It seems like all I have to do is begin what I intend as a series of posts, and my practice gets so busy, that I can’t get back to it.

More than a year that has passed since I published Part I of this series. It has been a wild one. But being  busy is not really grounds for complaint on my part, so take this for mere explanation.

I do some alternative fee arrangements in my practice, and frankly, I would rather do that than bill hourly. For example, I regularly advise employees who are losing their jobs about whether to sign severance agreements, and about what those agreements mean. I long ago learned that it takes about two hours to read the documents, get the client’s story, evaluate it against my checklist of potential claims, and advise the client about whether they have a substantial claim against the employer or not.

Most simply don’t have much of anything.  A few have very valuable claims. The ability to tell the difference is of substantial value. So I price the job, with a minimum fee, not the time. Many potential clients are happy to pay for the service, and not for the time.

This kind of flat fee billing isn’t really terribly creative. But it’s a start and is only one of many ways lawyers are trying to sell their knowledge and skills rather than their time.

Creativity when it comes to charging for legal services has the potential to expand the range of clients our profession can serve, improve the efficiency with which we provide service, and more clearly align the interests of lawyer and client.

Of course, the hard truth is that most alternative fee models are based on comparisons with data generated from hourly rate cases. That suggests a characteristic of legal work that is forgotten at each party’s peril. There is an economic reality in spreading overhead costs, lawyer compensation, and profits, over working hours. When it comes to producing and selling any product or service, one needs to understand the costs.

This reality is one reason why lawyer’s like Innocence Project Director, Barry Scheck, believe that to argue effectively about the adequacy of resources for legal services programs, legal services lawyers must master the discipline of keeping accurate, contemporaneous time records. See my June 21, 2011 post, New York’s Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman to Criminal Defense Leaders: We must Provide Access to Justice or We may as well Shut Down the Courthouses!

I hope that Jay Shepard is mostly right, and that hourly billing will give way to more effective ways to bill for legal work within this decade.

But even if it does, I think lawyers and law firms will always have to understand the cost of providing legal services that comes from accurate time-keeping. That reality, and understanding the economic worth of one’s time, spreads beyond the business of practicing law, and into our work/personal life balance. Time is a non-renewable resource. To create the right balance, lawyers have to understand the value of their time in money, and make reasonable judgments about how to spend that resource.

Rich

The Capitol at Night

For 17 years the American Bar Association has sponsored ABA Day in Washington. ABA members walk Capitol Hill for a few days, meeting with their Senators and Representatives, and urging them to act to advance the ABA motto, “Defending Liberty, Pursuing Justice.” For most of the last decade, I have joined that effort.

Year in and year out, the most concrete expression of that ABA ideal has been straightforward: ABA members have urged members of Congress to increase funding for the Legal Services Corporation. The LSC is the vehicle the federal government uses to support civil legal aid for the poor.

This year’s effort was no exception: Last week, ABA members worked to persuade Congress to support the Obama Administration’s budget recommendation of $430 million dollars for LSC. They also urged adequate funding for the judiciary and action to timely fill federal judicial vacancies.

As usual, these requests did not present heavy lifting for the Vermonters in attendance, who included Vermont Bar Association President Amber Barber, VBA President-Elect David Fenster, Vermont ABA Delegate Fritz Langrock, VBA Executive Director Bob Paolini, and me, in my role as the Vermont Bar Association’s representative to the ABA House of Delegates.

Each member of Vermont’s Congressional Delegation, Senator and President Pro Tempore Patrick Leahy, Senator Bernard Sanders, and Representative Peter Welch, has an unblemished record of support for these issues. Our meetings with the delegation largely consisted of thanking the members for their past support.

Still, our visits this year carried a different, discouraging tone. There was no talk, as there had been in the past of a “Dear Colleague” letter to point out that, even before sequestration, LSC funding is far below FY 2010 levels, as demand for legal aid continues to grow. In the midst of a tectonic clash over fiscal priorities, such a letter would be a waste of ink. Attempts to strategize about how to encourage increased funding quickly bumped up against the realities of fiscal politics. Even Senator Sanders —who in past visits has chided the ABA for not seeking more funding for the Legal Services Corporation — held out little hope that the Administration’s LSC funding recommendation would be approved.

