2016

Regulatory compliance, cyber-security issues, herding legal operations staff — in-house legal practice is more complex than ever. One element that remains a continuing challenge is protecting the organization’s attorney-client privilege. Slipping up can risk the loss of the privilege in litigation involving the company, and can potentially result in an order to produce otherwise confidential communications to the other side. What are some signs that your law department needs to tune up its privilege IQ?…

Has your mother-in-law ever asked you for legal help? Giving legal advice to family members can be challenging for lots of reasons — but it comes with the territory when you have a law license. A Colorado lawyer, however, recently got into disciplinary trouble for helping his Minnesota in-laws in a small collection matter. In a badly flawed decision, the Minnesota Supreme Court decided that he’d engaged in the unauthorized practice of law.…

Under deadline pressure to produce a brief? You’ve found one online in a public database that fits your case to a T? If you’ve always thought that you can make free use of another lawyer’s brief, think again. You just might get sued for copyright infringement — successfully. In Newegg Inc. v. Ezra Sutton, P.A., a California U.S. district court made that point earlier this month, when it granted partial summary judgment to plaintiff Newegg on its infringement claim — but Newegg has come in for some criticism for pushing the case.…

Avvo has a First Amendment right to use a lawyer’s publically-available information to generate advertising revenue for itself, the district court for the Northern District of Illinois held on September 12. The ruling means that Avvo can park ads for your competitors on the profile it creates for you — unless you pay Avvo to keep them off.…

The prohibition against aiding clients in carrying out crimes and frauds has been in the news lately, in connection with the quandary that lawyers find themselves in when attempting to help clients in the marijuana industry — whose conduct may be legal under state law, while remaining illegal under federal law. (We’ve blogged about it previously, here and here. ) In this environment, it is useful to consider just what constitutes assisting a client’s crime or fraud, as the Ohio Supreme Court did last week in disbarring a lawyer who helped a divorce client hide assets from her spouse.…

It’s common for law students to clerk for a couple different firms during their law-school years. When a student law clerk you hire has worked for a firm representing a party adverse to your client, what happens? Is the student disqualified from working on your matter? Is your whole firm disqualified? Can you screen the clerk and solve the problem? Two recent ethics opinions out of Texas and Ohio clarify the rules.

The smoke might eventually clear for Ohio lawyers who hope to help clients engage in the medical marijuana industry after it becomes legal in the state on September 8. On August 17, the state supreme court said that it had “directed its staff to prepare a draft amendment to the Ohio Rules of Professional Conduct that would clarify the services attorneys can offer clients seeking to comply with the state’s new medical marijuana law.” The announcement follows the ruling 12 days earlier by the Board of Professional Conduct that Ohio lawyers can’t provide any legal services to help clients in connection with a medical marijuana enterprise.

On Tuesday, the ABA House of Delegates amended the Model Rules of Professional Conduct to add a provision barring harassment or discrimination in all conduct related to a lawyer’s practice of law. After months of debate, comment and revision, the revised Resolution 109 passed on a voice vote, without dissenting comment from the floor. The version adopted reflects an amendment introduced last month, which lowered the bar for a finding of misconduct from strict liability to a “knows or should know” standard.…