In Part One of this series, we defined the newly evolving role of the parenting coordinator (PC) and discussed various statutory authorities for the PC role. In Part Two, we dealt with additional PC topics. Part Three herein concludes the series by providing a comprehensive PC order of appointment, which can be modified to fit just about any desired PC situation.
While marital spying could land a spouse in hot water, it can also put attorneys in some sticky situations. Divorce lawyers say they are treading very carefully as to how they handle feuding spouses who spy on each other. Clients will often tell their lawyers they have proof that their spouses are cheating, but they will not disclose how they got it. Other times, they might wiretap or open private e-mails without knowing this was illegal, and then tell their lawyer about it. Lawyers have to be extremely careful not to condone or listen to information gained through these methods. They must also be cautious when discussing spying tactics with clients, because they could be held liable if they review, or even know about, private information obtained illegally.
While courts often use parents' psychiatric conditions as a basis for custody decisions, solid research on the actual impact of parental mental illness on children is limited (For an overview of this issue see Jenuwine & Cohler, 1999). Common sense and clinical wisdom converge in suggesting that parental mental health is an important factor in parenting. However, systematic empirical studies of children of even severely mentally ill parents often show that common sense and clinical wisdom can be mistaken. Children are much less affected by their parent's illness than one would think.
The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York decided that opinion testimony of a copyright-infringement musicologist that was consistent with his infringement-analysis report would be admissible expert evidence, if needed. <i>Velez v. Sony Discos</i>, 05 Civ. 0615(PKC).
Marshall Grossman and Stanton 'Larry' Stein may be in for some awkward elevator rides. The two heavyweights at L.A.'s Alschuler Grossman Stein & Kahan officially divorced Jan. 1, after a year-long tug-of-war over the future of the 90-lawyer firm they'd fused together seven years ago. Now they've got their own firms, but they're just one floor away in Santa Monica's Water Garden building.
'Disconnect Between In-House and Outside Counsel is a continuation of the discussion of client expectations and the disconnect that often occurs. And although the outside attorneys should be pursuing how inside-counsel actually think, inside counsel should make an effort to impart this information without waiting to be asked.
Do divorce lawyers have an obligation to disclose client confidences when it is in the best interests of the client's child to do so? The short answer of the rules of professional responsibility is 'no' because a 'yes' answer is deemed to be fundamentally inconsistent with the premises of the adversary system in which the divorce lawyer functions. The longer answer is that the rules encourage ' but do not require ' a divorce lawyer to counsel the client to authorize the disclosure because it is in the best interests of both parent and child.
Womble Carlyle's technology training and online learning programs were in need of an upgrade. Unprecedented firm growth, heightened emphasis on developing lawyers' core technology competencies, and a need to streamline and automate existing e-learning processes led the firm to initiate a fundamental shift.
Online ticket reseller StubHub faces lawsuits over allegedly unrefunded event tickets in California, after a federal judicial panel ordered that similar cases from jurisdictions in multiple states be coordinated.