As I circulated among ABA members from other states, I could find no optimism. In fact, ABAers from red states seemed largely unable to engage their members of congress in real discussion about the needs of the poor for access to justice. One of my ABA colleagues from a red state shared with me his congressmen’s view that legal aid was “rampant with fraud.” No evidence of fraud was cited.

ABA Day Attendees Enjoy A Reception at the Library of Congress

In the past, entreaties from home-state lawyer constituents have, from time to time, helped persuade legislators to direct a little more money toward providing access to civil justice for our poorest citizens. It looks like this year, the highly partisan tenor of a deeply divided Congress means that such efforts fall on deaf ears.

Barring some unforeseen development, only the voters can bridge this divide.

Rich
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4/24/13 Update

I’ve been reliably advised that the usual “Dear Colleague” letter in which some Senators urge the rest to support increased funding for the Legal Services Corporation showed up after ABA Day last week. Senator Leahy and  Senator Sanders signed it, as they have in the past.

Thank you Senators.

Rich

Yesterday, New Mexico Governor Susana Martinez vetoed the New Mexico Uniform Collateral Consequences of Conviction Act, Senate Bill 158. This is the second time that Governor Martinez has vetoed the Act. (See The Bad News: No Enactments of the Uniform Collateral Consequences Act This Year, May 19, 2011).

The New Mexico statute, sponsored by State Sen. Joseph Cervantes, who also serves as a Uniform Laws Commissioner, would have been the most faithful enactment of the Uniform Act so far. The bill was adopted without a dissenting vote in either house of the New Mexico Legislature.

The 2013 version of the Uniform Act was watered-down in an unsuccessful effort to meet Governor Martinez’ objections. S.158 lacked the provision of the Uniform Act that would have permitted the issuance of a Certificate of Restoration of Rights. The Certificate would permit the mitigation of substantially all collateral consequences for individuals who could show five years of law-abiding and responsible behavior.

The only relief provision in the New Mexico bill was the Order of Limited Relief, which would have permitted the sentencing court to issue an order mitigating sanctions relating to employment, education, housing, public benefits, and occupational licensure.

There were a number of other less significant non-uniform changes in the New Mexico legislation. Still, the bill have would have adopted the basic scheme of the UCCCA, requiring collection of statutes imposing collateral consequences (but not regulations), a generalized notice to defendants in criminal cases of the concept of such consequences, requiring that collateral consequences be formally adopted, and regulating the effects of out-of-state convictions and extensions of relief. On balance, its adoption would have been an important step forward in the effort to rationalize and moderate the effects of collateral consequences.

Governor Martinez’s veto Statement, Senate Executive Message No. 48, fails to demonstrate a real understanding of the bill itself or of the underlying problems presented by collateral consequences.
Governors in other states have shown an emerging understanding of the need for reform.

As part of her Streetsafe Task Force recommendations, North Carolina Governor Bev Perdue recommended adoption of certificate of relief legislation based on the UCCCA. In 2011, the North Carolina Legislature adopted, and Governor Perdue signed, what has become Article 6 of G.S. Chapter 15A (G.S. 15A-173.1 through 15A-173.6), allowing certain ex-offenders to apply to a court for a certificate of relief from collateral consequences. To be eligible for relief in North Carolina, a person must essentially be a first time offender with convictions of only misdemeanors, or felonies of lower levels of severity. The legislation requires a 12 month waiting period after sentence has been completed before an ex-offender can seek relief.

Uniform Laws Annotated, which publishes the complete text of Uniform Acts together with commentaries and notes, has designated the North Carolina statute as a substantial enactment of the UCCCA.

