Holiday parties are great times to socialize and network with colleagues. But the casual atmosphere and the sometimes-plentiful adult beverages can also tempt you to tell war stories that reveal too much about your past clients, potentially violating your continuing duty of confidentiality under Model Rule 1.9. But what’s “too much”? If something about
Licensing woes bring suspension to in-house lawyer
Here’s a year-end reminder to in-house counsel: make sure that you are properly registered and licensed, or you may run into disciplinary problems. An Ohio lawyer who worked in a company’s law department learned that the hard way earlier this month, when she received a two-year suspension from the Ohio Supreme Court, with six
Lawyer’s “Dear eBay” letters come under litigation privilege, nixing defamation case
A lawyer representing an eBay seller in a dispute with the seller’s trading agents drew a defamation claim from the agents. But the case had a happy ending for the lawyer, as the New Jersey court of appeals held last month that two letters the lawyer wrote to eBay were protected by the Garden State’s
“No poach” clause OK when firms explore merger, says ethics opinion
One of 2017’s biggest legal trends is the upswing in law firm merger activity. Altman Weil’s MergerLine site reports 76 deals announced through 2017 Q3, the most ever recorded through three quarters, with a prediction that there might be 100 mergers by year-end, surpassing the 2015 high of 91.
Firm mergers raise lots of conflicts
Five reasons why lawyers should be thankful
Last year at this time, we published this post on gratitude, and it resonated with a lot of lawyers. Here it is again, slightly revised. Have a grateful Thanksgiving holiday.
Looking at the roiling current of world events, many of them dark and discouraging, can justifiably make us anxious and depressed. Our times are marked
“Hostile” and “unreasonable” conduct at meet-and-confer merits sanctions, CA appeals court says
When a court orders you to meet and confer with opposing counsel about a discovery dispute, it requires you to do “something more than bickering with [opposing] counsel ….” That’s what a California state appeals court noted in affirming $12,600 in sanctions against a defendant represented by a large national firm. According to the opinion
PA court disqualifies Drinker Biddle in pharma company ownership dispute
A Pennsylvania state court judge disqualified Drinker Biddle & Reath LLP earlier this month from appearing for either defendant in a shareholder dispute involving a Philadelphia LLC that provides services to pharmaceutical companies. The opinion spotlights the conflict issues that can come up when representing an entity and its controlling member against a claimed minority
Let’s be friends? FL supreme court asked to decide whether lawyers and judges can be FB pals
The Third District Florida court of appeals got some press this summer when it affirmed an order refusing to disqualify a judge who was Facebook friends with one of the lawyers in a case before her. The court wrote that “a ‘friend’ on a social networking website is not necessarily a friend in the traditional
$ + witness = suspension in Nevada; lawyer was not “merely negligent”
A lawyer who offered a witness $7,000 for his “honest testimony” was suspended for 35 days by the Nevada Supreme Court, after a state discipline board divided on whether a public reprimand was sufficient.
The opinion is a reminder about the limits of advocacy.
Truth is no defense
The lawyer’s client disputed a will. The
Deleted spam leads to missed appeal; not excusable, FL court of appeals holds
If the clerk of courts e-mails you an order that your client must pay $1 million in attorney fees to the opposing party, but your spam filter catches the e-mail and then deletes it after 30 days without alerting you, and you therefore fail to appeal the order in time — well, your client may