I’m interested in writing today about two recent ethics opinions that manage to go together quite nicely. Utah Ethics Adv. Op. 18-04 and Texas Professional Ethics Committee Op. 679. Both involve RPC 1.8 (or at least both should). And, not only does neither opinion do a very good job with the subject matter it tackles […]
Tag: Attorney Fees
Lawyers billing clients on the basis of time spent is less than ideal for all involved. For lawyers, it isn’t the best proxy for value delivered in terms of service and incentivizes inefficiency. For clients, it isn’t the best proxy of value received in terms of service and leaves clients feeling like the only way […]
Answering the question that was undoubtedly on the minds of every lawyer practicing in that state, the Lawyer’s Advisory Committee of the Nebraska Supreme Court issued Ethics Advisory Opinion for Lawyers No. 17-03 making clear that, yes, lawyers can accept payment from clients in the form of Bitcoin or other similar digital currencies. I don’t […]
For those that missed my post earlier this week on the release of the Oregon State Bar Futures Task Force report, you can read that post here and get caught up. Today, I want to offer some thoughts on one of the three Recommendations made by the Regulatory Committee of the Futures Task Force. It […]
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A tale as old as time.
Stop me if you’ve heard this one … it’s about a lawyer getting into trouble for overbilling … where there are examples of the lawyer even trying to claim to have billed more than 24 hours in a day. You probably stopped me somewhere in there because you have heard it before. The legal profession […]
An opinion worthy of discussion was issued in Ohio back in February 2017 but I didn’t stumble across it until this past week. (A tweet by ALAS got it onto my radar screen.) Advisory Opinion 2017-1 from the Ohio Board of Professional Conduct addresses advertisement of contingent fee arrangements and, in particular, it addresses the […]
On the heels of my criticism of an ethics opinion out of New York as weird-ish, let me turn my attention closer to home to discuss a Court of Appeals opinion this week here in Tennessee that is fortunate for the law firm involved but unfortunate for lawyers in Tennessee in general. In Guo v. Woods […]
I’ve written previously about the maelstrom of issues presented by Avvo’s expansion from its original core business as a lawyer rating service into new things such as Avvo Legal Services — an arrangement where it makes clients, who will have already paid Avvo for the legal services they want, available directly to lawyers to perform […]
Last week, the ABA Standing Committee on Ethics and Professional Responsibility issued its latest formal opinion – Opinion No. 16-474 addressing the topic of “referral” fees under the ABA Model Rules and, specifically, the intersection of Model Rule 1.5(e) and conflicts requirements under Model Rule 1.7. Along the way, the opinion also stakes out […]
Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it. – Ferris Bueller Back in December 2015, during my Ethics Roadshow I talked a little bit about one of the items that had been rolled out for public comment by the ABA Commission on the Future […]