A Florida Bar rule blocking a personal injury law firm from stating that it specializes in mass-tort cases is unconstitutional as applied, a Florida federal district court recently held. The court enjoined the Florida Bar from enforcing its Rule 4-7.14(a)(4), which prohibits statements “that a lawyer is … a specialist, an expert, or other
LegalZoom GC sees self-help model as legal-services solution; others see problems
With the goal of positioning his on-line legal forms company as a solution to America’s access-to-justice problem, Chas Rampenthal, General Counsel of LegalZoom, zoomed through my home state last week, with two speaking engagements. I caught his speech at a breakfast meeting at my home-town bar association, the Cleveland Metropolitan Bar Association (@clemetrobar).
A panacea
Can lawyers barter their services? Connecticut ethics opinion says “Yes.”
Bartering for goods and services seems old-fashioned, even primitive — after all, that’s why money was invented, right? But bartering might be viewed as a component of today’s “sharing economy,” which involves more-direct, Internet-facilitated interactions between consumers and providers.
A recent informal opinion of the Connecticut Bar Association Standing Committee on Professional Ethics
Negotiating for legal employment with the “other side” raises ethics issues
When you start planning to leave your firm for greener pastures, lots of ethics issues can crop up (bad pun). One of the most acute issues is if you get an offer to join a firm that is on the opposite side of a matter you are already handling. That was the situation in a
Keeping your client out of social media trouble — how far can you go?
Your domestic relations client has some really unfortunate Face Book posts that she put up before you filed for divorce on her behalf. Your personal injury client has some pictures on Instagram that seem to depict him riding a surfboard, despite his claimed injury. And your business client, charged with producing a defective product, has
Unauthorized practice — a continuing risk for unregistered in-house lawyers
We’ve written before to remind in-house lawyers that even if you don’t sign pleadings or appear in court on behalf of your corporate employer, you are still practicing law when you give advice and participate in business transactions on your employer’s behalf. If you do so without being duly licensed, you are straying into unauthorized
Deposition frustration: Thoughts on sanctioning lawyers for misconduct
The Eighth Circuit got it wrong a couple weeks ago when it reversed the sanction that a district court had imposed on a lawyer for disruptive deposition conduct.
I have over 35 years of experience as a trial lawyer. One of the biggest frustrations in that practice over the years has always been opposing counsel
Celgard DQ decision– sky is not falling, but representing economic competitors still merits caution
Celgard, LLC v. LG Chem, Ltd., a disqualification case decided by the Federal Circuit, continues to make waves. Insightful commentary from Ronald Rotunda is here; he notes that typing the case name into Google yields more than 5,000 hits.
Last December, when the opinion came out, there was concern (see here and here
Billing follies — what not to do
This week’s not-to-be-missed article on lawyer folly is a jaw dropping round-up of bad billing conduct, as reported in the American Lawyer.
It’s well-known that every jurisdiction’s version of Model Rule 1.5 prohibits charging an unreasonable fee or an unreasonable amount for expenses. So what could lawyers have been thinking when they did things
Verizon says legal departments among most likely to fall for phishing scam
As Willie Sutton supposedly said, he robbed banks “because that’s where the money is.” That also explains why law firms and lawyers are increasingly the targets of cyber-intrusion, particularly phishing scams. Apparently, phishing in legal waters can yield a full net of stolen information.
“Most likely” to take the bait
Verizon’s 2015 Data Breach