Colorado Supreme Court
Office of Attorney Regulation Counsel
Promoting Professionalism. Protecting the Public.
Lawyer
Self-Assessment Program: Linking lawyers to professional development resources
An
overview of the educational resources in the Lawyer Self-Assessment Program.
By JONATHAN
WHITE
The online platform
for Colorado’s new Lawyer Self-Assessment Program debuted October 23, 2017. The
program offers lawyers two avenues to assess whether they have systems and
procedures in place to maintain professional competence, enhance client
service, and comply with professional obligations. The program consists of the
online platform as well as a print/PDF version of the survey that features
similar content as the online assessment.
A pillar of both the online platform and the print/PDF version of the survey
are the educational resources featured in both versions of the survey tool. A
committee of over 50 lawyers volunteered their time to create the
self-assessment content. Where possible, they paired publicly-available
resources with the questions in the surveys to emphasize that the
self-assessment program is, at its heart, an educational opportunity. Subcommittee
members wanted lawyers to be able to refer to a rule or an article on a
professionalism matter as they self-assess so that they have context for why the
issue raised is critical to a thriving, ethical practice.
The educational resources come from a variety of sources and authors. For
example, a number of the self-assessments refer lawyers to the formal ethics
opinions published by the Colorado Bar Association’s Ethics Committee. The
formal ethics opinions cited in the self-assessment include opinions related to
conflicts of interest, inadvertent disclosure of confidential information, and
ethical duties for lawyers providing unbundled or limited-scope representation.
Other ethics opinions incorporated into the platform include several opinions published
by the American Bar Association’s Standing Committee on Ethics and Professional
Responsibility on topics such as review and use of metadata by lawyers and
preserving client confidences when communicating with clients over email.
On the technology and ethics front, the ABA’s Legal Technology Resource Center
has assembled ethics opinions from jurisdictions nationwide on maintaining the duty
of confidentiality when utilizing cloud-based software for file management. The
same center compiled ethics opinions from the states on metadata and disclosure
of potentially confidential information through metadata. Links to the
repository of ethics opinions on these topics appear in the self-assessments. More
broadly, the ABA‘s many sections offer an array of publicly-available educational
resources. Both platforms give users hyperlinks with which to view and read a
number of these resources. These range from articles on fee agreements and
engagement letters to an ABA Journal article on sharing fees with other
lawyers.
Elsewhere, the self-assessments incorporate links to template forms published
by ALPS Corporation, the Colorado Bar Association’s preferred professional
liability insurer. For example, the second self-assessment pertains to
communicating in an effectively, timely, and professional matter. It has links
to template engagement letters created by ALPS. It also links users to sample
client file closing letters. ALPS, meanwhile, also offers lawyers insightful perspectives
on current professionalism issues through articles and blog posts, a number of
which can be found through links in the self-assessment bibliographies.
These educational resources appear in two places in the online platform.
Lawyers can find several selected resources in the ten online self-assessments.
A comprehensive bibliography of educational resources, with hyperlinks, appears
once a lawyer completes an individual self-assessment and views the complete
bibliography found in the end-of-section report.
Moreover, each self-assessment gives lawyers the chance to provide anonymous
feedback. If you know of additional articles that you think would be useful to
other lawyers assessing their practice, let the subcommittee that designed the
self-assessments know. The anonymous feedback section gives you the option to
do just that. Identifying new resources and incorporating them to the online
platform or print survey keeps the content pertinent, timely, and useful for
lawyers in the state.
More information on the Lawyer Self-Assessment Program, including links to the
online and print surveys, as well as an affidavit to claim continuing legal
education for program completion, can be found through the following link:
https://www.coloradosupremecourt.com/AboutUs/LawyerSelfAssessmentProgram.asp