December 2018
Wednesday, December 19, 2018
LIVE REPLAY: Ethics and Digital Communications
Program Description
Lawyer use of technology, in both their professional and personal lives, is escapable, and frequently those two worlds blend and give rise to substantial ethical issues. Lawyer talk to, email, text and otherwise communicate with clients using smartphones and tablets. Frequently these and laptops are connected to public or at best semi-secure networks, despite the fact they are used to carry sensitive and often confidential information. The ease of technology obscures its complexity – a complexity lawyers are required, as duty of competence, to understand before they use it. Failure to understand, however, may lead to ethical complaint. This program will provide you with a roadmap through the maze of ethical issues that occur when lawyers use technology in their lives and practices.
- Ethical issues when lawyers use professional and personal purposes
- Blurry line between using technology – smartphones, tablets, laptops – for personal purposes v. law practice
- WiFi and the “Cloud” – ensuring client communications & files are secure
- Text messaging – the duty to retain certain client communications
- Law firm web sites and blogs – what information can/can’t you share and promote for client development purposes?
- Social media – understanding the limits of what information you can obtain on clients, adversaries, jurors and others
Faculty:
Thomas E. Spahn is a partner in the McLean, Virginia office of McGuireWoods, LLP, where he has a substantial practice advising clients on properly creating and preserving the attorney-client privilege and work product protections. For more than 30 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 a 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