Ohio Governor John Kasich, a Republican, led efforts in his state to reduce the effects of collateral consequences. Thanks to his leadership, Ohio adopted its collateral sanctions legislation, Senate Bill 337, in July of 2012. That legislation, ORC § 2961.21-2961.24, permits persons with record of conviction to seek a certification of qualification for employment. Following the UCCCA, such a certificate mitigates collateral consequences by requiring case-by-case consideration as to an occupational license or employment opportunity. It also provides some immunity from negligent hiring actions if the employer has been presented with a certificate.

The possibility of broader reform along the lines of the UCCCA remains under active discussion in Ohio.
Meanwhile in Alaska, State Senator Majority John Coghill, R-North Pole, and Minority Leader Johnny Ellis, D-Anchorage, wrote to the ABA’s National Inventory of Collateral Consequences Project, asking that Alaska be moved to the head of list of states that are being inventoried by the Project. They wrote that a completed inventory would assist Alaska government in advancing an Omnibus Crime Bill that acknowledges that some collateral consequences are not rationally related to public safety and may impede ability of former offenders to find employment and housing.

The NCICC Project agreed to take up Alaska immediately, and the Senators have announced plans to open legislative hearings this summer to address collateral consequences and related issues.

Rich

I think of myself as a political liberal in the classic sense of the word. That is to say that I believe the society
should embrace change, rather than resist it.

In current political debate, the difference between liberals and conservatives is more commonly thought of as the choice between those who believe that government can solve problems and those who believe problems are best solved by individual choice as reflected in the market.

Unabashed liberal than I am, I’m no ideologue. I don’t believe that ideology, be it liberal or conservative, provides the answer to every question. To find the right public policy one must first correctly diagnose the problem and then prescribe the change most apt to solve it. If the prescription runs counter to one’s ideology, perhaps ideology should be left aside.

So, I am an occasional reader of the Wall Street Journal editorial pages, even though they are extremely conservative.

Recently, I happened upon an opinion piece there by James L. Huffman, Dean Emeritus of the Lewis and Clark Law School and a member of the Hoover Institution’s Task Force on Property Rights, Freedom and Prosperity. Huffman’s piece, entitled “Perverse Incentive of the Lawyers Guild,” (Wall Street Journal, February 21, 2013), analyzes the current problems facing American legal education. As he notes, costs are up and applications are down. Law schools are scrambling to stay afloat. And as mentioned in my most recent post “Distant Rumblings from the ABA Meeting, ” the ABA has created a task force on the future of legal education, charged with studying the problem and recommending solutions.

Huffman rightly suggests that the ABA should look within. He suggests that the fundamental problem is rooted in an endemic tendency of regulation. He argues that the regulators have captured the regulator, here the American Bar Association Section on Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar.

He has a point. The Section on Legal Education is dominated by law school deans and tenured law school faculty. The section sets the accreditation standards for law schools. It’s no surprise that those standards require that 80% of law school teaching be performed by full-time faculty, currently tenured or eligible for tenure.

At almost every law school, tenured faculty have one common characteristic: they were the most academically gifted law students of their generations. In short, they were “good at law school.”

That doesn’t necessarily make law professors good at practicing law. Almost every law professor I know has all the ability it would take to be a great practicing lawyer, but little or no interest in being one. Few have much practical experience.

Most law school faculty members are interested in research and writing about jurisprudence: the philosophy or science of law. It’s an important subject matter and learning about it is critical to being a good lawyer. But as I’ve argued often in the past, it’s just not enough.

To this point in the argument, Huffman and I — liberal and conservative — agree completely. Our analysis of the problem is the same. But his prescription for change and mine differ, at least in emphasis.

Trusting to the market, Huffman suggests that the ABA should “free law schools from most of the existing standards and encourage them to draw on the enormous intellectual power of their faculties to design and test innovative approaches – – and let a thousand flowers bloom.” In his view, “the ABA’s role should be limited to assuring that prospective students and legal employers get full and honest information about what could become a bonanza of legal education alternatives.”

In my view, we know a lot about the knowledge and skills law students ought to be taught to serve the public well as practicing lawyers. Many members of the public are not well-equipped to evaluate whether the lawyer they are hiring has what’s needed to competently handle their problem.

