In September 2021, the Washington Supreme Court adopted amendments to RPC 1.4, which now require disclosure regarding minimum malpractice insurance levels. With some exceptions, this new requirement applies to all practicing attorneys and has generated many questions.
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Making technological investments in a law firm is fundamental for planning for the life of the practice. According to the Thomson Reuters’ 2021 Report on the State of the Legal Market, 84 percent of surveyed partners expected their firms to increase investments in technology after the pandemic. The pandemic has forever changed the use of technology in law firms and altered consumer expectations. Firms who fail to adapt will be left behind.
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Division I of the Washington Court of Appeals recently addressed the “professional judgment” rule in Angelo v. Kindinger, 2022 WL 1008314 (Wn. App. Apr. 4, 2022). The rationale of the rule, which is a long-standing part of the decisional law of legal malpractice, is that a lawyer should not be held liable for malpractice for a good faith judgment within a range of reasonable alternatives.
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Is it OK to hit “Reply All” when responding to an email from another lawyer when that lawyer cc’d their own client on the initiating email? Have you just violated RPC 4.2? Or is including the other client permissible because they were already included in the initial email?
There’s a new advisory opinion which helps you answer this question. The Committee on Professional Ethics just posted Advisory Opinion 202201 on the WSBA website, which takes a comprehensive look at the issue.
Since 2018, it’s been tough to deduct legal fees, and some plaintiffs in contingent fee cases are even taxed on their gross recoveries, not net after legal fees. Creativity is needed in this new age, since sometimes the rules seem to say you shouldn’t be deducting fees at all. Fortunately, the mechanics of deducting legal fees in employment, whistleblower, and civil rights cases have been improved, at long last.
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When the towns of Malden and Pine City were destroyed by fire in 2020, the residents were left with nothing and are still trying to pick up the pieces. They need help dealing with government agencies and state agencies—and I get calls daily for assistance. Most can’t afford an attorney but they still need the […]
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The Washington Supreme Court’s Practice of Law Board recently met with the Washington Supreme Court justices to update justices on the latest version of the Board’s Blueprint for a Legal Regulatory Lab, a new framework for regulating innovative legal services and business models. A legal regulatory lab is not a physical place; rather, it is a process that uses Supreme Court orders to define a set of customized regulations to allow legal professionals and entrepreneurs to safely test new services.
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Our language, a shared communication tool, reflects our society. As such, we can use it to create a more inclusive environment where all belong. Part of this work is actively and continuously creating a space where gender and pronouns are not assumed. For lawyers especially, this is a critical part of ensuring a healthy workplace and happy clients.
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For a lawyer who’s thinking about striking out on their own and starting a firm, there are naturally pros and cons. You gain more autonomy in how you practice, but lose the structure of an established firm. You get to choose how you run your business, but you also take on more risk.
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More than 10,000 WSBA members are also members of the nearly 30 sections spread across the many diverse practice areas of the law. Through sections, these members band together to share knowledge, perfect their skills, and push the boundaries of the legal profession. Just as no single legal professional is limited to one area of law, a number of WSBA members are actually members of multiple sections. Nicholas Pleasants, for example, is one such lawyer. A solo practitioner and owner of Pleasants Law Firm, he participates in three WSBA sections. Read on to find out why he does it and what he gets out of it.
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2021 has been a year of adaptation. Though we went into the year with cautious optimism of a return to normal, it seems that we are now coming to grips with a world in which we are collectively creating our new normal. As Mark Fucile explains in the latest Ethics & the Law column in Washington State Bar News, “there are a number of risk-management considerations for the work of a traditional law firm both inside and outside of a physical office.”
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It doesn’t take much to imagine the many disasters that, in an instant, could derail a law firm’s operations. Unexpected events that affect your health — pandemic, perhaps? — or others that affect your working space — think floods or fires — or cyberattacks can severely hamper your ability to provide legal services. Without a strategy to mitigate the effects of sudden calamity, you can lose time, money, and resources trying to recover. You could even end up the subject of discipline or malpractice claims if failure to prepare harms a client.
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If you’re reading this, then you’re probably looking at client portals and are in the process of deciding whether your law firm should invest in them. In this guide, I’m going to cut the fluff and get straight into what client portals are all about and what they can do for you.
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Sadly, many WSBA members are unaware that as members they have free access to hundreds of titles through the WSBA Lending Library. Even sadder, many WSBA members think the Lending Library is just another repository for dusty tombs of legal text that weigh as much as a neutron star but are far less interesting. Happily, many WSBA members, in this regard, are wrong.
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I am the managing shareholder of a 50+ attorney business law firm with 29 equity partners: 16 women and 13 men. Stokes Lawrence was founded 40 years ago by two men. While we did not consciously seek to be majority women owned, we have always attracted and been successful retaining women lawyers. In fact, our firm was recently admitted to the National Association of Women and Minority Owned Law Firms
Read More… The Administrative Office of the Courts (AOC) announced on June 25 that it was delaying the e-filing component of its Courts of Limited Jurisdiction Case Management System (CLJ-CMS) project—also known as Odyssey File & Serve (OFS). Citing concerns raised by the legal community, “Upon careful and lengthy consideration of the comments received, and several productive discussions held with leaders in the District and Municipal Court Judges Association and the District and Municipal Court Managers Association, the Project Steering Committee has decided to delay implementation of OFS while we sort through the various issues and consider other options.”
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