Ethics & Malpractice Issues

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…

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…

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…

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…

Post updated April 20, 2022 – As of April 2022, many states have eliminated the prohibition on trade names. See here. In Part I of the Post , I blogged about solo Ekaterina Schoenefeld’s nine year battle to have New York’s out-of-state lawyer bonafide office requirement invalidated as unconstitutional.  Schoenefeld’s fight, however, shows the kind…

 May a state – consistent with the Privileges and Immunities Clause of Article IV – require non- residents, who are licensed to practice as attorneys in that state, to maintain a separate physical office in that state as a condition of practicing law there, when the state does not require resident attorneys to maintain any…

Via Michael Frish of the Legal Profession Blog comes another stupid ethics decision destined to put the kibosh on unbundled legal services and drive clients straight into the arms of Legal Zoom. Briefly, the sad facts. The lawyer who is the subject of the ethics decision is a solo practitioner serving the Polish community in…

Another day, another stupid  legal  ethics ruling. This one – ABA Formal Opinion 475: Safeguarding Fees That Are Subject to Division With Other Counsel , released last week – seems innocuous enough, not to mention dull as dishwater. But like so many ethics decisions, Formal Opinion 475 elevates form over substance to the detriment of many…