Schedule

The Westin Chicago River North, Astor Ballroom

Promenade Ballroom

Speaker: Marissa I. Delinks

Speaker: Ronald E. Mallen

The financial crisis that began in 2008 led to a wave of corporate bankruptcies and bank failures. The panelists will discuss the consequent phenomena of bankruptcy litigation trustees suing law firms for contributing to the underlying business failures, FDIC claims against lawyers arising out of failed banks, and actions brought against intellectual property law firms.

Panel Moderator: Thomas P. McGarry

Speakers: Pamela A. Bresnahan & John K. Villa

Expert testimony is routine—and in many instances, mandatory—in legal malpractice trials and summary judgment motions filed in such cases. This panel of experienced trial lawyers will review significant court decisions and discuss when expert witnesses are and are not qualified, how to avoid and challenge speculative testimony, what can (and cannot) an expert testify to on causation, and how to best structure an expert’s testimony.

Panel Moderator: John W. Sheller

Speakers: Charles A. Gilman & Edith R. Matthai

The panelists will examine important but lesser known affirmative defenses. The defenses of in pari delicto, the adverse interest exception and the Wagoner doctrine are often available in “big ticket” financial fraud cases, such as actions against professionals by bankruptcy trustees. Because lawyers are frequently sued for alleged errors in or concerning litigation, the defenses of res judicata and collateral estoppel often are available. The panelists will discuss recent decisions on these defenses and what to know about raising them.

Panel Moderator: Marjorie S. Hensel

Speakers: Kevin S. Rosen & Lisa A. Ryder

Promenade Ballroom

Claims against class action lawyers are a growing focus of legal malpractice lawsuits. Aside from dissident opt-out plaintiffs, and subclasses, some of those lawsuits have been brought as class actions. The panelists will examine recent cases where the plaintiffs sought to push the liability boundaries, including as to claims for errors in jury selection. Also to be discussed are recent cases that examine the place of traditional legal concepts, such as the collateral source rule and the double-recovery rule, in legal malpractice claims.

Panel Moderator: David P. Hartnett

Speakers: Nancy J. Marshall & Russell S. Roeca

Claims against class action lawyers are a growing focus of legal malpractice lawsuits. Aside from dissident opt-out plaintiffs, and subclasses, some of those lawsuits have been brought as class actions. The panelists will examine recent cases where the plaintiffs sought to push the liability boundaries, including as to claims for errors in jury selection. Also to be discussed are recent cases that examine the place of traditional legal concepts, such as the collateral source rule and the double-recovery rule, in legal malpractice claims.

Panel Moderator: David E. Jones

Speakers: Barry Z. Brodsky & Richard H. Donohue

This past year’s insurance coverage cases address a number of new issues and some familiar ones. Panelists will discuss: “prior knowledge” exclusions and limitations; defining the scope of covered “professional services” and the reach of the “business enterprise” exclusion when a claim arises from a business transaction involving both lawyers and their clients; coverage for lawyers who are defrauded in internet check-cashing schemes; the imputation of knowledge and statements by an insurance broker to the insurer; coverage for an attorney’s obligation to refund a portion of a contingent fee to his prior law firm under the “professional services” requirement and the definition of “damages”; the controversy over the use of staff counsel; a rare interpretation of the “consent to settle” clause; and whether notice from the claimant (not the insured) satisfies the policy.

Panel Moderator: David A. Grossbaum

Speaker: Cynthia Fitzgerald & Charles S. Levine

Members of the audience will have an opportunity to engage in a “Q&A” dialogue with the panelists, who will attempt to answer questions concerning legal malpractice or risk management. All issues are fair game!

Panel Moderator: Peter R. Jarvis

HUB 51, 51 West Hubbard Street

Continental Breakfast – Promenade Ballroom C

Promenade Ballroom A/B

The panelists will provide an update on the present state of the LPL Insurance Marketplace, and address the issue of coverage for emergent cyber-liability. The panelists will also survey the subject of coverage for disciplinary proceedings and explore carriers’ and brokers’ innovations in loss repair.

Panel Moderator: Victoria L. Orze

Speakers: Nick Lewin & Joseph G. Shores

As courts attempt to balance an attorney’s ethical duties to a client with a law firm’s need to obtain privileged in-house legal advice regarding ethical and legal responsibilities to a client, the law on these issues remains unsettled. The panelists will—from the perspective of law firms (both corporate and private)—analyze the recent decisions regarding the privilege protection accorded to those communications and discuss when and how the privilege can be preserved.

