Lawyers Helping Lawyers: In Good Times and Bad

Thursday, March 25, 2010
6:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m. (registration at 5:30 p.m.)

LaTourelle Resort and Spa
1150 Danby Road, Ithaca, NY

The program is FREE to all attorneys, but pre-registration is required. Dinner is included.

This program has been approved for 2.0 MCLE credits in Ethics for all attorneys, including both newly admitted and experienced attorneys.

Co-sponsored by
The Tompkins County and Broome County Bar Associations; Lawyers Helping Lawyers Committees of Broome, Tompkins, Cortland, Chemung and Tioga Counties; and the New York State Bar Association Lawyer Assistance Program. This program is funded through a grant from the New York State Lawyer Assistance Trust.

Program Description
Presenters will share their perspectives on practicing law in a manner that enhances and integrates mental, emotional and spiritual health and development of community.

Agenda
5:30 – 6:00 p.m. Registration
6:00 – 6:15 p.m. Introduction
Mariette Geldenhuys, Esq., Mariette Geldenhuys Attorney at Law
6:15 – 6:40 p.m. A Lawyer’s Family Story of Depression
Hon. Michael J. Miller (Ret.)
Hinda Miller
6:40 – 7:05 p.m. A Lawyer’s Story of Alcoholism
Lenore Le Fevre, Esq.
7:05 – 7:30 p.m. Lawyers Helping Lawyers (panel discussion)
Hon. John C. Rowley, Tompkins County Court Judge
Charles Oliver Wolff, Esq., Law Office of Charles Oliver Wolff
Richard M. Wallace, Esq., Guttman & Wallace
7:30 – 7:55 p.m.
Lawyers Assistance Program
Paul Curtin, Outreach Coordinator, 4th Department New York State Bar Association’s Lawyer Assistance Program

7:55 – 8:00 p.m. Questions and Answers
For registration or additional Information please contact Sindy Garey, Director of the Broome County Bar Association bcbaexdir@stny.rr.com.

*** The meeting location includes a Spa and is offering a 15% discount on Spa services for attendees and a special $99.00/night room rate as well. For information on Spa services and reservations, go to www.augustmoonspa.com.

Practice Management and the New Rules of Professional Conduct

Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Sponsored by the Committee on Law Practice Management and the General Practice Section

 

Practice Management and the New Rules of Professional Conduct
CLE Teleconference

Find out how the new rules affect your practice

Tuesday, February 24, 2009

12:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m.
(Eastern Time)
Moderator:
Professor Gary Munneke

Speakers:
Marian Rice, Esq.
Thomas Rice, Esq. 

On April 1, 2009, the New York Rules of Professional Conduct will replace the existing Disciplinary Rules. In addition to adoption of ABA Model Rules Format, the new rules bring changes that affect the manner in which you manage your law firm or practice on your own. Learn the overall format of the newly enacted Rules and how the Rules:

Significantly change the manner in which a conflict of interest should be analyzed and resolved;

Alter the existing rules on the relationship between attorney and client and the allocation of authority in the attorney client relationship;

Impact upon the current letters of engagement rules and the circumstances under which attorneys may agree to a division of fees;

Set forth the attorney’s responsibilities and duties to prospective clients who have not engaged the attorney;

Affect the current definitions of attorney-client communications;

Delineate the role of an attorney when dealing with a client of diminished capacity;

Permit, under certain circumstances,evaluations to one other than the client;

Define the role of the lawyer as a third party neutral;

Specify an attorney’s obligations before a tribunal;

Expand an attorney’s obligation in speaking with unrepresented parties;

Include direction on the inadvertent receipt of documents and respect for the rights of third persons; and

Set forth aspirational goals for pro bono service.

register at www.nysba.org/practicemanagementcle

Law.com – N.Y. Bar Panel Urges Adoption of New Conduct Rules

Joel Stashenko

New York Law Journal (read Entire Article)November 7, 2007

Attorneys in New York state are a step closer to becoming the last Bar in the United States to have rules of ethical behavior based in form and substance on the American Bar Association’s Model Rules of Professional Conduct.

The New York State Bar Association’s House of Delegates last Saturday unanimously approved revisions that are designed to transform New York’s current Code of Professional Responsibility into new state Model Rules of Professional Conduct.

It took the State Bar’s Committee on Standards of Attorney Conduct nearly five years to produce the almost 500 pages of proposed rules, which will now be sent to the appellate division’s presiding justices for review and possible final adoption.

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FOLLOWUP: Law.com – Lawyers Learn From HomeBanc’s Demise

Law.com – Lawyers Learn From HomeBanc’s Demise

Closing attorneys vow to accept only wire transfers after dealing with lender’s bounced checksAndy PetersFulton County Daily Report (full text)August 23, 2007

Even though a bankruptcy judge in Delaware this week saved them from financial ruin, real estate closing attorneys said they learned a powerful lesson from the collapse of HomeBanc Corp. — never accept anything but a wire transfer at closing.

