Greetings 2018! Time for some ethics trend predictions to kick off the Year of the Dog (according to the Chinese zodiac). Let it be a year in which you doggedly pursue ethical practice (ouch). No more bad puns — here’s what’s hot as we begin the year:
Law firm cyber-security
No surprise here that the
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
The ACLU and the Electronic Frontier Foundation have sued the Department of Homeland Security to block U.S. Customs and Border Protection personnel from searching travelers’ electronic devices without warrants. This has implications for lawyers who cross in and out of the U.S. with phones and laptops containing confidential client information. The CBP’s policy, which the
Travelling abroad for work? What should you do if a Customs and Border Patrol agent, claiming lawful authority, demands that you unlock your computer or thumb drive or cell phone — full of client confidential information — and hand it over to be searched as you cross the U.S. border?
Being inexperienced can contribute to getting into disciplinary trouble, but it can also be a mitigating factor in a bar disciplinary case. That’s the message of a recent opinion of the Oklahoma Supreme Court, which imposed a six month suspension from state practice as reciprocal discipline on a lawyer who had already been suspended from
What if you suddenly became disabled and couldn’t handle your law practice? Or, if you were to die, who would deal with your pending matters? Who has the password for your computer? Who knows where you bank? The Ohio Board of Professional Conduct last week published an ethics guide titled “Succession Planning” that
What happens when your ethical duty of competence meets up with an emergency situation where you are called on to give legal advice — immediately? Does a Good Samaritan concept apply to “emergency legal services.”
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You know those e-mails out of the blue that start “We would like to engage you to handle our $1 million legal matter”? From our friends over at Lawyerist.com comes a description of what happened when Steven Chung, an L.A. tax attorney, actually took the bait and pursued one of those invitations.
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Since it debuted in the U.S. a couple weeks ago, Pokémon Go has become a nationwide phenomenon. If you’re like I was, you may need a primer in order to understand what the hoopla is about. The game was launched by Nintendo and The Pokémon Company for smartphones. It features the longtime videogame franchise that involves capturing and “training” phantasmagorical creatures called Pokémon. And yes, there’s an ethics issue for you to think about.
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A cyber-alert issued earlier this month by the non-profit Center for Internet Security warns of a dangerous wave of malicious e-mails that are specifically targeting lawyers. The fake e-mails are calculated to get your adrenaline pumping and to get you to open them and click on a link — because they’re personalized, they look urgent, and they’re disguised as coming from your own state’s disciplinary body or bar association.
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