Week 1 Assignment There are two parts to this assignment. (The Second Part is in the Legal Assistants and Ethics Discussion below.) Both parts must be completed to get full points. Please do not look at the answers of other students until after you have posted your work. As always, after posting your own work, I encourage all of you to read the responses of the other students and provide at least one classmate with your positive response. If you have any questions about this assignment, please post it in the questions conference. Part 1: Who is the client? As you have probably noticed from your reading assignments, many of the ethical duties that legal professionals must adhere to revolve around the clients. Therefore we must first understand who is a client. Much of the reading and many of the hypotheticals in this class just assume the existence of a client. But that is not always so easy to do in practice. In the real legal world, paralegals are often the first to communicate with individuals that have not yet become official clients. Let’s call these folks potential clients or PC’s for short. As you will see when you finish this conference assignment, the line between a PC and an official client is not always clear. So in the weeks ahead while we study what will seem to be fairly clear and the definite rules for legal ethics, keep in mind that in the real world it is not always so clear who the rules apply to (who is a “client”?) or when they apply (when do the duties created by legal ethics apply?). The CALI lesson this week will help define who are clients and therefore who the duties of legal ethics apply to. Here is a link you can use to access other lessons about legal ethics in CALI (but you must be logged in first); http://www.cali.org/courses/2580. First, go to the topic entitled CALI. Read and follow the instructions to gain access to CALI. There are two ways to access the client or not lesson. The first is: once you have accessed CALI and are logged in, go to CALI’s main page, click on lessons which is on the upper right hand corner of the screen, then click on “Professional Responsibility” then scroll down until you see the Client or Not? lesson. The second way to access the lesson is: once you are logged into CALI, go directly to the lesson by clicking on this linkhttp://www.cali.org/lessonlink/660/PR14/2580/jq Here is CALI’s description of the lesson: This lesson reviews problems in client identification. The lesson is in the form of a game show CLIENT OR NOT?! in which students are presented with an individual who is claiming to be a client. The student may choose the type of liability/responsibility they wish to risk in giving their answer (Competence, Confidentiality or Conflict of Interest). They then will be asked under the circumstances raising that issue whether the individual is a client. Students may proceed through the entire lesson reviewing client identification under one or all of these three issues. Lesson Completion Time: 45 minutes Lesson ID: PR14 Now you are ready to run the lesson. Read the introduction and then click on and complete the lesson. You will receive a score but you don’t need to do anything with your score; the lesson is meant to be a learning experience. If you received a very low score, I suggest you retake the lesson. Remember, you do not need to report your CALI score. Second: written Assignment: 1. After you have completed the CALI lesson and read Opinion 32 (under Class Content), write a brief statement about what you will say to these callers that will ensure a potential client does not inadvertently become a client. This statement can be as short as one sentence. Write it out as if you were writing a script. For example: Hello Ms. potential caller, my name is Carol and —well you get what I mean. As a paralegal for a large law firm, you have the responsibility of being the first legal professional to take information from potential clients that call the firm wanting legal services. Before you write the script, be sure to read this: http://nvbar.org/sites/default/files/opinion_32.pdf
