We love blogging! Blogs have become an increasingly important part of professional practice. Writing blog posts allows professionals to increase their social media presence and keep clients informed about recent developments in their respective industries. At the same time, blogs are an invaluable marketing tool that allows professionals to connect with potential clients and develop new business relationships in a less formal, and more interactive, medium than traditional print publications. But, bloggers beware. While this new form of interaction can be highly beneficial, professionals should …
Continue ReadingAuthor: Michael P. Luongo
Fiduciary Exception Limits the Attorney-Client Privilege
The attorney-client privilege encourages full and frank communication between attorney and client, whether the client is an individual or a large corporation. Protecting confidential communications promotes broader public interests in the observance of law and the administration of justice. However, in shareholder derivative actions alleging harm by the corporation against stockholders, some courts have held that the corporate attorney-client privilege should be balanced with the interests of the shareholders, and that the privilege may therefore be subject to limitations. This is known as the “fiduciary …
Continue ReadingRethinking the Professional Apology
Professionals are only human. Even the most cautious professional is not immune from the occasional mistake. Whether the mistake gives rise to a claim of professional malpractice, however, will often depend not on the error that was made, but on what actions the professional took to resolve the error after it occurred. Professionals are generally reluctant to admit responsibility for a personal mistake. Traditional wisdom suggests that doing so would amount to an admission of guilt that could provide damaging evidence in a future lawsuit. …
Continue ReadingThe Continuous Treatment Doctrine: A Doctor’s Nightmare
Every jurisdiction maintains a series of statute of limitations which set the amount of time a litigant has to initiate a claim before it expires. Some of the purposes of these statutes is to prompt reasonable diligence by the plaintiff to initiate claims and to prevent exposure for long dormant claims. Attorneys are familiar with the various exceptions that act to toll the limitations period, and establishing when the statutory period begins to run can sometimes lead to protracted litigation in its own right. Here, …
Continue ReadingCyber Lessons from Jennifer Lawrence
As you’ve no doubt heard, hackers recently accessed dozens of female celebrities’ personal cloud-based storage accounts, releasing hundreds of nude photographs and videos onto the web. Many of the photographs were taken by cell phones, which automatically backed up the files to popular cloud services, such as iCloud and Dropbox. Some suspect that the hackers then employed targeted attacks in which “brute force” programs were used to randomly guess weak passwords for a given username until it found a match. Once inside the celebrities’ cloud …
Continue ReadingBlurred Lines: Professional Advisor or Business Partner?
Some professionals are regularly presented with the opportunity to engage in business ventures with their clients. Whether the professional is retained to review an investment opportunity for a client, provides advice regarding a client’s business, or invites a client to invest in a new venture, professionals may occasionally find themselves transitioning from the role of advisor, into that of a business partner. However, blurring the line between professional advisor and partner can easily lead to ethics violations and civil liability.
Consider this example. In In …
Continue ReadingOverzealous Advocacy Leads to Sanctions
Attorneys have an obligation to provide zealous advocacy on behalf of their clients and to pursue a client’s interests within the bounds of the law. To this end, lawyers are expected to protect clients during discovery by properly counseling them in anticipation of depositions and objecting to requests that are truly improper without crossing the line. However, overzealous advocacy, which obstructs legitimate discovery requests, may draw judicial ire and potentially lead to disciplinary action. Consider the following example.
Sanctions were recently imposed by an Iowa …
Continue ReadingDropping the Problem Client
Professionals and their clients do not always see eye to eye. Whether there are disagreements over litigation strategy, conflicts in personality, or a client who refuses to pay, many professionals encounter a problem client at some time in their career. While professionals may be tempted to cut ties with these clients when the relationship turns sour, an ugly break-up can make matters worse and may invite a malpractice suit.
Professionals should consider several factors before deciding to end the relationship. Take the time to assess …
Continue ReadingMonitoring a Client’s Social Media Content
Proceed with caution! The intersection between social media and attorney ethics is fraught with peril. In fact, all professionals should be on high alert when interacting with clients or would-be clients on social media sites. You all know this and you’ve heard it before from your friends at PL Matters and others. Still, there is no shortage of social media blunders impacting the PL community. The Philadelphia Bar Association Professional Guidance Committee recently released an ethics opinion addressing four common questions facing lawyers whose clients …
Continue ReadingEmployer Liability for Employee’s Online Activity
Many employers have made great strides in adapting to the risks posed by online activity. Some maintain employee handbooks with social media and computer use policies. Others provide training and many monitor employee use of employer-provided devices. But risks still remain. Take, for example, the recent Indiana appellate decision regarding potential employer liability for an employee’s online conduct.
In Miller v. Federal Express, an underlying construction project came to a halt when financial backers withdrew funding. The Indianapolis Business Journal reported on the funding …
Continue Reading