One of the more archaic aspects of lawyer regulation is the heavy-handed approach to UPL. And, I’m not referring to UPL in the sense of something done that involves the practice of law by a person who isn’t a lawyer anywhere. I’m referring to regulatory efforts involving UPL that are brandished against someone who is […]
One mistake. What should be the price of one mistake? To some extent, the answer to those questions for lawyers and lawyer discipline matters ought to be foreordained in two consecutive paragraphs of the Scope portion of the ABA Model Rules: [19] ….the rules presuppose that whether or not discipline should be imposed for a […]
Two weeks ago, I offered some thoughts on the latest flare-up in the long-running off-and-on ABA exploration of the third-rail of the practice of law: potential non-lawyer ownership/investment in law firms. This time around, before I could even manage to finish reading all of the comments and try to write some thoughts about the comments, […]
When you allow yourself to ponder just how quickly technological advances have changed the daily life of a lawyer, it becomes pretty easy to speculate about just how foreign the daily life of a lawyer 10 years from now will be when compared to what it is today. When I stop to think about the […]
April 2016 has brought another iteration of a seemingly, endless, (yet kind of potentially pointless unless you think the politics of the situation will somehow play out differently from the past) debate: whether some entity within the ABA is attempting to usher into reality a world in which people other than lawyers will be allowed […]
So, yesterday, I started writing about the potential ramifications for lawyers of the adoption by the Department of Labor of its final “persuader” rule which will become effective on April 25, 2016, but will only be applicable to agreements entered into on and after July 1, 2016. You can catch up on part 1 here. […]
Lawyers in private practice work in a variety of settings ranging from solo practice to law firms with thousands of lawyers in scores of offices. Lawyers also practice in a variety of business structures ranging from d/b/a arrangements on one end to Swiss Verein models. My rough guess would be that the majority of United […]
Over the last several months there have been various iterations of stories and reports making the rounds about the susceptibility of our profession to depression and substance abuse, reports of 1 in 5 lawyers being problem drinkers, etc. There are also always folks out there writing variations of pieces about the problems that are created […]
Last week the Chattanooga Estate Planning Council was kind enough to have me come to speak to them about ethical issues arising from the uncertain world of the law regarding digital assets. They were gracious hosts and, to the extent there were important ethics issues to really discuss, we managed to cover that most, if […]
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 […]