As a lawyer, your professional reputation is your most valuable asset. You put effort into having good ethical standards, making a good first impression on clients, and helping them get a desirable outcome in their divorce or parenting plan cases. A lawyer’s worst nightmare is when a disgruntled client writes a negative review online. Perhaps the only thing worse is when a client formally files a complaint against you or sues you for legal malpractice, and the state takes disciplinary action against you. The reputation of divorce law as a sleazy business is undeserved; it is entirely possible to do your job with the utmost professionalism and integrity. It is in the interest of family law attorneys to adhere to the highest ethical standards in their dealings with clients and colleagues in the legal profession.
Maintaining High Ethical Standards in Family Law
Avoiding Conflicts of Interest
Conflicts of interest can cause all kinds of problems in family law cases. For example, if your client’s ex-spouse accuses you of having a conflict of interest in the divorce or parenting plan case, they can appeal the judge’s ruling that was allegedly tarnished by your conflict of interest. This requires your client to go back to court and spend more time and money in an effort to hold onto what he or she already has. Here are some ways that you can avoid conflicts of interest:
- Do not provide legal representation for people that you know personally outside of work. If one of your friends refers a family member or friend who is going through a divorce or co-parenting conflict to you, do not agree to represent the person. Instead, refer them to another family law attorney.
- You cannot represent both spouses at different points in the same contested divorce case. If one spouse visits you for a consultation but does not hire you, you are already closely enough involved with the case that you cannot represent the other spouse. For this reason, sometimes clients engage in “lawyer shopping” to make it hard for their ex to find a lawyer who is still eligible to represent them.
- If you have a personal history with the judge in the divorce case you are representing, this is a conflict of interest. Ask the judge to recuse themselves from the case and ask the court to assign the case to another judge.
- If your client chooses collaborative divorce, both spouses and their lawyers must sign a collaborative divorce agreement. If the collaborative divorce negotiations fall apart, the divorce case must start over again from scratch, with one spouse filing a divorce petition in court. If the clients do this, they must choose new lawyers; you cannot represent a client in a conventional divorce case if you have already represented them in an attempt at collaborative divorce.
Being Cautious About Matters of Confidentiality
Your one-on-one communications with your client are confidential. You would not have made it this far as a lawyer if you did not know not to reveal privileged information about your clients at social gatherings or to post about it on social media. The biggest danger today is accidental breaches of confidentiality. Be vigilant about which employees of your law firm are part of the circle of confidentiality in each case. Think twice before you click “reply all” on anything, and be cautious about adding recipients to existing email chains. When in doubt, start a new email thread and type each address individually.
Treating Clients With Respect
Formal complaints are usually the result of perceived violations of clearly stated rules about confidentiality and conflicts of interest. Reviews posted online, by contrast, are simply the result of you getting on a client’s bad side, sometimes over something minor. For example, a client might blame the fact that she did not get the property division she wanted in her divorce on the fact that you arrived late for a hearing and made a bad impression on the judge.
Likewise, even though family lawyers deal with emotionally fraught situations on a regular basis, you should maintain a neutral tone in your dealings with clients, judges, and other lawyers. Of course, you can privately tell your own client that she made things worse by leaving an angry, expletive-laden voice memo for her ex-husband. Avoid name-calling and stereotyping, though, whether in one-on-one conversations or in court. Lack of professionalism is the number one complaint that clients in family law cases make about their lawyers.
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