NJSBA Family Law Section

Good morning Family Law Section members,

On Monday, Jan. 17, NJICLE will present Webcast - Sean Carter Everyday Ethical Issues from 12 to 4:45 p.m.

Lawyers face ethical issues daily. It’s the little things -- how you talk to and about your colleagues, how you communicate with your clients, and how you present yourself and your firm on the web—that are likely to get an attorney in ethical trouble. During our half-day program, Sean Carter will use his unique humor to show you how to avoid ethical problems in everyday practice.

FEATURING
Sean A. Carter graduated from Harvard Law School in 1992. He was a corporate securities lawyer in private practice in large law firms in Boston and Los Angeles serving clients such as GNC, the Boston Beer Company, Experian, Safelite Auto Glass, J. Crew, and many others. In 2000, he accepted a position as in-house counsel for a publicly traded financial institution, at which he remained until October 2002.

Since that time, Mr. Carter has been a full-time lecturer, columnist, and legal commentator. His writings have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the Los Angeles Daily Journal, the ABA e-Report and on numerous blogs and websites, including Findlaw.com. He has been a guest on numerous radio programs across the country as well as online legal media outlets, such as The Legal Broadcast Network.

In addition, Mr. Carter delivers more than 100 MCLE presentations each year on topics such as legal ethics, professionalism, the elimination of bias, substance abuse prevention, constitutional law, etc. He has spoken for state and local bar associations, law firms, law schools and corporate in-house legal departments in more than 30 states.

PROGRAM
Part One:
12:00 Marketing
Lies, Damn Lies and Legal Marketing: The Ethical Way to Market Legal Services
What is effective advertising in other fields is rarely acceptable in the field of law. In this entertaining ethics course, Sean Carter examines in detail the ethical rules concerning marketing and their practical implications. The program also covers common advertising strategies employed by attorneys, and the pitfalls many attorneys will encounter.

1:30 Break

1:40 Civility
If You Can’t Say Something Nice, Shut Up!
As children, we were all taught, "If you can't say something nice, then don't say anything at all." Well, that advice holds especially true for lawyers. Whether in open court, a deposition, or contract negotiation, lawyers who choose to "go low," run a high risk of bar discipline. Increasingly, disciplinary authorities are treating the once aspirational goal of civility as a mandate. Therefore, it's important for all lawyers to be reminded of their obligation to "play nice.”

2:30 Yakety Yak! Do Call Back! The Ethical Need for Prompt Client Communication
While it is important to comply with every obligation of the ethics canon, the obligation to promptly communicate with the client may be the most important. Lawyers who flaunt this rule leave their clients with no choice but to contact the state bar in a desperate attempt to seek answers to their questions. And, of course, by that point, the disciplinary authorities will have a long list of questions of their own. In this insightful webinar, legal humorist Sean Carter will provide lawyers with practical tips for how to meet the increasingly difficult of burden of talking, emailing, and texting to each client's content.

3:30 Wrap-up
3:35 Break

Part Two - I THINK, THEREFORE I AM …BIASED – How Implicit Biases Manifest in the Legal Profession
3:45 Introduction
Biases are an inevitable end- product of the sorting machine that is the human brain. The three sorting rules by which we process information encourages certain types of biases; and they don’t require malice or ill-intent.

3:50 Sorting Rule #1 – We must have an answer.
One of the basic human needs is for certainty. This largely explains the prevalence of religion in most societies. Religion provides answers to otherwise unknowable questions, such as “Where did we come from?” and “Where are we going?” And this need for certainty is so strong that, in the absence of confirmable truth, our natural tendency is to fill-in-the-blanks with our best guess.

In many cases, our best guesses are the result of a combination of “facts” that are, in and of themselves, best guesses, meaning that we have a tendency to be both certain and wrong. The foregoing is illustrated for attendees by showing a now-infamous video of then Los Angeles Dodgers General Manager Al Campanis trying to answer a question for which he did not have the answer – “Why there were so few black managers in major league baseball at the time?” His efforts to give a certain answer to a hard-to-answer question resulted in him creating biases on the fly that would shortly thereafter spell the end to an otherwise noteworthy career.

4:00 Sorting Rule #2 – Seeing is believing.
Not surprisingly, we get most of the information we use to make decisions based on our sight. But what is surprising is that sight isn’t just our first point of reference, but it is the ultimate determiner of truth. In other words, even if our other senses give us contradictory information, we will base our conclusion on what we see. This truth is demonstrated through a visual and auditory test administered by the presenter.

