On September 28, 2008 FRE 502 become applicable in federal court. The rule provides that under certain circumstances the disclosure of attorney-client material and work product material does not constitute a waiver. Read the full rule here. Federal Evidence Review is a great resource for infromation about this rule. Click…
Every month I let you know that a new edition of our newsletter – Trial Law Report – Tennessee Tort Law Edition – is in the mail to our subscribers. This month, we are making a free copy available for downloading by each of you, the loyal readers of this blog. (The…
Westlaw charges you for looking at the language of a public act after it has been codified. The Tennessee Secretary of State has the language of the public act for free at this site. The site includes public acts back to 1997.
The lawyer in this case was not permitted to collect expert witness expenses from his client after an unsuccessful med mal case because the fee agreement with the client said only that the client "may" be responsible for such expenses. What does your fee agreement provide?
Structured settlements were up 25% in the 4th quarter of 2008 (compared with the previous quarter), and totaled nearly $1.8 billion, according to this article in the National Law Journal. The article relates the increase to the economic turmoil we have been experiencing. Perhaps. But what were they in the…
Here is an interesting article from the ABA Section of Litigation on the issue of handling the difficult adversary lawyer. We have all been there. Here is a description of a type of lawyer each of us has seen: The Bully. Nearly all difficult adversaries exhibit bullying behavior. This lawyer…
Plaintiff talked to lawyer (later the defendant) about a potential car wreck case. The lawyer allegedly gave the plaintiff wrong information about the statute of limitations applicable to the claim. Plaintiff’s car wreck case was dismissed as time-barred. Plaintiff sued the lawyer for negligent misrepresentation. Lawyer said that he never…
Keeping contemporaneous time records in cases where fee-shifting is allowed just makes sense. Not keeping such records does not make sense. And, if the allegations against one attorney are correct, a lack of candor about whether such records were kept can cause a big, expensive mess. Result? A forfeiture of a fee…
Are you familiar with JD Supra? It is a website that contains thousands of legal documents prepared by lawyers around the country. You can search by key word, locate a document relevant to your issue, and use to short-cut your research time. For example, here is a brief written on…
Evan Shaeffer linked me to a great post in the (new) legal writing blog and I quickly determined that I needed to pass it on to you. Raymond Ward from the Big Easy writes about writing. His post, "Owning your downloaded legal authorities," has some great ideas, including the recommendation that cases from electronic…