Ethics of Client Billing and Fee Collection: Balancing Financial Interests and Fiduciary Obligations

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.

Jan L. Jacobowitz is a legal ethics, social media, and technology expert who is the founder andowner of Legal Ethics Advisor. For over a decade, she was the Director of the ProfessionalResponsibility and Ethics Program (PREP) at the University of Miami's School of Law. UnderJan’s direction, PREP was a 2012 recipient of the ABA’s E Smythe Gambrell Award---theleading national award for a professionalism program.Jan provides legal ethics consulting, opinion letters, and CLE training to law firms and legalorganizations. She also serves as a legal ethics expert in litigation matters. Recently, she hasbeen involved in matters involving issues such as attorney fees, conflicts of interest, theunauthorized practice of law, advertising, and the multi-jurisdictional practice of law.She is the immediate Past President of the Association of Professional Responsibility Lawyers(APRL) and the co-chair of its Future of Lawyering Committee (FOL). As a co-chair of FOL, Janparticipates in the ongoing national conversation concerning rethinking attorney regulation toaddress issues of access to legal services, the unauthorized practice of law, and lawyerspartnering with nonlawyers.Jan is the co-author of the book, Legal Ethics And Social Media, A Practitioner's Handbook, andis among the first law school faculty throughout the country to teach Social Media and the Law.She also co-developed the course Mindful Ethics: Professional Responsibility for Lawyers in theDigital Age, which served as the catalyst for the book that she co-authored, Mindfulness &Professional Responsibility—Incorporating Mindfulness into the Law School Curriculum.Jan served as one of five members of the Miami-Dade Commission on Ethics and the PublicTrust from 2018-2020. She was the Vice Chairman of Broward County’s Committee onOversight of the Inspector General from 2011 until May 2018.Jan has presented at hundreds of Ethics CLE Seminars and has been a featured speaker ontopics such as Social Media and Advertising, Technology, Lawyer's First Amendment Rights,Cultural Competence, Cybersecurity, Mindful Ethics, Litigation Funding, eDiscovery, AttorneyFees, Cannabis, and Artificial Intelligence. She has also authored law review and journal articlesin many of these areas.Prior to devoting herself to legal education and legal ethics consulting, Jan practiced law forover twenty years. She 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 ofJustice; and was in private practice with general practice and commercial litigation firms inWashington and Miami.Jan has a J.D. from George Washington University and a B.S. in Speech from NorthwesternUniversity. She is a certified civil court mediator and an active member of the California Bar, theD.C. Bar and the Florida Bar.

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.