Relationships and the Competent Lawyer

Conflicts, Confidences, Civility, and Life Outside the Practice

The rules regulate your relationships far more than most lawyers realize.
Opposing counsel is your brother-in-law, your roommate, or the person you are dating. Rule
1.7(c) requires written disclosure to your client, by name, for exactly those relationships. An
associate in your firm has an uncle who is a witness. Same rule. You describe your client’s
settlement position at dinner, and the marital privilege does not cure what you just did.
This two-hour program covers the relationships that create conflicts, what you can and cannot
say at home under Rule 1.6 and section 6068(e)(1), and conduct toward colleagues and opposing
counsel under Rule 8.4.1, which reaches contractors and interns and puts the duty to advocate
corrective action on every lawyer in the firm, not just management.
The other half is about what this work does to the relationships the rules do not govern. About
thirty six percent of lawyers report high work-life conflict, and isolation runs through nearly
every lawyer distress story there is. The support system that notices a problem early only exists
if it has been maintained. That makes this a competence subject, not a lifestyle subject.
You will leave with the one intake question that would have prevented every problem in our
case study, and a set of practices built to survive a trial calendar.
This is education for lawyers. It is not therapy or counseling.

Schedule:
Time Subject
0:00 – 0:03 Welcome, objectives and scope
0:03 – 0:23 What practice does to relationships
0:23 – 0:48 Practices that survive a trial calendar
0:48 – 1:08 Relationships that create conflicts: Rules 1.7,
1.10, 1.8.10
1:08 – 1:10 Stretch break
1:10 – 1:25 Confidences outside the office
1:25 – 1:40 Colleagues, opposing counsel and civility
1:40 – 1:55 Relationships through peak seasons
1:55 – 2:05 Case study: the friend across the aisle and the
dinner conversation
2:05 – 2:10 Quiz, evaluation and certificate

Credit line: 2 hours. Approval pending with the State Bar of California.