I think the rules of accreditation should be changed to require that law schools be what the name suggests they are: professional schools graduating students with the basic knowledge and skills required to competently handle legal problems requiring professional attention.

That said, I certainly agree that more flexibility in the accreditation rules is needed to permit and encourage law school faculty to engage in scholarly activity intended to improve legal education in the future.

Either way, there’s a point to the conservative analysis that should not be ignored by the greater ABA. We have indeed allowed the regulated to become the regulators. There can be little hope for positive change unless the ABA is prepared to shift control of the accreditation process away from the deans and law professors.

I’m not going to hold my breath.

Rich

The American Bar Association met last weekend in Dallas Texas. Thanks to winter storm Nemo, I missed the meeting – the first time I have not made it to an ABA midwinter or annual meeting in some 15 years.

Nemo was no big deal in Vermont

In Vermont, the storm was really no big deal. We had 8 or 10 inches of snow, which is really not an unusual winter occurrence here. But south and east there was a lot of snow, and the new airline protocols cancel flights early, so there was no way for me to get to Dallas.

Watching the meeting from afar, one sees a different perspective. Ordinarily as I moved from breakfast caucuses, to award lunches, to speeches, programs, receptions, and banquets, I would have been enmeshed in the minutia of the meeting. Delegates would have been engaged in last minute deal-making about the texts of House Resolutions. In the background, I’d have been hearing about maneuvering by candidates for ABA leadership positions vying for advantage before the nominating committee. And all the while, I’d be greeting old friends and making new contacts.

That kind of information that is the currency of such a meeting is still finding its way to me through official and unofficial sources.

But from this distance, the only meeting news the made an impression through the mass media was about the ABA Task Force on the Future of Legal Education. The Task Force held a public hearing at the meeting. According to the New York Times story entitled A Call for Drastic Changes in Educating New Lawyers, (February 10, 2013), the precipitous drop in law school applications has put all kind of change on the table. Proposals from cutting law school from three to two years, to limited-license technicians, to change in accreditation rules, were under discussion.

Regular readers of this blog will know that I’ve frequently criticized the current status of legal education, arguing that a significant component of the regular course of study should be practical education in the basic things practicing lawyers do all the time, like negotiation, document drafting, and case management.

Even though some of the remedies suggested sound as bad as the problems we confront (cutting back to two years being one), I ‘m encouraged by the fact that discussion seems to be focusing on fundamental rather than incremental change.

I do wish that I could have participated in the Task Force hearing. Looking at what’s wrong with legal education is itself too narrow a focus. What’s wrong with legal education mirrors a fundamental problem with the legal profession and the larger legal system of which the profession is a part.

None of these elements — the legal system, the legal profession, or legal education — are designed to meet the needs of the average person. It is not that most people don’t need access to justice. They do. They can’t afford to access a system that is attuned to meeting the needs of business, large not-for-profits and government. We do a good job of meeting the legal needs of those institutions, and that’s fine.

But we could do a lot of good for the public, and for prospective lawyers, by providing law students with the knowledge and techniques required to meet the legal needs of the middle class. It’s past time to get about it.

Rich

A few weeks ago, a client who is also a friend and I agreed to have lunch at a local restaurant. I arrived first, and within a few minutes, my friend arrived. He is an ebullient fellow, and as he joined me he was in his usual, buoyant mood. We shook hands and as we sat down, we started chatting animatedly, when suddenly I noticed my friend’s speech was slowing markedly. Within seconds, he was having trouble finding a word, and then his speech stopped altogether. As I tried to ask him if he was all right, he started to slump slightly to the left.

I jumped up, stepped around the table and put my hand on his left shoulder. I called out to the nearest server, and shouted: “Call 911, I think my friend is having a stroke.” She acted immediately. Within moments the manager had taken over being sure that my friend would not fall over, and I was on the phone with our fire department dispatcher, explaining the history. I resumed my post, and within three or four minutes, the Fire Department’s Emergency Medical Technician squad and a police officer were on the scene.

