Hot Topics in Attorney Ethics - Confidentiality
Length: 1 Hour
One of the core ethical duties of lawyers is to maintain client confidences. As such, the rule of confidentiality is critical to the modern attorney’s role as an advisor and advocate for clients. Yet, despite the importance of confidentiality, many attorneys may not fully understand when the duty of confidentiality starts and ends as well as what information can and cannot be shared.
Presented by LEAP Legal Software and featuring attorneys Victoria Vuletich Kane, Edna Baugh, and Bonnie Frost, Hot Topics in Attorney Ethics – Confidentiality will provide attendees with a high-level overview of attorney confidentiality rules and best practices for staying compliant while representing clients in your practice.
In this 60-minute Continuing Legal Education course, we will provide practical ethics instruction and cover an overview of the attorney rules of professional conduct, emphasizing the confidentiality rules. We will then apply the confidentiality rules in practice, using real-life case examples and hypothetical situations so that attendees can easily recognize how key provisions of the confidentiality rules govern specific situations that arise in the practice of law.
This program will benefit attorneys in private practice. There is no cost to attend this event. CLE Credit is pending approval.
Victoria Vuletich Kane is the Director of Equal Opportunity & Title IX Compliance at Grand Rapids Community College. Victoria is a nationally recognized ethics attorney who previously served as Deputy Division Director of the Professional Standards Division at the State Bar of Michigan. Victoria also taught Professional Responsibility and Evidence as a full time faculty member at Western Michigan University Cooley Law School. Victoria is a frequent speaker, having spoken at Hertford College, Oxford University UK, The Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum, the American Bar Association, the Hauenstein Center for Presidential Studies, and Grand Valley State University, among others. Victoria is also a certified wellness practitioner by the National Wellness Institute. Through her companies, Ethics Squared LLC and The Vuletich Law Firm, Victoria offers consulting, investigative, and training services to law firms, colleges and universities, and non-profit organizations in ethics, equal opportunity and Title IX matters. Victoria is originally from Denver, Colorado, having moved “temporarily” to Michigan over 20 years ago.
Edna Y. Baugh was one of the founding members of Stephens & Baugh, LLC, where her practice focused on real property tax appeals and transactional real estate. Subsequently, Edna became the Assistant Director for Clinic Administration for Rutgers School of Law in Newark. In 2015, Edna was appointed Superintendent of Elections and Commissioner of Registration for Essex County, a position she held until she retired in December of 2020. Currently, Edna is Of Counsel at the Law Office of Devero D. McDougal in Maplewood, NJ. Edna was the first African-American woman to graduate from Vermont Law School, where she received her Juris Doctor in 1983. Edna was admitted to practice in New Jersey in 1984 and admitted to practice before the United States Supreme Court in 1989. Edna served on the New Jersey Supreme Court District V-B Ethics Committee as well as on the New Jersey Supreme Court Committee on the Tax Court. From 2006 to 2018, Edna served as a member of the New Jersey Supreme Court Disciplinary Review Board where she was appointed Vice Chair. Edna also served as President of Essex-Newark Legal Services, and as a Trustee of Essex County College where she served as Chair of its Foundation Board until 2015. Edna also served as President of the Girl Scout Council of Greater Essex and Hudson Counties (now Girl Scouts Heart of New Jersey) and is a lifetime member of Girl Scouts of the U.S.A. Edna is a past president of the Garden State Bar Association and is a current member of the New Jersey State Bar Association. She has been a panelist on several New Jersey State Bar Association programs. Edna was also a trustee of the Essex County Bar Association and has presented seminars for ECBA on real property tax appeals and residential real estate closings.
Bonnie C. Frost was admitted to the Bar in 1984 and served as a law clerk to Robert Muir, Jr., Morris County Assignment Judge and later an Appellate Division Judge (1984-1985). Bonnie is a partner in the law firm of Einhorn, Barbarito, Frost & Botwinick in Denville, NJ, and has been a Certified Matrimonial Law Attorney since 1998. Ms. Frost is a former member of the Disciplinary Review Board where she was Chair of the Board for six years, and is also a former Chair of the Family Law Executive Committee of the New Jersey State Bar Association, a former Chair of the Appellate Practice Committee, and a former member of the Supreme Court Family Practice Committee. Ms. Frost has been a volunteer for the Morris County Early Settlement Panel Program for almost 30 years. Presently, she serves on the District X Fee Arbitration Committee and the Committee for Attorney Advertising. Ms. Frost is the 2012 Saul Tischler award winner for the New Jersey State Bar Association for “Lifetime contributions to the advancement of Family Law in New Jersey” and the 2016 Alfred C. Clapp winner for “Excellence in Continuing Education,” an award given for planning, moderating, and participating in continuing education programs in Family Law, Appellate Practice and Ethics. She was also a finalist for Attorney of the year by the New Jersey Law Journal in 2016. In 2022, Ms. Frost received a lifetime achievement award from the New Jersey Law Journal. She has participated in more than thirty published Family Law opinions, including D.M.C. v. K.H.G., 471 N.J. Super.10 (App. Div. 2022), Woytas v. Greenwood Tree, Quinn v. Quinn, J.B. v. W.B, and Steneken v. Steneken in the Supreme Court and Reese v. Weis, Clark v. Clark, Overbay v. Overbay, Addesa v. Addesa in the Appellate Division. Ms. Frost has co-authored or authored the amicus brief on behalf of the New Jersey State Bar Association in the family law cases of Weishaus v. Weishaus, Mani v. Mani, Fisher v. Fischer, Gac v. Gac, Snyder v. Snyder, Segal v. Lynch, and, in the ACPE Opinion 735. She has orally argued before the Supreme Court on behalf of the State Bar in Mani v. Mani, Segal v. Lynch and ACPE Opinion 735. She has also co-authored amicus briefs for AAML in Gnall v. Gnall and Moynihan v. Lynch. Ms. Frost received her B.A. from Douglass College, M.Ed. and Ed.S. from Rutgers, the State University and her J.D. from Seton Hall University School of Law.
Sy Justin Sommer is the Director of Product Enablement at LEAP Legal Software. Sy is a 2010 graduate of Fordham Law School and is an attorney admitted to practice in the State of New York. Sy began his career in the Family Law Department of Manhattan law firm Davidoff Hutcher & Citron LLP. After three years with DHC, Sy took a role with JPMorgan Chase Bank in Brooklyn, NY where he served as an Associate Vice President Senior Counsel in the bank’s Mortgage Banking Litigation group. In 2018, Sy sought to apply his legal education and experience in the legal technology space and joined LEAP with excitement to further the company’s mission of helping attorneys to be more productive with cloud technology. Despite being a born and raised New Yorker, Sy currently resides in Jersey City, New Jersey.