Ethics in Negotiations: Boasts, Shading and Impropriety (Live Replay from June 30, 2021)

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Description

Lawyers must always be truthful in their representations. Yet they must be zealous in representing clients. The tension between these two principles is perhaps never as great as when the lawyer is negotiating for a client.

The lawyer may make statements about the law or fact – or simply refrain from making statements because the lawyer knows certain facts or legal precedent are adverse to a client's interest. Lawyers may also boast, signaling that a client's position is stronger than is, in fact, the case.

Navigating these gray lines is the difference between ethical representation and impropriety.

This program provides a guide to ethical issues in negotiations.

Truthful representations v. zealous representations?
Affirmative statements of fact, value or intent in settlements
Silence about adverse law in negotiations
Silence about facts unknown to an opponent or counter-party
Silence about errors in settlement agreements or transactional documents
Non-litigation work in another state – "temporary" practice

Contributors

Elizabeth Treubert Simon

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, her practice focused 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 Rules of Professional Conduct Rules Review Committee. She is the immediate past chair of 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.

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Thomas E. Spahn

Thomas E. Spahn is a partner in the McLean, Virginia office of McGuireWoods, LLP, where he has a broad complex commercial, business and securities litigation practice. He also has a substantial practice advising businesses on properly creating and preserving the attorney-client privilege and work product protections. For more than 20 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 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

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Thank you

Description

Contributors

Elizabeth Treubert Simon

Thomas E. Spahn