My friend was on his way to the hospital within 15 minutes from the onset of his symptoms. My guess — that he was having a stroke — turned out to be correct. He got prompt treatment, and it appears that this has minimized his long-term injury. I’ve visited him in the hospital several times, and within two weeks from his stroke, he was transferred to a rehabilitation facility, where he is receiving 6 to 8 hours of therapy a day, and seems to be making a rapid recovery. When I stopped by this week, he was speaking clearly, if a little slowly, and working hard on the treadmill to reduce some partial paralysis on the left side. We have reason to hope that he will have no permanent damage.

My friend says I saved his life. That’s speculation. I’m confident the restaurant staff would have reacted with equal speed had he been there without me. But the point about swift and decisive action in the event of a stroke is correct. The Mayo Clinic says:

Seek immediate medical attention if you notice any signs or symptoms of a stroke, even if they seem to fluctuate or disappear. Call 911 or your local emergency number right away. Every minute counts. Don’t wait to see if symptoms go away. The longer a stroke goes untreated, the greater the potential for brain damage and disability. To maximize the effectiveness of evaluation and treatment, you’ll need to be treated at a hospital within three hours after your first symptoms appeared. If you’re with someone you suspect is having a stroke, watch the person carefully while waiting for emergency assistance

I’ve had no training in recognizing a stroke, and only a little experience. I feel lucky to have quickly come to the right response.

There is a widely accepted protocol for laypeople trying to figure out what to do in such a situation. Take a look, and if you need to, as the video suggests, ACT FAST:

The bottom line is simple: If a person’s face looks a little bit uneven, if his arm drifts down, if her speech doesn’t seem right, don’t wait; seek immediate emergency medical attention. My friend and I hope you never need to know this, but that you will remember to act fast if you do.

Rich

Photo credit: Pen Waggener. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

Indeed it is. I am in a small firm and, of necessity, we watch our income and expenses closely. Among other things, each of my “partners” and I get a weekly lists of our receipts. Our first 2013 report came out on Friday, January 4. One of my partners commented, “[a]nd so we start again.” As I responded, it certainly seems better than the alternative.

That’s in the nature of being an attorney in private practice. You always have to keep your eye on the bottom line. Sometimes it feels oppressive. Some lawyers react to this dynamic with single-minded focus on the dollars. Some do not, but even they must pay plenty of attention to money.

My sense is that a generation or two ago, lawyers had more time to put into the professional, non-financial side of the practice of law. Perhaps that is just the natural tendency to romanticize the past. I don’t really know if in the good old days, lawyers had more financial breathing space within which to attend to the public service side of the practice.

But I know this: Today, if you let it, making money will be your work life. If you don’t carve out some time to be a professional as well as a business person, money will make sure that you are only a business person. The time to be active in your profession and in your community does not fall like manna from heaven. It has to be snatched from otherwise productive or leisure time. For some lawyers, it just does not seem worthwhile to make that effort. For others it just does not seem possible. It is not for me to second-guess those judgments.

The public, the bar associations, and the courts all expect a lot from lawyers. We are required to do continuing legal education. The courts expect us to devote time to pro bono work. The public needs us to do public service. On the other hand, if you don’t pay proper attention to the bottom line, you don’t stay in business.

I am not complaining. I’d rather practice law than do anything else. My own professional and public service work has been personally very satisfying, and on occasion has even helped me to earn a legal fee or two. And I do think some pro bono and public interest work is a fair trade for the monopoly our profession has on access to the courts.

It does seem ironic that, notwithstanding all the pro bono and public service work that lawyers do, our profession has such a lousy reputation. I don’t really expect that will change. Our collective reputation seems tied to the acts of the worst among us. Of course, their behavior is plenty bad. But the truth about most in our profession is far better.

It takes an understanding of the importance of the rule of law, and what lawyers do to make it work, to get that a lawyer who represents a notorious criminal defendant — even a guilty one — is doing good, not promoting evil. As lawyers we need to advance public understanding of our legal system and our profession.

