Planners hope all-virtual Techshow 2021 will attract a wider audience
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While attendees of ABA Techshow 2021 won’t get to walk through a bustling exhibit hall or dine together at one of Chicago’s many pizzerias or steakhouses, organizers of what will now be an all-virtual gathering because of the coronavirus say they still hope to foster a strong sense of community.
They plan to do so by providing opportunities for tech aficionados to gather online to discuss topics of interest and through offering a mix of digital social activities during the March gathering with the theme “Technically Together.”
The co-chairs of the event’s planning board are hopeful that members of the legal industry who have not been able to travel to Chicago previously for Techshow because of financial or time constraints, among other reasons, will join the fold virtually.
ABA launches initiative to help measure effectiveness of regulatory reforms
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The ABA Center for Innovation has launched an initiative focused on developing uniform metrics that states could use to measure the effectiveness of new approaches they are taking to regulating the legal industry.
The center’s project comes as states such as Utah and Arizona have in recent months approved opening up their legal marketplaces to alternative business structures featuring nonlawyer owners and investors.
Officials involved with the ABA’s metrics initiative say a primary goal is assisting jurisdictions with determining whether their regulatory reforms are achieving the desired outcomes, such as increased access to justice for members of the public. States collecting the same type of data would also allow for comparisons between different regulatory approaches, they argue.
Arizona’s court system will begin utilizing Thomson Reuters’ cloud-based court exhibit and evidence sharing platform to assist with the handling of digital evidence across the state, it was announced Wednesday.
Stanford law prof remembered as leading legal ethics scholar and advocate for access to justice
Deborah L. Rhode. Photo courtesy of Stanford University.
Deborah L. Rhode, a leading legal ethics scholar and strong advocate for enhanced access to justice, died last week.
Rhode, who was 68, was a longtime professor at Stanford Law School, which is where she founded the Stanford Center on the Legal Profession in 2008.
She also formerly chaired the ABA’s Commission on Women in the Profession and received multiple ABA awards in recognition of her professional responsibility and public service work.
Gillian Hadfield, a professor at the University of Toronto’s law school who co-authored articles with Rhode, says her friend has long been the leading voice for the view that lawyers’ monopolization of the legal profession has been at the foundation of the access-to-justice crisis.
Ethics attorneys hopeful COVID-19 will prompt changes in remote working rules
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The continued spread of COVID-19 has resulted in lawyers across the country working remotely for months on end, including in jurisdictions where they are not licensed to practice law.
While this trend prioritizes public health and provides workers with increased flexibility, it could also raise ethical issues for some attorneys.
That’s because many states have adopted rules of professional conduct making it the unauthorized practice of law for a duly licensed lawyer to practice remotely from a jurisdiction where he or she is not admitted for longer than a temporary period and without meeting several stringent requirements. These state regulations are typically based on ABA Model Rule 5.5.