Ethics & Malpractice Issues

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…

Avvo is one of the online platforms that many solos and smalls love to hate. And even though I’ve been a fan of Avvo since its inception, there are a number of features that I’m not crazy about – such as using lawyer profiles that they’ve cultivated with reviews and links to post competitors’ paid…

Let’s say that you’re an attorney, duly licensed and happily practicing law in Colorado. One evening, your wife mentions that her parents in Minnesota are having a tough time resolving a dispute with a creditor, and asks if you could intercede on their behalf. Now, you’re well aware of the pitfalls of working for family…

Last month’s announcement of the marriage between Microsoft and LinkedIn had ethics gurus coming out of the woodwork, warning of a parade of horribles that would flow from the pairing. When the deal was initially launched, ethics CLE speaker Stuart Teicher wrote of potential threats to confidentiality – such as a Microsoft’s Outlook Calendar sending…

At a time when solo and small law firms are losing ground to non-lawyer providers that aren’t subject to the same onerous and costly regulation , Professor Leslie Levin comes up with this proposal: why not subject solos and smalls to even more regulation by their malpractice carriers? As is typical of most scholarship about…