. In carbon markets, businesses or individuals who reduce greenhouse gas emissions or sequester carbon in the soil can sell “credits” to other...

The Minnesota Court Supreme Court recently issued a decision concerning which watercourses in the state could be treated as “public waters” under various state statutes and regulations. The case arose out of a petition to improve Renville County Ditch 77 by cleaning the outlet into a stretch of Limbo Creek. Historically this section of Limbo...

The success of cash crop farming in Minnesota is due in large part to the work our ancestors in this state did to convert wet and even flooded property into dry farmland. Through systems of open ditches and buried pipe, land was made farmable by quickly draining water from the landscape allowing it to be...