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CLEforME.com, the California Bar-approved provider of Minimum Continuing Legal Education (MCLE), today shared guidance for practicing California attorneys on avoiding legal ethics complaints. The company has been providing CA Bar approved legal ethics MCLE courses for the last 7 years. In the process, it has gleaned practical insights that may help attorneys stay away from common and avoidable discipline issues.“We work with some great legal ethics instructors,” said Hugh Taylor, CEO of CLEforME.com. “Their experience shows that taking certain basic steps can help stay in a safe zone that protects your practice and your law license.”
While complaints are inevitable, the company wanted to highlight five areas of conduct that tend to trigger or exacerbate ethical issues. These include:
- Not returning client phone calls promptly.
- Unwisely delegating management of client trust accounts to others. And, not following up with reconciliations, ideally done by an outside CPA.
- Allowing non-attorneys to take actions in the attorney’s name, i.e. misusing the legal license.
- Inadequately documenting work. Attorneys who have been through the complaint process can attest to the value of having a written recording of proceedings in a matter.
- Not taking alcohol and drug issues seriously. Many complaints arise with attorneys who are struggling with addictions. This makes sense, as so many complaints are based on missed deadlines, incomplete work or accidental misallocation of client funds – mistakes that coincide with impaired behavior.
Available at http://www.cleforme.com, the company’s California Legal Ethics MCLE courses cover these topics and more. They are intended to enable California attorneys to satisfy their continuing legal education requirements. The State Bar of California requires its members to complete 36 hours of CLE every three years, including four hours of ethics and one hour each of Bias and Professional Competency.
CLEforME.com offers a convenient way to comply. Its popular CA MCLE Power Pack contains these six “hard to find” course hours. The compliance deadline for California attorneys this year is February 1, 2017. This year, “Group 3,” attorneys with last names beginning with letters N-Z, must be in compliance for the period between February 1, 2014 and January 31, 2017. (Some refer to the requirement as “Mandatory Continuing Legal Education.”)
CLEforMe.com is a CA Bar approved multi-course MCLE provider. Provider #15304. The Power Pack is available now at www.cleforme.com.
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Contact Info:
Name: Hugh Taylor
Email: Send Email
Organization: CLEforME.com
Phone: 800-887-7134
Release ID: 138538
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