One of your ethical duties with respect to an Internet scam is to not fall for it, the Association of the Bar of the City of New York Committee on Professional Ethics has said in a new opinion.
Competent? Don’t fall for Nigerian check scam
The Committee considered the ethics rules that apply to
We posted here about the in-house firm counsel privilege, and the New York case that held late last year that the privilege didn’t apply where a malpractice plaintiff was seeking to discover all relevant communications of his former lawyers.
The opinion in Stock v. Schnader Harrison Segal & Lewis LLP is in the New York
Some law firms or solos searching for efficiency and ways to trim overhead have considered arrangements with a “professional employer organization,” or PEO. A PEO, which some states permit by statute, is a separate company to which an organization allocates some or all of its human resources functions. The PEO sometimes acts as a co-employer
LinkedIn has achieved remarkable market penetration among lawyers. Ninety-five percent of ABA members report that they have profiles. (Preceding link requires LEXIS subscription.) Many law firms turn to LinkedIn’s premium offering, “Reference Search,” to help them vet job candidates by finding references — others who have worked with candidates at their former firms. But
Although almost every U.S. jurisdiction now has some version of the ABA’s Model Rules of Professional Conduct, some of us who have been around awhile remember the old Disciplinary Rules, which governed lawyer conduct under the former Model Code of Professional Responsibility. (Or maybe you remember the Disciplinary Rules because you practice in a state
It’s a scenario that all trial lawyers are familiar with. Your client is testifying at deposition. She gets a little confused and her testimony reflects it. After a line of questioning concludes, you request a break, leave the room with your client and confer. When the deposition resumes, your client changes her testimony, perhaps significantly.
Sometimes our lessons come in more bizarre ways than others. As reported by Law360 last week (subscription required), three Florida lawyers were charged by disciplinary authorities over a January 2013 incident involving the firm’s paralegal. The three lawyers were defending defamation claims against their client, who was a local radio talk show host known as
When you represent a business entity, do you also necessarily represent the shareholders? How about the owners? What if there are just two of them? Representing closely held entities can raise thorny ethics issues for business lawyers. Model Rule 1.13(a) says that when you represent an organization, your client is the entity. And when you
H&R Block announced in January that it would offer immigration document preparation services in some of its Texas stores. The business model depended on customers going into the stores, where “trained immigration assistants” would help them use proprietary computer software to fill out the forms.
After barely getting off the ground
, though, the tax-help
Corporate organization
charts increasingly include slots for departments with names like “risk management,” “claims handling,” and the like. When lawyers head or staff such departments, does the attorney-client privilege cover their communications with company management? Not necessarily, says a new opinion from the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, Casey v. Unitek Global Services, Inc.
Sex discrimination