Can lawyers donate legal services to be auctioned or raffled off? Doing so may seem like a relatively low-stakes way to give back to your community and get some publicity, but can it be done ethically?

Can lawyers use a single cell phone (or other device) for both work and personal purposes? Should they?

Remember getting accosted at cocktail parties and bar mitzvahs? Your cousin’s date found out you’re a lawyer and has a question or twelve for you about their esoteric legal issue. Before you can get a word in, you’ve learned that the date lives in Oregon, the problem arose in Florida, and involves various distinctions between importing live poultry and importing poultry that has been processed for retail grocery sale.

Or, more commonly these days, you fire up your social media and find that a friend, a friend-of-a-friend, or a stranger has tagged you and wants you to weigh in on a legal question. (I call this the “Facebook subpoena” even though generally it has the force of “oh come on now what?” more than anything.)

Of course, you have no obligation to answer any of these questions. But can you? Should you?

More and more, clients (and employers) are expecting their lawyers to be available on weekends and holidays. (We can probably thank smart phones for that.) But does that expectation translate into an duty?

You’re relatively new to law practice. (Congratulations on your graduation and new job in a pandemic, by the way.) You studied the rules and maybe passed the MPRE. But you’re still learning and your on-the-job training has been, well…the partners are really busy.

Long story short, you messed up. In retrospect, that’s clear. Your client complained to the OLR and now you have to answer an inquiry.

Is your newbie-ness and perhaps not-great advice from your supervisor a defense to grievance?

A question I get frequently, often in the initial consultation, is whether the lawyer can offer to settle the matter financially with their client to make everything go away.

This is a “no, not everything” answer.

This is the non-lawyer version of a question I get a lot from lawyer clients—”how long is this disciplinary proceeding going to take?”

Unfortunately for lawyers facing discipline and curious lay folks alike, there’s no real answer. I know people get tired of hearing this from lawyers, but really, “it depends.” Every disciplinary authority has its own internal case processing goals, but it is often difficult to determine whether a particular case will fall within the guidelines.

Every now and again, I’ll be blogging some answers to questions I get frequently. (I’ll be sorting these under the category, “FAQ,” and will leave the debate as to whether that should be pronounced “fack” or “eff-A-cue” to a later date.)

One question I get frequently enough that I have the State Bar Ethics Committee opinion number* memorized, so we’ll tackle it first: “My former client has a big outstanding balance and now wants a copy of their file. Can I hold their file until they pay up?”