Sight dominance wouldn’t be such a problem if human beings were creatures with exceptional eyesight. However, as it turns out, we see rather poorly given the way that our brains process images. In short, our brain has been trained to make educated guesses as to what we see based on assumptions of what we should see. Moreover, it deletes any “extraneous” information so that we can focus on what is most important, but that process requires assumptions based on our expectations (i.e., biases). As a result, what we “see” is as much a product of our biases as it is a product of reality. The foregoing is demonstrated to attendees by showing how their eyesight is affected by their expectations and administering an attention test, after which will show most attendees just how much visual information their brains delete to allow them to focus on what should be important to them.

4:10 Sorting Rule #3 – Err on the side of caution
When all else fails and we are unable to come to a definitive (even if likely wrong) conclusion, the brain’s default is to choose the “safest” option for us. This is a very wise strategy in situations where the cost of being wrong is severe (such as, say, death), but it doesn’t serve us quite as well when the stakes are lower and especially given that our “view” of safety is often influenced by societal (and even innate) conditioning to feel safer with those who look most like us. As a result, our natural tendency is to seek out and forge bonds with others who we perceive to be on our “tribe.” Cognitive biases towards those in the “in-group” are well-documented, and the attendees will be introduced to some of the research and shown how this in-group preference operates within legal organizations.

4:20 Sorting all above
The sorting rules set forth above will often lead people (and even lawyers) to make a bad decisions based on hastily reached conclusions. These conclusions will often be based on biases that we have learned from others or have reached through previously hastily reached conclusions. Fortunately, while these sorting rules are not replaceable, they are negotiable. In other words, they can be tweaked to help us make better decisions by recognizing our biases and then compensating for them.

4:25 Revised Sorting Rule #1 – We must have an answer, but the answer is complicated.
The importance of this tweak is to get lawyers to understand that, in the past, being smart has often entailed making quick decisions based on limited information. But being “smart” isn’t enough to help us remove barriers and boundaries that have disadvantaged others for centuries. To do that, we must be wise. And wisdom is understanding that our first answer is not always the right answer and that we increase our chances of coming to this right answer is to slow down our thinking process and insist upon more information. And part of that additional information is relying on experts who, through years of training, can often see much clearer than we can.

4:30 Revised Sorting Rule #2 – Seeing is believing but watch out for your blind spots.
Just as blind spots in our vision as motorists make it more difficult to navigate our way down the highway in our cars, the blind spots in our vision as lawyers make it more difficult to navigate the diversity and inclusion issues that plague our profession. And just like the answer for a motorist is not to ignore those blind spots and pretend that they have reached some “post-blind spot” nirvana, our answer is to come to grips with our blind spots by taking a “second look” and even seeking navigational assistance from those who are better situated to see hazards and dangers that elude our current vision.

4:35 Revised Sorting Rule #3 – Err on the side of caution opposite your biases
Obviously, it’s not enough to just know that you have blind spots. To make strides towards overcoming them, it requires that you act upon this knowledge. And one of the easiest ways to do so is to make a conscious effort to overcompensate for your known biases.

4:40 Conclusion and Q&A
4:45 Adjourn

CLE Credits:
NJ CLE information: This program has been approved by the Board on Continuing Legal Education of the Supreme Court of New Jersey for 5.2 hours of total CLE credit. Of these, 1.2 qualify as hours of credit for diversity and inclusion and 4.0 qualify as hours of credit for ethics/professionalism.
NJ CLE: This program has been approved for 5.2 credits (50 minute hour), including 1.2 diversity and inclusion credit and 4.0 ethics/professionalism.
PA CLE: 4.0 ethics credits pending ($16 fee – separate check payable to NJICLE must be submitted at the end of the program)
NY CLE (t): 4.0 ethics and 1.0 diversity and inclusion credits

The tuition for NJSBA members is $175. The general tuition is $225.

Click here to register for Webcast - Sean Carter Everyday Ethical Issues.

For questions or to register by phone, please contact an association representative at 732-214-8500, or by email at [email protected].

All the best,
Barb

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Barbara Straczynski
Director of New Media and Promotions
New Jersey State Bar Association
New Brunswick NJ
(732) 937-7524
[email protected]
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