Ethics and Billing and Collecting Fees CLE

Ethics and Billing and Collecting Fees

May 2013

Ethics and Billing and Collecting Fees

Convenient, timely, reliable, and affordable...

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.

How to Register

There are 2 easy ways to register:

1. CALL us! (303) 860-0608, or toll free (888) 860-2531

2. Or REGISTER ONLINE NOW by using the corresponding course links above.

Program Description:

There is an inherent financial tension in providing legal services: A client is completely dependent on the advice, counsel and representation of a lawyer but is often resistant to paying the lawyer fair value for those services, particularly when the outcome of a case is unfavorable or a transaction fails. Legal fees are often the source of ethics complaints against lawyers with clients alleging fees were never clearly explained or are excessive. This leaves a lawyer in the excruciating position of having continuing obligations to a client at the same time as the client is refusing to pay for the lawyer's services. This program will provide you with a real-world ethics guide to establishing fees, obtaining client agreement, describing work and costs, collecting fees for legal services, and ending a representation when a client refuses to pay.

Ethics issues in establishing, billing and collecting attorneys' fees
Common traps in timesheets and descriptions of work
Types of work and uses of time that cannot be billed
Double billing, duplication of work, transient billers, and internal conferences
Cost recovery issues v. billing for time
How to end a representation when a client refuses to pay and ongoing ethical obligations to the client

Faculty:

Brian S. Faughnan is special counsel in the Memphis office of Thomason Hendrix Harvey Johnson & Mitchell, PLLC, where he represents clients in a wide variety of matters at the trial level and on appeal. He counsels lawyers and law firms on a wide variety of issues surrounding legal ethics and professional responsibility. He is the chair of the Tennessee Bar Association's Standing Committee on Ethics and Professional Responsibility, a reporter for the committee's rules revision project, a member of the Association of Professional Responsibility Lawyers, and a member of the Media Law Resource Center's Ethics Committee. Mr. Faughnan received his B.A. from Rhodes College and his J.D., magna cum laude, from the University of Memphis School of Law.

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.