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. Mr. Pera received his A.B. with honors from Princeton University and his J.D. from Vanderbilt University School of Law.
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. Mr. Freivogel is a graduate of the University of Illinois (Champaign), where he received his B.S. and LL.B.
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.