Ethics in Drafting Claims

course

COURSE INFO

  • Available Until 3/29/2021
  • Next Class Time 1:00 PM ET
  • Duration 60 min.
  • Format MP3 Download
  • Program Code 03292019
  • Activity Code:   212919
  • MCLE Credits 1 hour(s)


Course Price: $75.00
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COURSE DESCRIPTION

From filing a claim to settlement, litigation can involve many gray ethical areas.  How valid is a claim factually or legally, and at what point is it so frivolous that you are acting improperly to pursue it?  Must you investigate the facts presented by a client before filing a claim?  Is ghostwriting a claim or pleadings allowed?  At what point is your help of someone else improper deception?  What is the line separating legitimate jockeying for position in litigation versus improper deception in settlement?  Exactly how much of what you know about the facts or the law or the status of witnesses are you required to share with opposing counsel?  These and related questions will be examined in this program on ethical issues in drafting and filing claims, ghostwriting pleadings, and settlements.

  • Duty to investigate client facts before filing a claim v. duty to investigate the law
  • Conflicting approaches of ethics rules and the courts to sanctioning ghostwriting in litigation
  • Understanding when you are required to be candid and when you are allowed to be silent, or engage in “puffery”
  • Ethics tension between duty of loyalty to client and duties as officer of the court
  • Ethics of serving unenforceable subpoenas in the hope of obtaining witness cooperation
  • Ethics in settlements – silence about facts, the law, mistakes in settlement documents, and the death of witnesses
  • Enforceability of settlement agreements and ethics challenges

Speakers:

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.  He received his B.A., magna cum laude, from Yale University and his J.D. from Yale Law School.