Clienting #29: Will Hornsby on Legal Ethics and Going Solo

Clienting: Digital Legal Marketing

This episode is all about ethics! Gyi Tskalakis and Kelly Street were joined by Will Hornsby to discuss the challenges legal ethics bring to a solo and small law firm. We also learn how Will became a go-to legal marketing ethics expert.

After serving as staff counsel in the American Bar Association’s Division for Legal Services for 30 years, Will Hornsby now maintains a solo practice that helps lawyers, legal marketers and innovators maximize the potential of their communications and delivery models while understanding and complying with the ethics rules. His practice focuses on working with clients to explore opportunities to expand their marketplaces. Will is also an Illinois disciplinary hearing officer, an adjunct professor at Chicago Kent College of Law and a member of the Board of Directors of the Justice Entrepreneurs Project, a Chicago-based lawyer incubator.

What's it like to go solo, what Will has been up to, and how unbundled services are still an untapped market.

Delivery of services and the challenges on changing the standard legal services delivery model, as it relates to ethics rules.

Legal movers & shakers are talking on social media but the conversation needs to move into ethics rules governance.

Where is 'the line' in legal ethics? It's important to know your particular state rules but not to be frozen by them. Understanding the ethics rules creates an opportunity and allows law firms to know if their marketing is ethical; it doesn't prohibit marketing.

Marketing can help solve the A2J - access to justice - issue in the marketplace.

Will's grid: People who don't know they have a problem/People who don't know it is a legal issue. Ex: Kids w/asthma caused by mold & Elderly people in assisted living need pre-nups

Are reviews ethical? Is it ok to ask your clients for reviews?

How to protect your clients online: using social media with legal ethics in mind.

How changes in technology can open up new areas of legal practice.