Kentucky bundle

The two greatest sources of professional risk to attorneys come from overlapping sources – ethical obligations and legal duties to clients. Using real world examples, this course explores a national survey of claims against lawyers based on attorney malpractice and professional misconduct. Common ethical considerations and the relationship between professional responsibility and malpractice exposure will be explored along with growing cyber risks to attorneys. Related causes of action, common defenses and jurisdictional considerations will be reviewed as well as risk management techniques and best practices to mitigate such claims.

Patent Law is a very complex and specialized area of the law. Regardless of whether the attorney is simply searching for existing patents for a client, applying for a patent, or litigating in a patent-infringement case, the attorney will encounter aspects of the law and specific requirements that are not found in any other area of the law. In this introduction to Patent Law, we cover some of the basic aspects of each of those tasks: searching for patents, applying for patents, and engaging in patent litigation. We also address two lesser known patent-related subject matters—Patent Misuse and Joint Inventorship—and analyze two recent federal district court cases that focus on the topics.

This program provides a basic overview of business bankruptcy, from both the troubled business’s perspective and the creditors’ perspective. We will discuss common reasons why businesses file bankruptcy, and the objectives that businesses seek to achieve through bankruptcy. We will also discuss the basic “nuts and bolts” of bankruptcy, including the automatic stay, the treatment of executory contracts and unexpired leases, Chapter 11 plan confirmation requirements, and preference and fraudulent transfer actions.

Many criminal defendants have suffered complex trauma that must be explicated through presentence reports by mitigation experts. This seminar will focus on major approaches to conceptualize the harm that many of our clients have suffered in childhood through the ACE criteria and a developmental perspective focusing on the effects of abuse and neglect. The seminar will also consider how these matters are assessed in a psychosocial evaluation and major psychopathology that results from complex trauma.

This presentation is not about how to comply with state law in order to organize and operate a business as an LLC. Instead, ideas and suggestions are offered on how to effectively counsel people who come to your office who want to create and operate their business as an LLC. Do they really know each other well enough? Do they really share the same goals? Do they really agree on how to handle finances and decision making? The content of this course is intended to help you help them make sure they are ready to successfully operate their business as an LLC.

Effective legal writing is a necessary skill in the practice of law and lawyers do tend to write well. However, regardless of how effective a lawyer’s writing skills are, there is always something useful to be gained from a review of effective writing guidelines and advice. This presentation describes the basics of legal writing. All other types of legal writing are built on these basics. Several specific types of legal writing are then addressed with guidelines and ideas to help your writing remain effective.

This course provides an advanced overview of criminal mitigation as a key strategic tool for criminal defense lawyers, and reviews various humanizing processes that a criminal law attorney can utilize to better advocate for his or her client. Mr. Silver discusses how the use of psycho-social analysis, which can also impact the factual analysis of the case, can provide a more positive and informed narrative of a client and increase their chances of success in the courtroom. Both experienced and novice lawyers will gain important insight into various criteria to consider and deploy at the pre-sentence or pre-plea stage of representation.

Young and old attorneys can always learn something about Trademark Law. In this introduction to Trademarks, attorneys learn the basics of Trademark Law from prosecution of a Trademark to obtain one through litigation when a Trademark is infringed. The presentation is broken down into three sections. First, the results of an interview with a Trademark Examiner from the United States Patent and Trademark Office about her prosecution pet peeves is addressed. Second, the basics of Trademarks is presented. Third, a sample case on Trademark infringement is thoroughly analyzed and discussed.

Do you friend, tweet, connect, or blog with colleagues, friends, clients, and others? If so, have you installed an automatic mental pause button before posting on social media? Are you now wondering about where and why to find said pause button? Well, you have come to the right course because we will explore the answers to these questions and more as we journey to uncover the impact of social media upon the practice of law. After a bit of historical context, the course will reveal why today’s lawyer must be imbued with social media savvy in order to effectively represent clients, market a law practice, and avoid ethical landmines that endanger a lawyer’s license to practice law.

Among the most important topics in immigration defense today is CRIMMIGRATION, that is, the consideration of how to contend with and explain criminal issues, including fraud, misrepresentation, illegal activity and crimes involving moral turpitude, for immigration clients. This seminar will consider how to tackle this extremely important issue separate and apart from proving hardship issues in 601-waiver petitions by using MITIGATION, just as criminal defense lawyers use mitigation to defend and explain their client’s criminal behavior with prosecutors or in court.

This course is designed to address the various evidentiary issues that arise with electronic evidence. For example, the presentation will cover the use of social media as evidence and how it is obtained and introduced into evidence. There will be a discussion of some of the preliminary evidence rules that are sometimes overlooked that can apply to social media and other electronic evidence. Issues with juries using social media during trial will also be covered. There will be a general discussion of the application of the hearsay rule to electronic evidence, and how to lay the proper foundation. Rules regarding spoliation of electronic evidence and the effect will be examined. The presentation will also deal with statutory provisions regarding discovery electronic information from third party providers. With the increased use of e-signatures, there will be coverage of issues that arise when introducing a document that has been electronically signed.

Attorneys in firms of all sizes – from solo practitioners to lawyers are multinational Big Law firms - face a number of ethical issues relating to cybersecurity, and preserving the confidentiality and security of their clients’ data. Contrary to what some lawyers may believe, law firms are often a valuable target for hackers because they can hold vast collections of sensitive and highly valuable client-related data. These cybersecurity threats come from individual hackers, international cybercriminals, and even a firm’s own attorneys and other employees. This program provides a basic primer on attorneys’ ethical obligations to understand and address the cybersecurity risks they face, and provides practical advice for attorneys in addressing issues that arise will undoubtedly arise in their legal practice.