“There’s no right way to do the wrong thing.” Cynthia L. Stratton, managing partner of civil litigation and employment law firm Stratton & Green, ALC and SDCBA board member, was raised with this adage. But there are myriad ways to do the right thing. Stratton does the right thing by focusing on relationships and community.
Happy National Women’s Month!
My name is Catharine “Kate” McGlynn, and I am in my third year of practice. I have been involved with the New Lawyer Division since 2021 and this is my first year serving on the NLD Executive Committee. I am the 2024 Legal Education Co-Chair, so I am tasked with bringing you all some top-notch CLE events.
Ethics for New Lawyers
Inadequate client communication is typically one of the top complaints to the State Bar every year. This is unfortunate because keeping clients informed of developments in the representation is one aspect of the practice of law we can actually control.
A copyright is a form of intellectual property that protects an original work of authorship fixed in a tangible medium.1 Musical compositions and sound recordings are examples of the works protected under this area of law. An owner of a copyright has exclusive rights including,(1) to reproduce the copyrighted work; (2) to prepare derivative works; (3) to distribute copies or phonorecords to the public; (4) to perform the copyrighted work publicly; (5) to display works publicly, and (6) in cases of sound recordings, to perform the copyrighted work publicly by means of a digital audio transmission.2 Music artists striving for fame can go independent, while some opt to contract with record labels to target a vaster audience. While there is much more control an artist may possess with their creativity and exploitation of their music going independent, the ample resources and deeper financial pockets of record labels are very alluring. But deeper financial pockets of record labels mean record labels having stronger bargaining power than the music artist, and unconscionability within the contract may occur, leaving the artist disadvantaged.
In August 2018, I hopped on a plane from my hometown in Bangalore, India, and came to the United States to study law for a second time. I had just spent the last five years of my undergraduate life learning antiquated common law norms that govern the Indian legal system. I can’t for the life of me recall why I decided, “Oh yes—let’s go halfway across the world and jump into another cesspool of trauma”—but I did—and now my life is decidedly better because I took that plunge. I began my studies at California Western School of Law, not knowing a single person and having no family in the surrounding area to lean on.
Media coverage of efforts by the defendants to disqualify the Fulton County District Attorney in the Georgia case against former President Donald Trump provides a stark reminder of the ethical obligations of both criminal and civil practitioners when making extrajudicial statements about ongoing litigation.
While working for her father one summer as a teenager, U.S. Magistrate Judge Jill L. Burkhardt began to feel like she could never learn all there was to know about the job. When she shared this concern with her father, she was surprised by his response. “He told me, ‘That is the best thing you can say about any job. If you ever have a job where you can learn everything there is to learn, you will be unhappy because you will be bored.’” Having worked as a civil litigator for Baker & McKenzie, a criminal prosecutor for the U.S. Attorney’s Office, and now approaching ten years on the bench as a federal magistrate judge, Judge Burkhardt has found the legal profession to pass her father’s test. “Whenever I feel daunted by what I don’t know, I remind myself that that’s what makes this such a wonderful, fascinating career—you can be in it for decades and never stop learning.” In that spirit, Judge Burkhardt sat down to share with SDCBA’s New Lawyer Division some of the lessons she has learned throughout her illustrious career.
Happy February Current (and Future) NLD Members!
Abusive litigation tactics do little for the client or the lawyer. Rather, such behavior is the hallmark of a second-rate attorney. Under both the state and federal judicial systems, a newly-minted lawyer is required to maintain the respect due to the courts of justice and judicial officers.[1]
A firm believer in the saying “everything happens for a reason,” Katharine Tremblay recently joined the California Department of Justice as a Deputy Attorney General in the Employment and Administrative Mandate section of the Attorney General’s Office. Prior to heeding the call to public service, Tremblay enjoyed a successful and over decade-long career in private practice, where she focused mainly on employment, business, and contract law.
