Law Practice Management

It’s been dubbed “the Amicus Machine” — the seemingly limitless wave of amicus curiae filings in the nation’s highest court.  Statistics from the Supreme Court’s 2017-18 term reflect amicus briefs filed in every one of the 63 argued cases, averaging 14+ briefs per case.  For the current term, it is reported that groups have already

The practice of law comes in many forms and sizes. It may include giving advice about a legal right, representing a client in a legal proceeding, preparing legal documents, and negotiating on a client’s behalf. Yet what all these acts have in common is that you must have state authorization to so act. You face

If you and your spouse are both lawyers, you know that you potentially face a few unique ethics issues — conflicts and confidentiality are the most obvious ones.  (We’ve considered some of the ins and outs here and here.)

But what if your nearest and dearest is also your law partner — or what

Third-party litigation funding is a growing and, some say, controversial industry.  We’ve written before about whether such arrangements are permitted under state ethics rules (here), and we reported on the first effort to mandate disclosure of third-party funding via federal court rule (here), as well as the first state statute requiring

“DQ” at this time of year makes me think of drive-in ice-cream cones.  But I actually mean “DQ” as in “disqualification,” and instead of sugar cones, it points to an interesting case involving some take-home lessons about conflicts of interest.

Crisis of unhoused residents

California’s massive homelessness problem has been the subject of several federal

Looking for marketing ideas to help you or your firm stand out from the crowd?  If you’re tired of branding tee shirts and mugs with your logo, how about donating your legal services to be auctioned off by a charity?  As you might suspect, there are ethics issues — and Maryland’s state bar association recently

We’ve written before about “web bugs” — tracking devices consisting of an object embedded in a web page or e-mail, that unobtrusively (usually invisibly) reveal whether and how a user has accessed the content.  Three jurisdictions (Alaska, New York and, most recently, Illinois) have issued opinions pointing to the ethics

A former part-time Ohio judge and bankruptcy trustee whose bookkeeper was convicted of stealing funds from his trust account was publicly reprimanded last week for failing to reconcile his trust account monthly and failing to adequately supervise his staff.  The court’s opinion spotlights the potential legal ethics problems that dishonest non-lawyer staff can create.  Below