Does the new year have you thinking about taking on work in a new practice area? Maybe business in your accustomed area is slowing, and you’re considering shifting gears. If so, beware of dabbling in areas where you don’t have the requisite knowledge and skill to provide competent representation to your client.
The ethical duty
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?
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
There should be a word that’s the opposite of “schadenfreude” — you know, that evocative German term that means “secret pleasure at another’s misfortune.” Maybe there is such a word, but the one I’m searching for would convey the sense of “Please, let me not fall into the same error” as some other person did, because under the right (or wrong) circumstances we can all make ethical mistakes. Here are three cautionary tales. You may read them and wonder how the lawyers involved came to such grief — or you may just be thankful that it wasn’t you, or that the demons these lawyers struggled with aren’t yours.
Technophobia isn’t confined to U.S. lawyers — no surprise, it affects Canadian members of the bar, too, with the same potentially disastrous results. Last month’s cautionary tale: a lawyer who was technologically illiterate failed to supervise his wife, who ran his office and used his bar credentials to misappropriate more than $3000,000 without his knowledge. Canadian disciplinary authorities permitted him to surrender his license voluntarily, instead of revoking it.
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.”
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.
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.