BINDER CLIPS FOR ANYTHING!
Happy Friday.
Julie
www.islersombathy.com
Legal Stuff
Copyright 2014 Julie Ann Sombathy All Rights Reserved
www.islersombathy.com
Legal Stuff
Copyright 2014 Julie Ann Sombathy All Rights Reserved
Friday, March 7, 2014
Thursday, March 6, 2014
Florida Supreme Court Opinion: Undocmented immigrants ineligible for membership in the the Florida Bar
The Florida Supreme Court issued a ruling today in Opinion No. SC11-2568 on the question of whether an otherwise qualified individual who is not a citizen and is not legally residing in the U.S. is eligible for membership in the Florida Bar.
Short Answer: No.
Short Answer: No.
Wednesday, March 5, 2014
Electronic Filing System and Confidential Information
Since the time there have been courts, there have been court files. And court files often contain very private, sensitive information such as bank account numbers, your social security number, full name, and date of birth. Before the internet, this was not that big of a deal. In order to access this information, a person had to first know it was in a court file, and then either appear in person or write and request copies of the pleadings or evidence in the file. In other words, there used to be a paper trail leading back to the person requesting the copies of the pleadings or evidence. There was no anonymity.
With the advent of the internet, online court records, online official records and for the state court system in Florida, a unified electronic filing system implemented in 2013, there is almost total anonymity and zero privacy. Luckily the courts have addressed this issue with Florida Rule of Judicial Administration 2.420 which allows a party (or in some cases a non-party) to protect their sensitive information. Otherwise, anyone with a password and minimal computer skills can access the court files of any Florida court and print copies of anything scanned for that court file. Without getting too specific, the Clerk has some capability to research the history of activity of a username and password such that an unauthorized access can only be caught but only if the true owner of the username and password becomes aware of the misuse fairly quickly.
In my experience, there are two situations in which the clerk of court does not scan everything that is filed. First, the clerk does not scan old pleadings in dormant files. This is a matter of manpower. Whenever we access a file that has not been scanned, we just call and they scan it. Second, the clerk sometimes does not scan a file as a courtesy to someone involved. If you call and ask that the file be scanned, they will. But as long as no one is asking, that file just does not get scanned. This happens everywhere, not just in the county where I reside.
Rule 2.420 creates categories of certain types of information which may be protected. To protect your information, you have to file a notice of filing of confidential information which designates the type of information and the location of it in your pleading. This allows the clerk to redact or not scan portions or all of any pleading (depending on the case) containing the information. Basically, your notice is a road map for the clerks, who locate and redact the confidential information in each pleading prior to making the scanned pleading available online. So for example, if you are going to trial and intend to introduce bank statements and loan applications as evidence, then you need to do a Notice of Filing Confidential Information. Otherwise, the clerk's office will scan your documents as exhibits, thus making them available to anyone with a user name and password and rendering you very vulnerable to identity theft.
If an opposing party files pleadings or documents containing your private information like bank account numbers, social security number, or date of birth, Rule 2.425 provides a remedy in two ways. First, the aggrieved party can ask the court to require redaction or sealing of the offending records. Second, the court can issue sanctions against the filer as Rule 2.425 requires that parties minimize the filing of documents containing sensitive information.
If the quantity and location of the information is so pervasive in the document that redaction would be impractical and burdensome, then I recommend filing a Notice Filing Confidential Information but taking it a step further and asking the court to seal the pleadings. For example, when proof of my client's damages required admitting into evidence copies of correspondence and proof of payments to the IRS, I asked the court to seal the exhibits rather than attempt to locate and describe each piece of confidential information. The court has the discretion to do this under Florida Rule of Judicial Administration 2.425, but it is a very drastic action and should only be requested in extreme circumstances.
If an opposing party files pleadings or documents containing your private information like bank account numbers, social security number, or date of birth, Rule 2.425 provides a remedy in two ways. First, the aggrieved party can ask the court to require redaction or sealing of the offending records. Second, the court can issue sanctions against the filer as Rule 2.425 requires that parties minimize the filing of documents containing sensitive information.
If the quantity and location of the information is so pervasive in the document that redaction would be impractical and burdensome, then I recommend filing a Notice Filing Confidential Information but taking it a step further and asking the court to seal the pleadings. For example, when proof of my client's damages required admitting into evidence copies of correspondence and proof of payments to the IRS, I asked the court to seal the exhibits rather than attempt to locate and describe each piece of confidential information. The court has the discretion to do this under Florida Rule of Judicial Administration 2.425, but it is a very drastic action and should only be requested in extreme circumstances.