Rich

At the end of the year, lawyers and law firms sit down and assess the year’s performance. For most, that’s primarily a financial analysis. After all, we are in business, and making money is essential. For many, it is of the only real measure of success.

There are lots of ways to make one’s living. For truly capable, ambitious people, practicing law is not the most likely way to great financial success.

On the other hand, there are other measures of success, and at least for me, practicing law has allowed me not only to make my living and but enjoy a broader range of compensations than I would likely have in some other endeavor.

Building relationships with clients is one of the things I enjoy about the practice of law. I’ve represented all kinds of clients, including businesses, not for profits, and government entities. But for the most part, I’ve represented individuals. And of course, even when lawyer represents an entity, contact with the client is inevitably through some individual.

So the practice of law is a very personal business. Because I focus on civil litigation, most of my individual clients come and go. I represent them once or maybe, in rare instances twice, in a lifetime.

But there have been some notable exceptions. There are a few individual clients who I have represented month-in and month-out over many years. Probably, that is because I started out as a general practitioner, not as a litigator. Some of my general practice clients have stayed with me.

One of those relationships ended this fall, when my most senior client passed away. I started in private practice in the fall of 1980 and in the spring of 1982 a retiring lawyer in my law firm brought his long-time client of his to see me. Our retiring partner had represented the client for many years. The client was approaching retirement age himself.

We agreed to be lawyer and client, neither anticipating the length and depth of the relationship we would share.

The client would not have been a natural friend for me: our values, interests, and politics were as different as our stages of life. But his legal affairs were many, and over the ensuing 30 years, I opened more than 60 different files for him.

He had a broad range of needs, and as I was “his lawyer,” he insisted that I serve them all, even when that meant I had to get help.

My last assignment was a death-bed codicil. As he reached the end of life, he wanted to make one more change in his will, and I appeared at his home to aid in its adoption. He seemed to be doing well in the circumstances. He answered my questions demonstrating the capacity to make or change his will. He signed the codicil. My paralegal and I witnessed it. He thanked me and I promised that I would stop back again in a few days. We shook hands.

As it turned out, there would be no going back. Over the following weekend, he passed away in his sleep.

I had represented him for 30 years. The services that he required were, by and large, routine. I tried no cases on his behalf. I argued no appeals. I did not even take one deposition for him.

My representation mostly consisted of giving him to best advice I could, and drawing some rather simple documents. He did not always accept my advice. Things did not always go well.

But I know that he valued my advice, and I know that I enjoyed the quality of our relationship. Towards the end, as outside influences tugged him one way and another, his needs challenged my ability to stay in my role, and to represent my client, not the situation.

I appreciate the trust he placed in me. The representation won’t make much of an impression in our year-end calculations, but I won’t forget it.

Rich

The Simplex Time Recorder Co. Gardner, MA, USA. Photo by Barbirossa.

Regular readers of this blog are likely familiar with the Uniform Law Commission. It’s an important part of my professional life and a subject I write about frequently.

Currently, I chair the Commission’s Committee on Scope and Program. That Committee is responsible for vetting proposals for new uniform and model laws and making recommendations to the Executive Committee about future study and drafting committees.

The weekend before last, members of the Uniform Law Commission leadership team met with members of the leadership team for the Uniform Law Conference of Canada. The ULCC, which was founded in 1918, seeks “to harmonize the laws of the provinces and territories of Canada, and where appropriate, the federal laws as well.” (Uniform Law Conference of Canada Home Page)

We talked about potential joint projects, and one such project is underway. Together, we are working to draft a statute on the Interjurisdictional Recognition of Advance Planning Documents that would provide for cross-border recognition of powers of attorney for property, healthcare, healthcare instructions, and related documents.

We also learned about an impending Canadian project that may have potential for the United States. The ULCC has a Uniform Limitations of Actions Act and is considering updating that statute.

After hearing about their project, our leadership team is evaluating whether such a proposal has merit for the United States.

