About the Course
Introduction
This CLE course will discuss what the ethical rules of professional responsibility permit, require, and prohibit attorneys from doing when pricing their services, documenting fee arrangements, billing clients, and collecting delinquent balances. The panel will outline practical approaches for avoiding ethical violations, legal liability, and financial loss.
Description
Billing and fee collection has always been a complicated area for the legal profession. When billing disputes arise, practitioners must balance their financial interest in collecting fees against their duty of loyalty to clients. For this reason, billing disputes are subject to scrutiny.
To minimize client disputes over billing and fee collection and avoid ethical missteps, attorneys must immediately review and reconsider their policies and practices surrounding fee agreements, time tracking, and billing and collections.
Listen as our authoritative panel examines the ethical dilemmas inherent in law firm billing and collection practices and offers practical steps firms can take to avoid ethical violations and legal liability.
Presented By
Ms. Buckner's practice focuses on legal ethics, professional responsibility and the law of lawyering, including advising lawyers and law firms, and rendering expert opinions. She also serves as an expert consultant on issues involving legal ethics including legal fees, billing, fee arrangements, conflicts of interest, fee sharing, referral fees, unauthorized practice of law, withdrawal from representation, modification of fee arrangements, client trust accounting, and other issues.
Ms. Jacobowitz is a legal ethics consultant whose background as a litigator, in house counsel, and legal ethics scholar provide her with a unique perspective and skill set. She has provided ethics opinions and litigation reports in many areas of legal ethics and risk management, including, but not limited to conflicts of interest, attorney fees, advertising, alternative business strategies, and UPL. Ms. Jacobowitz's qualifications include a special focus on technology and social media issues implicated in the practice of law. Prior to devoting herself to legal education and legal ethics consulting, she practiced law for over twenty years. Ms. Jacobowitz began her career as a Legal Aid attorney in the District of Columbia; prosecuted Nazi war criminals at the Office of Special Investigations of the U.S. Department of Justice. She then practiced privately in general practice and commercial litigation firms in Washington and Miami.
Mr. Minkoff is a partner in the Litigation Group and Chair of the Professional Responsibility Group. He is also one of New York State’s leading practitioners in the field of attorney ethics and professional responsibility, representing attorneys in a wide variety of matters including law firm partnership disputes, disciplinary cases, legal fee disputes and legal malpractice and professional liability cases on behalf of both plaintiffs and defendants. Mr. Minkoff also provides ethics opinions and advice to a wide variety of law firm clients.
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This 90-minute webinar is eligible in most states for 1.5 CLE credits.
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An excellent opportunity to earn Ethics CLE credits. Note: BARBRI cannot guarantee that this course will be approved for ethics credits in all states. To confirm, please contact our CLE department at pdservice@barbri.com.
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Date + Time
- event
Thursday, October 19, 2023
- schedule
1:00 p.m. ET./10:00 a.m. PT
- Areas ripe for ethical missteps
- Fee agreements
- Timekeeping and charging expenses
- Billing forms
- Common ethical challenges and best practices for law firms
- Resolving billing disputes
- Charging interest on overdue bills
- Withdrawing from a representation due to unpaid bills
- Using a collection agency
- Filing a lawsuit against a non-paying client
The panel will review these and other key issues:
- What ethics rules govern the billing and fee collection processes?
- What are some best practices counsel can use to collect past due fees while complying with ethics requirements?
- What options do practitioners have for resolving billing disputes with clients?
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Representing Fiduciaries: Legal Ethics for Counsel and Pitfalls to Avoid
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