Panel Moderator: Wendy Wen Yun Chang

Speakers: Shawn M. Harpen & Monte M. Lemann, II

Statistically, there is a virtual certainty that a law firm, yours or one you know, will become the subject of a governmental investigation, or be embroiled in an investigation of one of its attorneys or clients. This panel, which includes a law firm general counsel and experienced current and former federal prosecutors, will use hypotheticals drawn from real-life situations to discuss tricky privilege questions; responding to sensitive e-discovery demands; handling existing, emergent or potential conflicts of interest; interacting with insurance carriers; deciding whether and when to retain outside counsel and public relations specialists; drafting and applying internal indemnification agreements; managing multijurisdiction or cross-border investigations; and the government’s expectations as regards the law firm’s and counsel’s conduct

Panel Moderator: J. Richard Supple, Jr.

Speakers: David Crenshaw, David A. Glockner & Rodger A. Heaton

Over the last several years, the legal market has undergone profound changes that significantly impact the way lawyers do their work, relate to their clients, and manage their risks:

The shift to a “buyer’s market” for legal services has effectively put clients in charge of key decisions regarding the organization and staffing of legal matters, the scope of work to be performed by outside counsel, and the risks to be taken in a particular representation;

The imperative to control legal costs has caused clients to focus on efficiency and cost effectiveness as dominant considerations in their dealing with outside counsel, forcing firms to re-think their traditional work processes;

The rapidly expanding capabilities of technology to streamline traditional labor-intensive legal projects have blurred the nature of the traditional lawyer-client relationship;

The proliferation of nontraditional outsource providers for various aspects of legal services has complicated issues of liability for firms;
The expanding use of detailed and invasive “outside counsel guidelines” by many corporate clients has undermined the ability of firms to manage their own affairs;

The changing external risk environment—including the growing trend toward viewing outside lawyers as “gate keepers” and “whistle blowers”—has complicated the management of risks within firms; and

The continued growth of firms (both in absolute numbers of lawyers and in organizational complexity) has posed challenges for traditional risk management systems.

In this presentation, Mr. Jones will review all of these developing trends and offer some suggestions for how firms might think differently about risk in this rapidly changing environment.

Promenade Ballroom

Speaker: James W. Jones, Senior Fellow, Georgetown University Law Center

Back again this year, we present a forum for law firm general counsel and risk management lawyers to explore topics of interest specific to their role and responsibilities. This panel of general counsel will address topics and questions submitted in advance by general counsel, conference attendees and advisors. Attendees are encouraged to introduce topics for general discussion.

Panel Moderator: Thomas L. Browne

Speakers: Martin S. Checov, H. Robert Fiebach & Heather McCallum

Legal malpractice claims have been a catalyst for risk management in law firms. Similar concerns underlie the need for law firms to implement measures to minimize the risk of ethical breaches, and the consequent risk of disciplinary action. The panelists include a senior disciplinary regulator and the former head of the Minnesota disciplinary system who now oversees risk management for a large, national law firm. They will engage in an interactive discussion, reviewing the case law concerning law firms’ ethical duties to supervise; ways in which state bar oversight and monitoring techniques (such as random audits) can be applied to risk management within a firm; and the need for law firms to educate their lawyers and employees as to ethical issues.

Panel Moderator: Hal R. Lieberman

Speakers: James J. Grogan & William J. Wernz

Continental Breakfast – Grand Ballroom C

Promenade Ballroom

Law firm general counsel and the firms that they represent need to know when waiver letters of future conflicts are likely to withstand judicial scrutiny. They also need to know when an ethical wall or screen implemented to avoid disqualification is likely to be upheld. Both art and science are involved in making these determinations. The panelists will describe their hands-on experience and their sense of what the ethics rules and case law do and do not allow.

Panel Moderator: Peter R. Jarvis

Speakers: Douglas L. Hendricks & Lauren B. Shy

The switch to limited liability entities, such as LLPs, LLCs and PCs, can give attorneys a false sense of security about vicarious liability for malpractice by others at their law firm in which they were not involved. Moreover, limited liability protection may not be available for some firms, especially those that expand across state lines by growth or merger. This can result in structures comprised of multiple entities in an effort to comply with inconsistent regulatory requirements across jurisdictional lines. The panelists will discuss these issues in the context of an era in which lawyers frequently change law firms, firms expand across the country and even long-established firms may face bankruptcy or be dissolved.

Panel Moderator: Allison D. Rhodes

Speakers: Hon. Samuel L. Bufford & Robert W. Hillman

In a recent law review article, a prominent academic identified 93 separate regulators of lawyers in the United States. This Byzantine structure is increasingly problematic for law firms operating in more than one jurisdiction within the country and geometrically more complex for those operating globally. The panelists will discuss the future of multijurisdiction law firm regulation; the potential for regulation based on legal services for sophisticated clients; and what a “compliance officer” is (Clue: He’s in your London office)—and why it matters.

Panel Moderator: Anthony E. Davis

Speakers: Samantha Barrass, Jonathan Kembery & D. Ronald Ryland