دانلود کتاب Attorneys’ Legal Liability, 2014

This 2014 Edition of ATTORNEYS' LEGAL LIABILITY celebrates the 12th anniversary of its first publication and represents the enduring dedication and scholarship of the volunteer chapter authors. This IICLE handbook is designed as a comprehensive and yet practical reference for Illinois practitioners. Its goal is to easily pilot the practitioner through the very complex and ever-changing terrain of the law governing attorney legal liability and to catalog useful information necessary to reduce liability risk.

Illinois attorneys are busier than ever, thriving in an environment of increasing standards and expanding accountability. While we have remained largely self-regulated through our Supreme Court, we can no longer view ourselves in colloquial terms as we operate in an ever-expanding national and even global environment. This broader scope brings not only greater professional opportunity but also increasing regulation and liability. As we are all aware, lawyers today are subjected not only to malpractice and traditional disciplinary rules and liabilities, but also to federal and state regulators in unprecedented ways. To operate effectively in today's complex legal environment, every practitioner needs to grasp the wide-ranging duties and liabilities that attend our day-to-day practices.

This IICLE handbook begins with the ever-important reminder of the lawyer's role as a trustee for the public good. This is a logical starting point for any discussion on the importance of our profession's responsibilities and liabilities. The handbook then moves through doctrines pertaining to attorneys' standards of care and legal malpractice liability. Special attention is given to legal malpractice theory and practice, and a separate chapter is dedicated to principles of litigating the legal malpractice case. Because a lawyer's fiduciary duties are so important in terms of responsibility and exposure, a separate chapter deals strictly with the standards applying to fiduciary obligations and liabilities. The handbook then offers practitioners a desk reference to understanding and applying the attorney-client privilege. Other discreet areas of attorney responsibility are discussed separately. These include the handling of client trust accounts and property, the understanding and resolving of conflicts of interest, lawyers' liability for court sanctions, the statutory liabilities facing our profession, and an invaluable lawyers' reference to understanding disciplinary liability and practice in the ARDC.

This handbook also treats the practical aspects of protecting Illinois practitioners from liability exposure. Separate chapters include a guide to attorney liability insurance, a treatment of the business forms under which we can practice to limit liability consistent with our obligations to clients and the public trust, and a very significant primer for attorney liability risk management. Finally, the handbook provides a chapter dealing with lawyers in transition, discussing legal liabilities of those moving from the public sector to the private sector or from firm to firm.

This work allows an Illinois practitioner to have together all the subjects of lawyer liability, combined with chapters designed to help in reducing those liabilities, in a single text. We believe this 2014 Edition continues to be a substantial contribution to the body of Illinois lawyers' professional liability law. It could not have been done without the exhaustive efforts of each of the authors, very busy practitioners in their own fields, who took time from their practices to put together this excellent work. I would like to express my sincere thanks to each of them for the time they have taken to share their knowledge and expertise with our readers and also for their critiques and support in completing this project. It has been a high honor and privilege to work on this publication with members of the bar who are both my colleagues and mentors. We truly hope that this handbook will be a most useful aid for Illinois practitioners.