COURSE DESCRIPTION
This annual ethics program will provide you with a round-table discussion of practical ethical issues important to your practice. The program will provide you with an engaging discussion of ethics developments involving technology and law practice, conflicts of interest, and attoarney-client communications in a digital world where no one is truly unplugged. The panel will also discuss the ethics of withdrawing from a matter and firing a client and the ethics of developing new business. This program will provide you with a wide-ranging discussion of practical ethics developments important to your practice.
Day 1:
- Ethics and technology: A Potpourri
- Ethics, competence, and AI: What are competence and the unauthorized practice of law in a specialized world?
- Emerging issues in conflicts of interest, part 1
Day 2:
- Ethics of firing a client
- Ethics and client development
- Emerging issues in conflicts of interest, part 2
Speakers:
Lucian T. Pera is a partner in the Memphis office of Adams & Reese, LLP. His practice includes professional malpractice litigation as well as counseling lawyers and law firms in the area of ethics and professional responsibility. He was a member of the ABA’s Ethics 2000 Commission and is co-author of "Ethics and Lawyering Today," a national e-mail newsletter on lawyer ethics, which is accessible at: www.ethicsandlawyering.com. Before entering private practice, he served as a judicial clerk to Judge Harry W. Wellford of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.
William Freivogel is the principal of Freivogel Ethics Consulting and is an independent consultant to law firms on ethics and risk management. He was a trial lawyer for 22 years and has practiced in the areas of legal ethics and lawyer malpractice for 20 years. He is chair of the Editorial Board of the ABA/BNA Lawyers’ Manual on Professional Conduct. and past chair of the ABA Business Law Section Committee on Professional Responsibility. He maintains the Web site “Freivogel on Conflicts” at www.freivogelonconflicts.com.
Thomas E. Spahn is of counsel in the Tysons Corners, Virginia office of McGuireWoods, where he advises firm clients on professional responsibility issues and properly creating and preserving the attorney-client privilege and work product protections. He has served on the ABA Standing Committee on Ethics and Professional Responsibility and is a Member of the American Law Institute and a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation. He has written extensively on attorney-client privilege, ethics and other topics, and has spoken at over 2000 CLE programs throughout the U.S. and in several foreign countries. Through links on his website biography, he has made available to the public his summaries of over 1,600 Virginia and ABA legal ethics opinions, organized by topic; a 300 page summary of his two-volume 1,500 page book on the attorney-client privilege and work product doctrine; over 900 weekly email alerts about privilege and work product cases; and materials for 40 ethics programs on numerous topics, totaling over 9,000 pages of analysis.