In an article in In Brief entitled Contract Lawyers: Independent Contractors or Employees?, authors Lisa C. Brown and Jim W. Vogele give some excellent advice about steps a firm can take to ensure that a lawyer it hires as a freelance attorney is, in fact, an independent contractor, rather than an employee. However, a firm [...]

As the ABA Journal reports, today, the ABA’s House of Delegates adopted Resolution 105C, which amends the comments to ABA Model Rules 1.1, 5.3 and 5.5 to clarify lawyers’ obligations when outsourcing work, whether domestically or internationally. The resolution’s adoption caps a process that began in November 2010, when the ABA’s Commission on Ethics 20/20 [...]

For the past year and a half, the ABA’s Ethics 20/20 Commission has been considering changes to the Model Rules of Professional Conduct as they relate to domestic and international outsourcing. Yesterday, the Commission issued its Revised Draft Resolution on the subject for comment. The Revised Draft Resolution is the fourth version of proposed changes [...]

The new year is a perfect time to implement new plans. Whether you want to get started as a freelance lawyer or expand your freelance law practice this year, LRWP’s new Freelance Lawyering Success Packages can help you achieve your goal. The core of the Freelance Lawyering Success Packages is the Freelance Freedom recording. In [...]

Since I launched Legal Research & Writing Pro in 2008, the recording of my popular teleseminar, Freelance Freedom: How to Get Started as a Contract Lawyer has helped many lawyers begin successful careers as freelance attorneys. During that time, bar associations have increasingly recognized the importance of educating their members about the opportunities presented by [...]

For the past year or so, the ABA’s Ethics 20/20 Commission has been considering changes to the Model Rules of Professional Conduct as they relate to domestic and international outsourcing. The revision process has included soliciting input from stakeholders—including lawyers, law firms, clients and providers of outsourced services—and issuing both a November 2010 discussion draft [...]

In an article in the July 27 Connecticut Law Tribune, Mark Dubois, Connecticut’s former chief disciplinary counsel, reveals a troubling misunderstanding of the national consensus concerning the ethics of legal outsourcing. Dubois—who, according to his firm’s website, “is recognized as an authority on lawyer discipline matters and the unauthorized practice of law”—was Connecticut’s chief disciplinary [...]

Yesterday, the ABA’s Ethics 20/20 Commission released its initial proposal concerning changes to the Model Rules of Professional Conduct (or, more accurately, the comments to the Model Rules) as they relate to domestic and international outsourcing. The “initial draft proposal” shouldn’t be confused with the “discussion draft” of proposed changes, which was released last November. [...]

The Connecticut Law Tribune reports today that Connecticut state Rep. Patricia Dillon has introduced a bill designed to prevent companies from offshoring the drafting, reviewing or analyzing of legal documents to unlicensed workers overseas. The bill (HB 5083) amends Connecticut Gen. Stat. §51-88 “to provide that the practice of law includes (1) drafting, reviewing or [...]

Last week, the ABA’s Commission on Ethics 20/20 issued a discussion draft of proposed changes to the Model Rules of Professional Conduct as they relate to domestic and international outsourcing, along with a number of related documents, including (among other things) a compilation of the the comments it received. The commenters fall into a few [...]