The American Bar Association’s Lawyers’ Professional Liability Committee’s National Legal Malpractice Conference in Washington DC has been a smash hit, with 500+ lawyers in attendance.
The Legal Malpractice Law Review was showcased at a well-attended roundtable discussion called "Teaching Tomorrow’s Lawyers to Avoid Legal Malpractice". It demonstrated this blog as the latest cutting edge internet based method for teaching law students –and practicing lawyers, about how malpractice occurs and how to avoid those risks. Pointing out that a mere 10 per cent of the 193 ABA approved law schools in the US offer their students a full semester course on legal malpractice, panelists Ben Wasserman, Susan Fortney, Mitch Simon and Jett Hanna, sought to enlist the professional liability insurance industry in a pro-active drive to encourage more law schools to offer such a course to their law students. Ron Mallen, co-author of the leading treatise, Legal Malpractice, has long called for legal malpractice to be taught as a required course in law school and he was there to join in the discussion.
The two and a half day conference started off with a wonderful presentation by Associate Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who spoke with Bryan A. Garner of Law Prose, Inc. about the basics contained in their new book, Making Your Case: The Art of Persuading Judges. (very worthwhile reading)
A central theme of the Conference focused on how emerging legal technology is reshaping the lawyer’s standards of care in the 21st century and how this brings new malpractice risks to practicing lawyers.
And as the lawyers at the Conference saw this web-based cost-free educational blog and heard from Hofstra Law students who helped to create it, the Legal Malpractice Law Review welcomed the 30,000th "visitor" to its pages in the less than 6 months since it went live. "A great blog" , one lawyer in attendance at the Conference immediately "tweeted".
Kudos to the Committee for a job well done!
Tagged with: law school, legal education, Standard of Care, technology
Posted in: Standard of Care