The idea seems worth serious consideration. Many states have similar principles that guide the law in this area. For example, most statutes of limitations have a discovery rule. That is, a statute of limitations begins to run when the claimant knows sufficient facts so that a reasonable person would understand that they have a claim. Otherwise a claim could expire before an injured party knows that of the claim. Most states also agree that after some reasonable period of time, claims should expire. Potential defendants are eventually entitled to certainty.

Tick tock, tick tock. Time marches on, and as it does, claims expire at different rates in different states. Typically, statutes of limitation are treated as procedural, so that the limitation established by law in the forum state governs. Since each state has its own statute of limitation scheme, knowing exactly when a claim will expire requires identifying the claim, the place in which litigation might be brought, and then finding the applicable statute. All this can make figuring out a particular statute of limitations difficult.

That difficulty can cause unjust results. Defendants can believe that the applicable statute of limitations has expired and dispose of records and other evidence that may prove critical for their defense, or to a plaintiff trying to make a claim. Defendants can’t identify the period of limitation unless they know where litigation might be brought.

Plaintiff’s counsel may also have difficulty identifying the right statute of limitations. Missing a statute of limitations is one of the most common claims of legal malpractice.

Would a uniform statute of limitations simplify the law and advance the interests of justice? The answer seems to be “yes,” at least if such an act were widely adopted.

One foreseeable problem relates to the time periods established by particular statute of limitation schemes. Different states often select varying time periods for the same claims. For example, some states are very negative about personal injury claims. Some such states have very short limitations as to personal injuries.

Other states have particularly short statutes of limitations relating to local industries that are favored by state policymakers. For example, here in Vermont, the statute of limitations on most personal-injury claims is three years. But the statute of limitations on claims arising from the sport of skiing is only one year.

Could consensus be reached on a reasonable scheme that could be adopted by many states? That is the key question for determining whether a uniform law on the statute of limitations would be useful and successful.

No decision has been made on the question whether the Uniform Law Commission should begin a study of this potential project. I’d love to hear what readers think about whether such a project is worthwhile.

Please feel free to comment.

Rich

(The Animated Watch above is courtesy of Ebaychatter0)
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Addendum

Readers,

Let me add three points of clarification, based on the comments I have received so far:

1. The idea of a Uniform Statute of Limitations is for civil, not criminal cases;

2. The idea is for different periods of limitation for different categories of claims, not one single limit. So there might be one period of limitation for tort claims, another for contracts, etc.; and

3. The idea is that many states and territories would adopt the same scheme to make that applicable limitation the same no matter in which jurisdiction the claim is ultimately filed.

I hope that clears up any confusion.

Rich

ULC President Michael Houghton thanks Minnesota law firm Gray Plant Mooty, for hosting a reception for members of the Drafting Committee on Fiduciary Access to Digital Information and the ULC leadership team.

We live in a world in which digitally stored information is of immense and increasing importance. Digital property can have, and often does have, very significant value. According to McAfee, American consumers value their digital assets, on average, at almost $55,000. Few owners of such assets consider the disposition of these assets upon death or disability. Some 30 million Facebook accounts belong to the dead. Yet, with rare exceptions, existing law does not address the resulting legal issues. Prefatory Note to the November 13, 2012 Discussion Draft

The purpose of the proposed Uniform Act on Fiduciary Access to Digital Information is to confer upon fiduciaries — such as executors, administrators, trustees, and agents under a power of attorney — the authority to access, manage, copy, or delete digital assets and accounts.

Two major policy issues are apparent in the initial draft. First, will that Act override terms of service agreements that do not explicitly permit fiduciary success to accounts? Second, will the consent of account-holders to fiduciary control be presumed or required to be explicit?

The initial draft is structured as amendments to the Uniform Probate Code, Uniform Power of Attorney Act, and Uniform Trust Code. These Acts have seen substantial, but by no means universal, adoption. The Committee will likely also have to address the possibility of a free standing statute for jurisdictions that have not adopted those statutes

Representatives of Google and Facebook attended the first drafting committee meeting.

The Drafting Committee is chaired by Commissioner Suzanne Brown Walsh from Connecticut, and the Reporter is Professor Naomi Cahn from George Washington University School of Law.

Rich