By David C. Carr
It is a truism that lawyers are often better at protecting their clients than protecting themselves. One area that illustrates this is what are colloquially referred to as “conflict waivers.”
New and newer attorneys are often eager to get in the courtroom. One way to gain invaluable experience — while at the same time assisting clients who may have nobody else advocating for them — is to sign up to serve as a court-appointed attorney in conservatorship cases. In these cases, the role of a court-appointed attorney is critical to ensuring a person’s wishes are heard and considered by a judge who is tasked with making rulings that may result in the loss of the client’s right of free will to make their own decisions.
Hello all:
I am honored to serve on the New Lawyer Division (NLD) Executive Committee where I help organize continuing legal education presentations for new lawyers in San Diego area. I graduated from California Western School of Law in 2018 and I am Senior Counsel at Gordon Rees Scully Mansukhani LLP. I am in my fifth year of practice.
If you have the chance to have a case in the East County Courthouse you may hear the legend of Judge Herbert Exarhos. Judge Exarhos rides his motorcycle to work every day and has been a pillar of the East County Courthouse since 1993. He loves serving the community and does not see retirement in his future.
Could lawyers have greater exposure to legal malpractice claims as the baby boom generation, the largest proportion of the U.S. population, starts to age? Unfortunately, the risk of Alzheimer’s and other dementias increases when an individual is age 65 and older. In 2020, the number of people living with Alzheimer’s in the U.S. was 5.8 million. This number is projected to increase to 13.8 million in 2050. This suggests that attorneys will likely encounter more situations in the future in which they need to assess whether clients have legal capacity to create estate plans and enter into legal transactions.
By Megan M. Moore, Attorney Career and Business Coach
By Anne Rudolph
Some attorneys advertise their services by purchasing ads in the newspaper, a trade magazine, and in other more traditional ways that are easily understood to be marketing and advertising. All such marketing and advertising must comply with the Rules of Professional Conduct.
By Charles Berwanger
This article discusses an attorney’s ethical duty of honesty not only in all aspects of the law practice but in all personal matters as well. It also presages the California Legislature’s imposition on attorneys the ethical duty to report to the State Bar another attorney’s act of dishonesty.
Whether newly admitted or highly experienced, working in a small firm or a large firm, or practicing in litigation or transactional law — an attorney in a law firm is likely to become involved in the handling of an existing matter for a firm client at some point. In the process of becoming familiar with the history of the file, the newly added attorney may find they are acting as a Monday morning quarterback, which may include questioning the positions and actions of others involved in the litigation, including the opposing party, other counsel, the Court — or perhaps another attorney within their own firm. When concerns arise regarding this latter category, attorneys must remain mindful of their professional obligations and the ethical limitations pertaining to client disclosures and conflicts of interest.
Alison Adelman, Esq., juggles many priorities as a practicing attorney and a new mother. Adelman is an attorney at the San Diego office of Ogletree Deakins. Her practice primarily focuses on employment defense cases, including harassment, discrimination, and retaliation claims. She appreciates the delicacy and complexity of her cases.
