A recent Illinois Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Committee (ARDC), reported here misses the point. The ARDC charged a solo estate planning attorney with ethics violations for splitting fees with a non-lawyer financial planner over a five year period between 2007 and 2012. During that time, the financial planner hosted six seminars each year, referring approximately
Is Your Jurisdiction Wasting Money to Make the Ethics of the Cloud Clear?
Last week, Bob Ambrogi posted an updated roundup of state ethics decisions — 17 to date – that clear the cloud for use by lawyers. But while I appreciate the bars’ efforts, they’re a poor use of resources.
For starters, every one of those 17 ethics decisions says roughly the same thing. Lawyers can use
Second Circuit Seeks Second Opinion on the Meaning of “Office” for Purposes of Non-Resident Lawyers – Update
For nearly three years, I’ve been tracking solo Ekaterina Schoenefeld’s challenge to the constitutionality of New York Judicial Code 470, which imposes an in-state office requirement – but only on nonresident lawyers. Schoenefeld won round one, when a federal district court judge ruled that the statute infringes on nonresident attorneys’ right to practice law
An Indiana Ethics Opinion That May Kill Legal Start Ups
Via the Legal Profession Blog, comes a recent Indiana ethics decision reprimanding a lawyer who’d practiced 41 years without incident for participating Law Tigers , a site that helps members of the public find a motorcycle attorney. Trouble is, in pursuit of a single Tiger that may purportedly cause harm to the public, the
Dewey Really Want to Say That Crowdfunding Is Unethical Fee Splitting? The Biglaw/SmallLaw Double Standard
Back in May 2013, Findlaw blogger William Peacock posted about Upstart, a crowd funding site where “backers” provide money to new graduates, who pledge to repay the funds through a percentage of future income for a term of five or ten years. Upstart and similar crowd funding platforms might potentially offer an innovative
A Guide to Legal Subscription Services: Why To Offer Subscription, How to Price Service and Avoiding Ethics Issues
Post updated March 17, 2022
Legal subscription services go by many names: prepaid legal, toll bridge agreements, outside general counsel plans, lawyer-on-retainer. Essentially, a subscription service is a catch-all for a business model where users pay for ongoing access to a product or service. In any event, the concept of legal subscription services has
What’s In A Trade Name? Legal Ethics Considerations.
Post updated April 20, 2022 – As of April 2022, many states have eliminated the prohibition on trade names. See here.
There are plenty of reasons for a law firm to use a trade name. Trade names can communicate your firm’s concentration or what’s unique about your practice more effectively and directly than a
Is Your Law Firm or #AltLaw Violating the Lanham Act?
I’ve often wondered whether a firm that lacked competency in certain practice areas could nonetheless, advertise these capabilities “on spec,” figuring that it could either refer the work out or hire a temporary lawyer to handle these matters if they came through the door. I’ve seen this tactic used occasionally by the #Altlaw law firms
What’s Needed for Solos & Smalls To Innovate? A Legal Ethics Safe Harbor & Crowdsourced Ethics
Solo and small firm lawyers account for roughly sixty-five percent of all attorneys. Unfortunately, as I’ve written before , solos and smalls are grossly underrepresented in the Reinvent Law space – even though solos and smalls have traditionally been (and in my view, still are) the driving force of innovation in the legal profession.
Still,
Should Lawyers Follow Clients Around the Web?
These days, most consumers who decline to purchase a pair of shoes or jeans or car insurance from an online site are accustomed to discovering that jilted object of their interest is stalking them around the internet, turning up everywhere in the form of “retargeting ads.” While many consumers find these ads downright