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 […]
This is an update on the California lawyer who successfully compelled arbitration of a client’s salacious claims that he treated her as essentially a “sex slave” that I wrote about here. While I talked about that case as an example of the growing power of arbitration provisions in the arena of attorney-client contracts, I did […]
It is undeniable that the American judicial system long ago embraced arbitration as a valid form of alternative dispute resolution. As a result, it is also hornbook law at this point that agreements to arbitrate disputes are to be enforced just like any other contract. As a practical matter, there isn’t anything empirically wrong with […]
A major issue that has dogged the legal profession in the past, and looks likely to dog it again in the near future (if you don’t happen to think it already does), is the debate over the restriction imposed under the ethics rules that prevents non-lawyers from having any ownership stake in a law firm. […]
Recently, I wrote a little about the problems that can be presented in re-negotiating the terms of a fee agreement with an existing client in light of the requirements of RPC 1.8(a) governing business transactions with clients. Yesterday’s big legal news in Tennessee involves something that could be flippantly described as an RPC 1.8(a) problem […]
When lawyers think about problematic business transactions with a client, they usually think about things like loans or, perhaps, situations in which a lawyer is joining a client as an investor in a business venture. The ethics rule regarding business transactions with clients, RPC 1.8(a), is broader in its coverage than just those situations and, […]