Lawyers are trained to identify and manage conflicts of interest before accepting a client, often relying on technology and practiced methods to flag issues involving current or former clients. However, a more nuanced and often overlooked area involves a lawyer’s own personal interest conflicts—situations in which a lawyer’s own business, financial, professional, political, or religious interests or beliefs may materially limit their ability to represent a client effectively. These are often not subject of most conflict checking procedures.

The first segment of this interactive session, featuring David F. Bayne, will explore the ethical and professional implications of such conflicts. Participants will examine how personal interests can compromise objectivity, by exploring various kinds of conflicts, including those created when family members, lovers and friends are opposing counsel and when a lawyer’s right to political speech may be circumscribed by duties owed to current or former clients. The discussion will also review a lawyer’s ethical duty to disclose their mistakes to clients.

Moderator:

Marc Lapp, Lead Attorney,  Ethics, Operations, and Quality Audits for Nationwide Trial Division

Marc joined Nationwide in 2012 following an extensive career as trial attorney and managing trial attorney for staff counsel offices in Missouri, Illinois, and Kansas. Marc received his law degree from Washington University School of Law.

In addition, Marc leads the volunteer regional disciplinary committees in the St. Louis metropolitan counties which review and investigate complaints of lawyer misconduct.

Featured Speaker:

David F. Bayne, Partner, Akerman LLP

David Bayne litigates complex, high profile commercial disputes and arbitration matters with a focus on professional liability defense, general commercial, and employment litigation. His clients include law firms, insurers, investors, information service providers, manufacturers, educational institutions, and individuals. He also counsels law firms and lawyers on issues involving legal ethics, the Rules of Professional Conduct and, together with partners from other firm practice groups in the firm, on law firm structure and partnership issues. David primarily litigates in the federal and state courts of New York but has appeared in courts in various parts of the country as well as in arbitration forums sponsored by the American Arbitration Association, JAMS, and the International Chamber of Commerce.

In his professional liability practice, David has represented lawyers and law firms accused of malpractice and professional misconduct as well as claims that lawyers have violated various state and federal laws in connection with complex commercial and real estate transactions, trusts and estates matters and other tort, fraud, and contract actions. David also provides ethics counseling to insurers operating in-house “law firms” (staff counsel offices) defending their insureds in covered claims in the various states that permit the practice.  David also regularly speaks on legal ethics and professional liability issues for bar associations, legal industry groups and for firm clients. 

In his general commercial practice, David has litigated numerous disputes involving complex commercial transactions, commercial real estate, and claims involving high net worth individuals and their estates. David’s experience in the general commercial area ranges from representing a large commercial information data service provider in its efforts to combat piracy and theft of its data to representing a national wine and spirits distributor in various commercial disputes in state and federal court. He has also acted as monitoring and coverage counsel for a large European insurer and has represented a New York college in various litigation matters for more than 25 years.