COURSE DESCRIPTION
Whenever an attorney takes money from a client – for fees billed, to cover expenses, as a retainer, or held in trust – there are substantial ethical issues involved. Many ethical complaints arise from accusations that an attorney mishandled funds. In billing and collecting fees and expenses, there are issues about whether the fees and expenses were explained in advance and are proper in relation to services provided. If an attorney accepts credit cards from clients, there are significant issues related to disclosure, Truth-in-Lending laws, chargebacks, pass-through of merchant processing fees, and confidentiality. In trust funds, there are issues of segregation of funds, accounting, and more. This program will provide you with a practical guide to the many ethical issues that arise when attorneys, clients, and money mix.
- Traps in trust fund accounting and the risks of “set-offs” of disputed amounts
- Disclosure and documentation of trust accounting of client money
- Retainers – use, accounting, and regular communications
- Accepting credit card payments from clients – pass-through processing fees, Truth-in-Lending, disclosure and confidentiality
- Confidentiality when a client has a dispute with his credit card company – ethical tension of client duties and contractual obligations
- Use of credit cards to fund a retainer and related trust fund accounting issues – trust funds v. operating funds
Speaker:
Thomas E. Spahn is of counsel in the Tysons Corners, Virginia office of McGuireWoods, where he advises firm clients on professional responsibility issues and properly creating and preserving the attorney-client privilege and work product protections. He has served on the ABA Standing Committee on Ethics and Professional Responsibility and is a Member of the American Law Institute and a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation. He has written extensively on attorney-client privilege, ethics and other topics, and has spoken at over 2000 CLE programs throughout the U.S. and in several foreign countries. Through links on his website biography, he has made available to the public his summaries of over 1,600 Virginia and ABA legal ethics opinions, organized by topic; a 300 page summary of his two-volume 1,500 page book on the attorney-client privilege and work product doctrine; over 900 weekly email alerts about privilege and work product cases; and materials for 40 ethics programs on numerous topics, totaling over 9,000 pages of analysis. Mr. Spahn graduated magna cum laude from Yale University and received his J.D. from Yale Law School. Mr. Spahn will serve as the discussion leader of today’s program.