Vol. 3 No. 15 | April 12, 2023
Courts
- 2023 OK 32: STATE ex rel. OKLAHOMA BAR ASSOCIATION v. MORTENSEN
- 2023 OK 33: OKLA. GAS AND ELECTRIC CO. v. STATE ex rel. OKLA. CORPORATION COMMISSION
- 2023 OK 34: STATE ex rel. OKLAHOMA BAR ASSOCIATION v. BAILEY
- 2023 OK 37: IN RE AMENDMENT OF RULE 6.2A RULES GOVERNING DISCIPLINARY PROCEDURES
- 2023 OK 38: IN RE AMENDMENT OF RULE 10 RULES GOVERNING DISCIPLINARY PROCEDURES
- 2023 OK 39: STATE ex rel. OKLAHOMA BAR ASSOCIATION v. PARRIS
No published opinions this week.
No published opinions this week.
Dispositions Other than by Published Opinions
The Supreme Court of Oklahoma Court Calendar
The Supreme Court of Oklahoma is in session year round, unless otherwise noted. The Court regularly schedules conferences on Mondays and other days as needed.
More
"As our profession ages and as the general public becomes more aware of cognitive decline, lawyers with dementia have become a subject of growing concern. Maybe someone in our legal profession comes immediately to your mind. Maybe they are a colleague, opposing counsel or potentially even a judge. Maybe they are someone you suspect has cognitive impairment, but you would hate to wrongly accuse someone of being impaired. After all, that person may be well known and maybe even revered in the community. That person may have served on numerous boards over the years, won awards, raised their children in the community and even may have been practicing law longer than you have been alive. Maybe their forgetfulness or eccentricities have another explanation. Who are you to raise the issue of their suspected declining cognitive ability? Do you have an ethical duty as a fellow attorney or judge to report that individual, and do you confront that person about their declining abilities? If so, how do you do so nonconfrontationally and tactfully?
This article looks at trends and demographics in the legal profession, how to identify early signs of cognitive impairment and ethical issues related to attorneys practicing with cognitive impairment."
"In February, I had my first opportunity to expand my circle of influence. I attended numerous meetings for bar leaders in positions like mine and other officer roles. These meetings took place in New Orleans. I was able to attend the Southern Conference of Bar Presidents, National Conference of Bar Professionals and American Bar Association meetings and programs. It was such a rewarding time with many takeaways. It left me wishing I had a way to share with you all the value of expanding your circle of influence. Then it occurred to me that I had this article to write, which was my opportunity to share."
"The question of what you can do with a law degree if practicing law isn’t for you has never been more relevant. In this post-pandemic world of uncertainty, stress and rapid change are fueling a desire for a reset button. Young lawyers with mortgage-sized student loan balances are going to laugh at this, but when I went to law school, there was a lot of talk about how a law school education was good training for all kinds of things, even if you never wanted to practice law.
We have all questioned whether the practice of law is really for us. When opposing counsel is being a jerk, our clients have all gone to Google Law School, and judges – well, let’s not go there. We can forget how special our legal training really is. We are trained problem solvers. We instinctively separate the relevant from the rest. We quickly spot critical issues. We aren’t intimidated by statutes and regulations. We understand how to formulate an argument and how to aim it at a specific audience."
Fastcase is your OBA-provided legal research benefit. It covers all federal and state court opinions, statutes, regulations, court rules and constitutions. Even subscribers to other legal research services may find Fastcase useful for jurisdictions not covered in their plan. The Fastcase 7 upgrade provided more powerful features and a simpler interface. But to access all of Fastcase’s powerful features, most lawyers will benefit from some additional Fastcase training.
OBA CLE has teamed up with Fastcase to produce free, on-demand training to help you get the most out of this valuable member benefit. "Legal Research Using Fastcase for Oklahoma Lawyers" will help you learn how to set up bookmarks to speed your searches, use search history and Fastcase’s Authority Check. You will also learn to determine whether to use natural language search or Boolean, interpret the interactive timeline in your results, share links with non-subscribers and explore the semantic tag cloud that allows you to see words and phrases that occur frequently with your current search.
"Mastering Advanced Legal Research Techniques in Fastcase" will teach you how to optimize client outcomes by improving the one skill that is imperative to all practice areas – efficient legal research. This presentation details how researchers can evade common research pitfalls and employ strategies to consistently retrieve strong results. Fastcase is used to demonstrate, but these core principles apply to all varieties of online legal research. Over the course of 50 minutes, attendees will learn how to save countless more by minimizing irrelevant results in their future research.
Click the links above or search "Fastcase" in the OBA WebCredenza catalog to access these free trainings today!
On Monday, May 1, celebrate Law Day with the Oklahoma Bar Association! Attorney volunteers are needed to answer legal questions at no charge from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. For more than 60 years, the OBA has celebrated Law Day with activities and events taking place over several weeks and in dozens of counties across our state. Forty-seven of those years have been spent offering free legal advice to Oklahomans.
This year, Oklahomans will have the opportunity to ask questions via phone or email. If you are interested in offering free legal advice, sign up to volunteer by reaching out to your local county Law Day chair.
Featured CLE
By Jim Calloway, OBA Management Assistance Program Director
Today’s photo editing software can be amazingly powerful. But power creates complexity. For tools like Photoshop, significant training will be required to use it. For the rest of us, a tool like Google’s Magic Eraser is all we need because we normally just want to remove unwanted images or people from photos. Magic Eraser will identify items that one might want to remove. Tap those items to remove them. If it misses something you want to remove, just draw a circle around it with your finger.
Google Photos app for iPhone is a significant development. But it is not free. You can review pictures, but it does not save the edits until you subscribe to a Google One membership, with subscriptions starting at $1.99/month for 100GB of storage. And some Gmail users may have already subscribed for the storage. But if your beach proposal picture has too many swimsuit-clad tourists in the background or no one noticed that distracting dog in the background of the family reunion photos, it is a bargain.
"The iPhone just got the Pixel’s Magic Eraser" from Tom’s Guide covers all the details, including a nice step-by-step guide on how to use this software.
The Oklahoma Bar Journal is a publication of the Oklahoma Bar Association. All rights reserved. Copyright© 2023 Oklahoma Bar Association. Statements or opinions expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the Oklahoma Bar Association, its officers, Board of Governors, Board of Editors or staff. Although advertising copy is reviewed, no endorsement of any product or service offered by any advertisement is intended or implied by publication. Advertisers are solely responsible for the content of their ads, and the OBA reserves the right to edit or reject any advertising copy for any reason. Legal articles carried in The Oklahoma Bar Journal are selected by the Board of Editors. Information about submissions can be found at www.okbar.org.