We all want to reduce our risk for legal malpractice.
Here you can find our thoughts on attorney-client privilege, existing client communication and your duties with potential clients.
We also discuss your emerging responsibilities in regards to online privacy and security.
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Every year, ethics boards receive thousands of complaints. The California State Bar alone received over 16,000 ethics complaints in 2011, a number that represents about 7% of California’s active lawyers. At some point in your legal career, one of those complaints could be against you.
Here’s how to handle an ethics complaint, if you wind up the subject of one.
Referrals from other attorneys are a huge source of business for many law practices. But should those referrals prompt the payment of referral fees? Is it OK to insist another lawyer pay a referral fee in exchange for sending a client to them?
Let’s say you are a lawyer who happens to be a white supremacist who wants to revoke the citizenship of all non-whites and deport them. Like oh, say, William Daniel Johnson. Would you sign up for your state’s lawyer referral service? And if you did, would you feel the need to mention your white supremacist views to your clients? How about the non-white ones?
Florida recently amended its rules regulating lawyer advertising. Which sounds good, considering their advertising rule-making track record.
The new rules are more of an overhaul than an amendment. The purpose: to make the advertising rules more cohesive, easier for lawyers who advertise to understand and, less cumbersome for the Bar to apply and enforce.
I invite you to judge for yourself whether they accomplish these goals. Down the legal ethics rabbit hole we go.
Keep Reading ⇒
Hate marketing? Good news! (Well, maybe.) There are literally thousands of consultants who would be happy to do it for you. And a few of them are probably actually legit!
All you have to do is pay a small referral fee (only don’t call it that) for the chance to talk to a potential potential client (not a typo).
Sound awesome? Here’s the catch. Two catches, actually.
It is the rare lawyer who is familiar with all the intricacies of legal marketing ethics rules. Most of them, however, seem to know that they must take care when using the word “specialize.” At the same time, most of these attorneys have no idea why. Continue reading this post to discover the answer.
Thinking about celebrating your latest triumph on Facebook?
Pop quiz hot-shot.
Does your social media victory lap concern your availability for professional employment? If so, you might be in violation of your state’s ethics rules.
Keep Reading ⇒
There are many people who advocate a niche practice over a general practice. I tend to agree, but it is tough. This year alone, we have turned away four clients already. Of course we refer these people to other attorneys, but it still feels like turning money away. As a result my partner and I have discussed expanding our practice. But how can one expand into unfamiliar areas of the law?
You can discuss The Shingle Life in the comments, in the LAB, or on Twitter using the hashtag #shinglelife.
Surely $550 or $1,000 is a bit of a steep marketing for what Ted Frank of the (anti-class-action pro-class-member non-profit) Center for Class-Action Fairness calls an “unemployed real-estate lawyer doing first-tier securities litigation document review as a temporary contract attorney,” who is probably being paid about $50 per hour, tops?
Intellectually, I understand the difference between paying a contract lawyer an hourly wage and charging a client an hourly rate for their work. But it’s never felt right to me. Contract lawyers feel more like a cost that should be simply passed through to the client.
However you feel, surely we can agree that marking up a lawyer you pay $50 an hour to $550 is egregious, right?
Read “Does Legal Fees Motion in $590M Citigroup Case Include $1K Per Hour for Low-Paid Contract Lawyers?” at the ABA Journal
In the course of the long and sordid drama surrounding “Internet lawyer” Charles Carreon and Matthew “The Oatmeal” Inman, there have been many opportunities for lawyers to learn from Carreon’s example. Or rather, learn what not to do by Carreon’s example.
Carreon may have held himself out as an “Internet lawyer” (whatever that is), but it is clear he was not well-equipped to do battle on the Internet. Or in court, as it turns out.
At Credit Slips, Paul Levy itemizes some of Carreon’s glaring legal mistakes when Carreon threatened an anonymous blogger at charles-carreon.com, who then sued:
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