Ethics & Malpractice Issues
Beware 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…
Read MoreLegal Ethics Are the Least of Lawyers’ Problems When Doing Business Online
In a digital world, legal ethics are no longer the center of the universe. Today, lawyers who advertise or engage in business online are subject to four distinct pillars of governance. First, there’s the law of the online world. That includes the Federal Trade Commission Act enforced by the FTC to prevent deceptive trade practices and…
Read MoreUsing New York’s Residency Law As A Sword To Dispose of Opponents, Not A Shield To Protect Clients
If you want to see an example of how laws purported to protect clients do anything but, look no further than Platinum Rapid Funding Group v. HD Raleigh Inc, d/b/a/ Pure Med Spa, a recent decision out of a New York court in Nassau County. There, the court granted the plaintiff’s motion to disqualify New…
Read MoreHow Many Lawyers Bought Followers from Sites Like Devumi?
Turns out that social media is far from the madding crowd that it’s cracked up to be. A study last year found that 48 million Twitter accounts and 60 may be bots run by computers, while Facebooks own disclosures pegged its number of phony accounts at a whopping 270 million . Most of those fake accounts…
Read MoreWhy Regulators’ Ban on Avvo Hurts Not Only Consumers But Solo Lawyers
A few years back, my mischievous little bichon shitzu, Sadie managed to hop up on to the kitchen table, knock a rotisserie chicken off the table and along with her “sister” – our 90-pound Old English Sheepdog – polish it off in the twenty minutes that I’d stepped out of the house to pick my…
Read MoreAre Solos Still Being Told Not to Use Social Media?
The above insert comes from a recent “Practice Insight” from my malpractice insurer, CNA. Though I’ve been a satisfied CNA customer for 16 years (I moved to CNA post- 9/11 when the D.C. Bar’s “preferred provider” that I’d used for several years prior closed up shop), this advice troubles me: are we still cautioning solos…
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