At least a dozen Atlanta-area law firms received bounced checks from HomeBanc last month, before the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection Aug. 9. By HomeBanc’s count, it bounced 134 checks worth at least $18 million, but the Georgia Real Estate Closing Attorneys Association estimates the figure was $28 million.

Assuming HomeBanc’s checks were backed by sufficient funds, lawyers had disbursed the money at closings — not only to the home’s seller and the previous mortgage holder, but also to agents for their commissions and to surveyors, court clerks and others whose payments occur at closing.

When the checks bounced, lawyers had to scramble to find ways to cover their positions. Some took out home equity loans, others filed claims on their Errors & Omissions insurance policies.

On Tuesday, the bankruptcy judge handling HomeBanc transferred ownership of the loans to the closing attorneys. This move lets the lawyers recover their money by selling the loans to banks or other mortgage lenders.

The bounced checks occurred as a result of HomeBanc getting squeezed by broad turmoil in the U.S. housing market and the global credit market. As the market tanked, HomeBanc’s primary source of funds, JPMorgan Chase, on Aug. 6 cut off money for the mortgages HomeBanc sold, according to HomeBanc’s court filings.

Regardless of the problems in the market, attorneys said the rubber check problem could have been prevented simply by requiring HomeBanc to fund its loans with wire transfers.

As a result, “some law firms are requiring 100 percent wired funds from everybody — lenders, buyers, even other attorneys,” said closing attorney Jennifer L. Dickenson of Dickenson Gilroy. “There is a really high sensitivity right now to how we get the money into our accounts.”

Why HomeBanc was allowed to fund mortgages with company checks, when the large majority of other mortgage lenders paid only by wire transfer, speaks to the clout HomeBanc carried in metro Atlanta — if not its level of intimidation.

“They were big enough they could frankly bully everybody,” said Jeffrey P. Ganek, managing partner of Ganek, Wright & Dobkin’s Midtown office. “You had to follow their rules.”

HomeBanc, or any mortgage lender, benefits by funding loans with checks as opposed to wire transfers, Ganek said. While wire transfers represent an immediate shift in money, checks take days to clear a bank, allowing HomeBanc to earn more interest on the money as it sat in escrow, Ganek said.

“Even if it’s only a day or two extra it’s sitting in an interest-bearing account, if you’re doing enough loans, it’s a lot of money,” he said.

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Read Entire Article

Law.com – Closing Attorneys See Red Over HomeBanc Mortgage’s Bad Checks

Real estate attorneys caught between covering bounced checks or risking bar violations after company files for bankruptcy

Andy PetersFulton County Daily ReportAugust 16, 2007

John K. Haley, a real estate closing attorney in Buford, Ga., left work July 31 thinking the HomeBanc mortgages he’d closed earlier that day had cleared.

That turned out not to be true. Haley was one of dozens of Atlanta-area real estate closing attorneys who received bounced checks last month from HomeBanc Mortgage Corp. Lawyers estimate HomeBanc may have issued $20 million or more in bounced checks July 30 and July 31. HomeBanc filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection Aug. 9.

Because HomeBanc’s primary lender, JPMorgan Chase, stopped financing the company around the end of July, HomeBanc could no longer provide funds on the mortgages it had sold. That caused a big problem for some lawyers: HomeBanc had already issued checks to these lawyers, who then disbursed the money to sellers, real estate agents, surveyors and others.

That left numerous lawyers high and dry.

“These lawyers are really scrambling right now,” said C. Scott Logan, president of the Georgia Real Estate Closing Attorneys Association.

While the state’s “good funds” law requires lawyers to wait until checks have cleared the bank before closing a mortgage, in practice most real estate closing attorneys close mortgages when they have the check in hand, without waiting for the money to clear, Logan said.

In addition to being stuck with thousands, if not millions of dollars in bounced checks, these lawyers also worry they may have violated State Bar of Georgia rules. That’s because they could have disbursed money from an escrow account when the money really wasn’t there, creating a negative balance. It’s a violation of Bar rules for a lawyer to have a negative balance in an escrow account.

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Read Entire Article

Law.com – Lack of Retainer Leads Court to Order Firm to Return Fees Beyond Contingency

Anthony Lin–NY Law Journal–8/08/07

 

“A client retaining an attorney on a contingent basis, in the absence of clear and express language to the contrary, contemplates that the percentage fixed is to constitute payment for whatever services may be necessary to obtain collection of any judgment which may be recovered, whether the services be in connection with an appeal taken from the judgment or in connection with efforts to collect the judgment, or both,” the judge wrote in Siagha v. Katz & Associates, 603927/05.

She noted that there had only been one retainer agreement filed with the Office of Court Administration in the case, a standard form filed by Schwartz Gutstein. The judge also noted that none of the lawyers who actually represented Siagha had ever taken the step of obtaining a retainer agreement specific to the case. They also never wrote him a letter or e-mail describing or discussing their legal fees.

 

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