COURSE DESCRIPTION
Technology allows lawyers far more flexibility to practice law than ever before. Lawyers can work in shared offices, splitting expenses with other small firms or solo practitioners. They can work remotely, from home or virtually anywhere, with basic computer and networking technology. But all these innovations come with potential ethics traps. These include issues of communications and confidentiality, supervising outsourced worked, multijurisdictional practice, and ethically managing all the technology used to practice law with this newfound flexibility. This program will provide you with a practical guide to significant issues when lawyers and law firms share office space, work remotely, or establish “virtual” practices.
- Ethical issues when lawyers share office space or other resources but practice separately
- Disclosure to clients of virtual nature of law office
- Electronic communications, confidentiality, and ethical risks in virtual law offices
- How Web sites and a “virtual” presence implicate multijurisdictional practice issues
- Outsourcing work to paralegal services, including fee sharing issues
Speaker:
Thomas E. Spahn is a partner in the McLean, Virginia office of McGuireWoods, LLP, where he has a broad complex commercial, business and securities litigation practice. He also has a substantial practice advising businesses on properly creating and preserving the attorney-client privilege and work product protections. For more than 20 years he has lectured extensively on legal ethics and professionalism and has written “The Attorney-Client Privilege and the Work Product Doctrine: A Practitioner’s Guide,” a 750 page treatise published by the Virginia Law Foundation. Mr. Spahn has served as member of the ABA Standing Committee on Ethics and Professional Responsibility and as a member of the Virginia State Bar's Legal Ethics Committee.
H. Michael Drumm is the founder and member of Drumm Law, LLC in Denver, Colorado, where he has an extensive franchise, trademark and business transactional practice. He works with franchisors across industries nationwide helping them draft, file and renew their franchise Disclosure Documents and franchise agreements. He has a specialty representing craft breweries to help them trademark their brands and protect their intellectual property. He has been repeatedly honored by Franchise Times magazine as a “Legal Eagle” and has been designated by the International Franchise Association as a “Certified Franchise Executive.”