Professional Liability Blog

On a list of jobs likely to engender little sympathy in the United States today, chief executive officer (CEO) perhaps is up there with trial lawyers and Internal Revenue Service auditors in the category of “most reviled.” Nonetheless, this blog entry offers a primer for CEOs on how to more effectively watch their backs and keep their jobs (or at least how to more effectively sue after losing them).

The realities of running a business can sometimes interfere with the practice of law. When a lawyer needs funding to keep his or her practice afloat, a tempting source of financing might be a wealthy client with whom the lawyer has developed a relationship over the course of many years and transactions. Borrowing money from a client, however, is rife with ethical and legal ramifications.

Occasionally, you will read about a legal case that is a comedy of errors. In such cases you’re reminded of cartoons where a character has a bucket fall on his head, then trips and steps on a rake, which immediately leaps up and hits him in the face, before stumbling two more steps into a window and then blindly stepping out of the way of an anvil about to fall on his head.