The evolution of Avvo from its origins as a lawyer-rating service to something with a much, much more extensive impact in the legal marketplace continued this week with the news of the launch of Avvo Legal Services. Robert Ambrogi was, as often is the case, the first to break the news online about the development, […]
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Am pleased to report that I was given an opportunity by the fine folks with the ABA/BNA Lawyers’ Manual on Professional Conduct to expand on my thoughts about the problem with Tennessee Formal Ethics Opinion 2015-F-160. Even if you are not a subscriber to the publication, you can read the article at this link on the Lewis […]
Much has been written over the last few years about the risks for lawyers of increasingly sophisticated financial scams targeting them. I’ve even written about the issue some in the past. Within the last 30 days or so, a “new” financial scam has gotten some publicity that should help real estate lawyers in particular to […]
So, the latest rage in Netflix binge-watching is the documentary “Making a Murderer.” If you haven’t been engaged in a digital detox program over the last month or so, then you are likely aware of its existence. My wife and I just finished it up last evening. If you haven’t watched it, you really […]
In my last post of 2015, in the context of a discussion of a slightly different fee topic (nonrefundable fees), I made reference to the overarching “reasonableness” requirement under the ethics rules for attorney fees of any flavor, including contingency fees. The example I grabbed for at the time was how a 60% contingency fee […]
For my last post of 2015, some thoughts on a frequent source of trouble for lawyers in certain practice areas where efforts are often made to charge nonrefundable fees. In Tennessee, back in 2011, our rules were revised to specifically acknowledge the legitimacy of the concept of a nonrefundable fee but also to impose certain […]
The ABA Standing Committee on Ethics and Professional Responsibility (“SCEPR”) has put out a proposed new RPC 8.4(g) for public comment with a March 11, 2016 deadline for any written comments. The proposed rule revision would add to the list of types of prohibited conduct in RPC 8.4 the following: (g) in conduct related to the […]
Yesterday, the Tennessee Supreme Court entered an order that addresses a variety of issues I have written about on a number of prior occasions. You can take in the entire order setting out all of the new provisions here. In addition to making a spot change to Tennessee Supreme Court Rule 6 and a revision to […]
Many moons ago at this point, I wrote a post here with some criticism about ABA Formal Ethics Opinion 471 and the various questions important to client file issues on which it punted. Back then I also wrote about how our effort in Tennessee to get an ethics rule adopted (it would have RPC 1.19 in […]
Lawyers need to be able to trust some people to do their jobs. These people might be support staff, colleagues, or sometimes even opposing counsel. When it comes to trust accounting though, situation after situation demonstrates that no matter how much a lawyer trusts an employee with access to or some control over trust account […]