On June 19, 2018, the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, provided an important reminder on when a communication can be considered privileged. According to the decision, a document is privileged depending on the purpose of the communications at issue. Before producing documents in a litigation, to maintain attorney-client privilege, counsel should determine whether the purpose of the communication was to obtain or provide legal advice, even if there were other business reasons for the Read more [...]
On February 28, 2013, the Supreme Court of Virginia found that a lawyer's blog can be considered potentially misleading commercial speech – and thus lawyer advertising - and be regulated by the Virginia State Bar. The posts predominately described cases handled by the lawyer himself where he had received a favorable result for his client.
However, the blogs only contained public information and were entitled to First Amendment protection. The Supreme Court agreed with the Circuit Court when Read more [...]
On February 9, 2017, a Virginia District Court deemed that the posting of privileged information on the web without protection results in a waiver.
In this case, Harleysville Insurance Company, ("Harleysville") sued the defendants, Holding Funeral Home, Inc. seeking a declaratory judgment that it did not owe them fire loss claim. (Incidentally, the District Court had to decide whether the facts and circumstances surrounding the defense counsel's access to Harleysville's entire claims file required Read more [...]
On February 21, 2017, the New York County Association Professional Ethics Committee issued formal opinion 749, which provides useful guidelines on lawyers’ duty of competence and protection of electronically transmitted client information as well as lawyers' duty of competence related to the collection, preservation and production of electronically stored information (ESI).
More on NYCLA’s Association Ethics Opinion 749 is available here
Read more [...]
On May 4, 2017, the American Bar Association Standing Committee on Ethics and Professional Responsibility issued an ethic opinion on securing communication of protected client information. According to the opinion, lawyers may ethically transmit clients’ information over the internet, provided they undertook reasonable efforts to prevent unauthorized access. Special security precautions may prove necessary when required by agreement or by law, or the nature of the information calls for a higher Read more [...]
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