Your motion or response has to be filed within two hours. You and your attorney are scrambling to get it finished. It’s a race against the clock and you didn’t eat lunch and you’re slightly panicked you’ll miss your deadline. Sound familiar? Believe me, I’ve been there many times. It [...]
Any member of the legal community, whether lawyer or support staff, full-time employee or contractor, is bound by the ethical duty of maintaining client confidences. An attorney, and by extension his or her staff, has a duty “to maintain inviolate the confidence, and at every peril to himself or herself [...]
The most substantial revisions to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure since 2006 went into effect on December 1, 2015. I've published two articles on the substance of those revisions, which can be accessed here and here. On February 26, 2016, I was honored to present and MCLE seminar on [...]
In recent years, law firm staff reductions have made paralegal jobs harder to find. Also, some paralegals have decided they want more control over their work life. The result has been a great deal of interest in tips for starting a contract paralegal business. Paralegals reach out to me for [...]
In addition to practicing family law in North Carolina, Lee Rosen of Divorce Discourse consults with lawyers seeking to improve and expand their law practices. I’ve been reading his blog avidly for years. You see, even though I’m an “embarrassing” paralegal and not a lawyer, I am a business owner, [...]
Some Rules The ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct 1.7 through 1.11 govern avoiding conflicts of interest. Rule 1.7(a) says a lawyer can’t represent a particular client if doing so would involve a conflict of interest stemming from the lawyer’s responsibilities to someone else - whether another client, a former [...]
The American Bar Association's Model Rules of Professional Conduct underwent a major overhaul in 2012. The revisions to both the rules and comments were thought to be necessary in light of the ever-increasing reliance on technology, electronic communication, and electronically stored information in today's law practice. I was honored to [...]
Can attorneys ethically blog about their past trials? Does doing so violate client confidentiality? Does doing so violate professional conduct rules? What do you think? In October 2012, the Redwood Empire Paralegals Association hosted an MCLE Seminar on ethics. I was pleased to have been one of three presenters on [...]
Do you know what it is? Is it good or bad? Should we try and remove it or keep in intact? It depends! I'm honored to have had my article, All About Metadata, reprinted on here The Paralegal Society Blog. You can read an updated version of the same article here.
Did you know that the phrase “privilege log” is nowhere to be found in the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure? I’m honored to have had my article, The Most Common 'Rule" That May Not Be In The Rules, reprinted here on The Paralegal Society Blog. You can read an updated version [...]
