BUSINESS ETHICS FOR LAWYERS
I will be doing a seminar on Feb. 28 for ICLEF, the legal education provider created by the Indiana State Bar Association in the 1970s to help get lawyers better prepared to handle their clients’ legal matters. Now a stand-alone not for profit corporation ICLEF is the leading provider of Continuing Legal Education in Indiana..
The seminar title is Developing and Representing the Business Entity, and my portion is Ethics in a Business Practice. We will be discussing the Rules of Professional Conduct, the Traps of working with businesses and the Remedies for lawyers and businesses if unethical events occur.
In focusing on the Rules of Professional Conduct, we will discuss recent cases in state and federal courts where the clients complained that their lawyer had jumped sides, and how the courts and lawyers handled that issue. Motions to Disqualify some of the biggest law firms you know will be reviewed, and we will review how the courts’ findings and orders, when presented with valid conflict issues protect the business or the lawyers.
We will also review other events that may prompt a client to think that the loyalty obligation discussed in comment 1 to Rule 1.7 has been violated.
Program chair, Jeffrey Nickloy (a lawyer I have sent clients to for complex issues) has brought together a faculty of some of the brightest lawyers in Indiana to present on various topics that day. The Business Law Section and the Ethics Committee of the ISBA will be well represented.
Registration materials are available here.
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Bill Conour
The Indianapolis Star had a long story about Bill Conour on Sunday, here. I never worked with Bill, but you could not be a lawyer in the state for the past 30 years and not know about him, his practice, or his atrium.
I will do a more thorough analysis of his fall, his plea, and his resignation in a few weeks, but I would like a few comments about Bill from those of you who knew him, worked with him, did or did not get cheated by him.
I will say (treading carefully as a Maurer grad, talking about our friends and fellow IU law siblings at McKinney) that the first time I walked into the Inlow Hall atrium, and saw the decor, I overheard a comment (it has been years ago, maybe it was my comment) that “the decor looks like a 1950s prison cell block,” with the metal wrapped columns to the ceiling. So long as it carries Bill Conour’s name (together with that of his ex-wife Jennifer), the image will fit.
Please share comments on Bill and his situation, if you will.
Lawyers with Troubles 
Glad someone is willing to discuss the Conour situation.Even though troubling it can be an illustration to others.
I was disappointed to learn from the Star article that it took 4 years from the time the original disciplinary complaint was filed with the Supreme Court Disc. Comm. to when Conour resigned from the bar. This is an unusually long time to investigate a disciplinary complaint. Moreover, in those four years it appears that many clients were harmed by his actions. While there may have been good and sufficient reasons for the investigation to have taken so long, I neverthless am left with the question of whether something could have or should have been done on an “interim” basis to protect Conour’s clients if the initial complaint did have some merit.