Law Practice Mgmt. Tips & Tricks

• Publication year: 2024
• Citation: Vol. 93 No. 4 Pg. 28
• Pages: 28

Law Practice Management Tips & Tricks93 J. Kan. Bar Assn 4, 28 (2024)Kansas Bar JournalAugust 2024

July, 2024

ABA Formal Opinion 511 Overlooks Importance of Listservs

By Larry N. Zimmerman, Zimmerman & Zimmerman PA.

“I need a referral for an elderly, wheelchair-bound client on a fixed income facing a retaliatory eviction due to alleged acts of her adult autistic son."

"My client has run afoul of some sovereign citizens who keep trying to file bogus liens on her property. Anyone have experience with that?"

"Help! I've got a judge saying he lacks jurisdiction over the defendant due to lack of service but he's recognizing jurisdiction for the defendant's compulsory counterclaim. I need to talk through that with someone."

Rule 1.6

Lawyers post hundreds, if not thousands, of these sorts of messages to various law-focused listservs (electronic mailing lists) on a daily basis and have likely done so since the first listserv went online in the 1980s. Such messages enable attorneys to find legal assistance for current clients on areas of law outside the lawyer's current representation and help lawyers tap into the broader, deeper experience of colleagues when a novel issue arises. These types of messages can also alert other lawyers to evolving interpretations of laws or rules helping to reduce surprise and cost to those other lawyers' clients. In other words, these types of listserv messages...