Ethics & Malpractice Issues
My Request to Rescind MSBA Ethics Opinion 1992-19 Prohibiting MarkUp on Payments for Freelance Lawyers
UPDATE October 12, 2019 – It’s taken me a while to post this, but MSBA finally responded to my request for an ethics ruling several months back. Instead of admitting that the rules as they existed were understood to prohibit markups on fees, the Committee insisted that markups have been permissible all along. In any…
Read MoreAt the Intersection of Legal Ethics and GDPR
The EU’s General Data Protection Regulation — which applies to US law firms that represent EU citizens or companies or hold data about EU citizens — allows EU citizens the right to have their data erased in certain circumstances. But the GDPR’s “right to be forgotten” could potentially butt heads with legal ethics requirements,…
Read MoreHow Three Little Words – Earned on Receipt – Could Change Everything for Solo & Small Law Firms
As the Small Business Administration recognizes, cash flow is the lifeblood of a business and critical to its growth. Yet ethics regulations requiring lawyers to deposit advance payments into trust accounts and subsequently release it in dribs and drabs as work is performed only serve to exacerbate cash flow issues for solos and smalls at…
Read MoreWhy The Revisions to the ABA’s Advertising Rule Represent Everything Wrong With the ABA
Yesterday on Twitter, I encountered a stream of tweets about the ABA House of Delegates recent amendments to Model Rules 7.1 – 7.5, hailing them as a game-changing, significant update to the existing regulations. Unwilling to rely on tweets as a primary source, I hustled over to the peruse the changes which are set out…
Read MoreHow Legal Ethics Rules on Non-Fee Splitting Platforms Lead to Unintended Consequences and Ludicrous Results
Today, my blogging buddy Bob Ambrogi posted about a soon-to-be-launching platform Text A Lawyer. Designed to mimic the convenience of Uber, Text-a-Lawyer would allow users to text legal questions via their phones for just $20 and have them answered by a lawyer within minutes. Text-a-Lawyer is a great idea for many reasons. First, because text is…
Read MoreBeware of Buying A Competitor’s Name To Market Your Law Practice
Can lawyers use a competitor’s name as a keyword to market their own law practice? Although Google allows law firms’ to purchase competitors’ names as keywords, at least two states — North Carolina and South Carolina — forbid this practice, finding it inherently deceptive. By contrast, Florida and Texas —allow lawyers to use keywords to…
Read MoreWhy State Bar Regulation of For-Fee Referral Services Is A Very, VERY Bad Idea
Last week, the Illinois Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission (IARDC) issued a report that recommends allowing attorneys to participate in for-profit referral and matching services, and seeks public comment on a proposed framework for regulating for-profit referral companies and participating attorneys. The IARDC’s approach has been hailed as a favorable development by some, and for sure,…
Read MoreLegal Malpractice Insurance As the Missing Piece In the Supply Chain for Innovation for Solo and Small Law Firms
Remember the bot that sues Equifax for data breaches that made headlines last fall? Although celebrated by most of the #altlaw crowd, surprisingly, the bot wasn’t as well received by many of the solo and small firm lawyers on one of my listserves. Many of these lawyers expressed concerns about the ethical implications of the…
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