COURSE DESCRIPTION
Investigations by lawyers are an essential element of most litigation. Lawyers investigate the parties and the facts underlying the case through the use of third-party investigators, online searches, obtaining public records, seeking the production of electronic communications, including text messages, and much more. Also, lawyers sometimes need to investigate their own clients – to assure themselves of the veracity of certain representations or when the lawyer suspects the client may be actively misleading the lawyer. These investigations are not without risk. Ethics rules limit what lawyers can do and say, and how the work product of these investigations may be used. This program will provide you with a practical guide to ethical issues when lawyers conduct investigations.
- Duty of an attorney to investigate a case before filing a lawsuit
- “Pre-texting” – the ethics of deception in investigations
- Ethical issues when a lawyer investigates a client – and when it is ethically required
- Conflicts of interest in investigations
- Ethical issues in social media and online searches – and obtaining text messages
- Use of third-party investigators
- Limitations on investigating members of a jury or jury pool
- When investigations go awry – discipline, sanctions, exclusion of evidence obtained
Speakers:
Elizabeth Treubert Simon is an ethics attorney in the Washington, D.C. office of Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP, where she advises on a wide range of ethics and compliance-related matters to support Akin Gump’s offices worldwide. Previously, she practiced law in Washington DC and New York, focusing on business and commercial litigation and providing counsel to clients regarding professional ethics and attorney disciplinary procedures. She is a member of the New York State Bar Association Committee on Professional Discipline and the District of Columbia Legal Ethics Committee. She writes and speaks extensively on attorney ethics issues.
Thomas E. Spahn is a partner in the McLean, Virginia office of McGuireWoods, LLP, where he has a substantial practice advising clients on properly creating and preserving the attorney-client privilege and work product protections. For more than 30 years he has lectured extensively on legal ethics and professionalism and has written “The Attorney-Client Privilege and the Work Product Doctrine: A Practitioner’s Guide,” a 750 page treatise published by the Virginia Law Foundation. Mr. Spahn has served as a member of the ABA Standing Committee on Ethics and Professional Responsibility and as a member of the Virginia State Bar's Legal Ethics Committee.