Attorney Ethics Traps in Using Email in Law Practice CLE

Attorney Ethics Traps in Using Email in Law Practice

December 2012

Attorney Ethics Traps in Using Email in Law Practice

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Teleseminars are midday continuing legal education conferences broadcast over the telephone. From the convenience of your office or home, you are able to dial into an 800 number, and hear nationally recognized practice leaders speak on important issues in the law. You are also able to ask them your questions. Teleseminars marry the best of technology and education to bring the world of CLE to your office or home.

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Program Description:

This program will highlight many ways in which the use of email from the beginning to the end of an attorney-client relationship raises new (and sometimes worrisome) ethical issues. Most law firms have web sites with attorney biographies and email addresses. What are the ethical issues if you get an email from someone with an interest that conflicts with a client? What are your duties to inform your existing client? Many attorneys send law updates or regular newsletters to both existing and former or non-active clients. Does this raise conflict issues if former clients think they still have an attorney-client relationship with you? In the pressures of the day, email is sometimes misdirected, sent to adversaries when it was meant to be sent to clients. What duties do recipients and senders have in this context? These and many other fascinating ethical issues arise when you consider the way email has permeated law practice. This program will provide you with a practical guide to ethical issues in using email in your law practice.

- Unsolicited email over the web and its impact on the formation of an attorney-client relationship - and the duty to inform existing clients of email from potential adversaries

- Emailing law firm newsletters and law updates to non-active or former clients, its impact on an attorney-client relationship and conflicts issues

- Inadvertent email communications - when you must refrain from reading, when you must inform adversaries, and when you can read the whole communication

- Ex parte communications via email and the “reply all” function

- Ethical issues in meta-data in email

- Transmission of email and the attorney-client privilege - using public computer systems, the systems of adversaries or servers maintained by third parties and its impact on the privilege and confidentiality

Faculty:

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.