COURSE DESCRIPTION
In employment law practice, lawyers are exposed to the most sensitive personnel information about workplaces – employee communications and possible misconduct, employer supervisory practices and communications with and about employees, and other sensitive personal information. At each step of investigating, informally resolving or formally litigating an employment dispute there are substantial ethical issues. These involve the propriety of pre-trial investigations, conflicts of interest and waivers of those conflicts, social media usage and discovery, among many others. This program will provide you with a real-world guide to identifying ethics issues at each stage of an employment dispute, assessing risks, and best practices.
- Confidentiality surround highly sensitive personnel issues
- Issues involving pre-trial investigations, including social media and texting
- Contact with represented/unpresented parties
- Ex parte communications – current v. former employees
- Conflicts of interest and waivers in employment litigation
- Ethical issues arising in discovery practice
- In-house counsel legal advice v. business function
Speakers:
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.
Elizabeth Treubert Simon is an ethics attorney in the Washington, D.C. office of Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP, where she advises on a wide range of ethics and compliance-related matters to support Akin Gump’s offices worldwide. Previously, she practiced law in Washington DC and New York, focusing on business and commercial litigation and providing counsel to clients regarding professional ethics and attorney disciplinary procedures. She is a member of the New York State Bar Association Committee on Professional Discipline and the District of Columbia Legal Ethics Committee. She writes and speaks extensively on attorney ethics issues. She received her B.A. and M.S. from the University of Pennsylvania and her J.D. from Albany Law School.