Tuesday, March 4, 2014
Better Late Than Never: Best of 2013
Short and sweet: These were the top 3 posts based on page views on this blog for 2013.
1. The Story of Arnie and Ophelia
2. Thoughts on Women Attorneys and the Conundrum of Appearance
3. Faye's Story: Part One, Part Two, and Part Three.
1. The Story of Arnie and Ophelia
2. Thoughts on Women Attorneys and the Conundrum of Appearance
3. Faye's Story: Part One, Part Two, and Part Three.
Thursday, October 31, 2013
Happy Halloween!
Four jack o'lanterns in honor of the holiday
Alien
I think this one is spot on. Those movies were stressful and scary weren't they?
LORD OF THE RINGS
ONE RING TO RULE THEM ALL
ONE RING TO FIND THEM
The detail is just wow. Very clever. You cannot go wrong with a LOTR reference.
I call this one "Descent into Sadness"
The night started out so well, and then....
My sister-in-law works for an ENT. I have begged her for two years to do a jack o'lantern like the puking one appropriately themed for the doctor's specialty for their annual contest. Instead, she did this one.
Don't get me wrong, this pumpkin is great.
She could totally go for the gross out
though and it would be hilarious.
I'm still working on her for next year.
Hope everyone has a happy and safe Halloween!
Julie
Copyright 2013 Julie Ann Sombathy All Rights Reserved
Tuesday, October 29, 2013
Appointment Cancellations: Equity is Always the Exception
Any professionals (read: mainly doctors) who charge cancellation fees with no exceptions are just ridiculous.
People sometimes cancel their appointments or fail to even show up at all; it is just part of doing business with the general public. Things happen: cars break down, people run out of gas, your boss won't let you off work. Fellow lawyers--who hasn't had a hearing set by the judge at the same time you were supposed to be somewhere else? Court wins almost every time because that is your livelihood.
For chronic cancellations or no shows, I fire
the client. Otherwise, I do not see the wisdom in punishing the vast majority of my
clients because of those rare
inconsiderate people. If you do not respect my time, then I have none for you. All others get the benefit of the doubt, and on the occasion when I'm late because life happened, or outside factors, I expect to get it in return.
I've never even considered charging a cancellation fee and I've never heard of any other attorneys doing so. Has anyone out there ever been charged a cancellation fee by a lawyer? Tell me about it in the comments.
I've never even considered charging a cancellation fee and I've never heard of any other attorneys doing so. Has anyone out there ever been charged a cancellation fee by a lawyer? Tell me about it in the comments.
On the issue of respecting my time, an hour wait at the doctor's office is ridiculous and completely disrespectful of a patient's time. Life happens, and if it is not a chronic problem, I try to be understanding as the patient. Emergencies (personal and professional) happen to doctors too. Who hasn't waited extra long at the OBGYN to find out that the cause was an emergency delivery or some other much more important situation? If the wait is always an hour after my appointment time, then I start looking for a new doctor. The doctor clearly does not value my time as highly as he or she values their own and that is unacceptable.
Which brings me back to the cancellation fee. Recently I waited an hour past my appointment time to see a pediatrician. No apology or explanation was given. The next week I had to cancel an appointment at the last minute because of outside factors beyond my control. Same doctor sent me a bill for $25. Clearly, we have a different way of looking at things, and she will get her $25 but also never see any of my family again. So she made her co-pay for that allotted time, but she loses all the future co-pays and more importantly my good will. Yes, I've already had one of those "catch up" conversations in the grocery store parking lot with a fellow mom looking to move pediatricians and I thoroughly trashed this doctor's office policies.
I hated ethics class in law school because the professor was a west coast philosophy major who had never stepped foot in the real world to practice law and the course was in no way geared to prepare us for the MPRE. In fairness to the professor, this was my last year and I was totally over it.
I have to give that professor credit though, because she taught me a concept that has never steered me wrong: Equity is always the exception.
This doctor with the cancellation fee not only needs to think harder about her business model but about fairness in general. She has lost two new patients in less than 3 weeks, all for $25 because I guess my cancellation messed up her one hour ahead overbooking policy.
I hope she buys a coke and a smile with it.
JAS
Which brings me back to the cancellation fee. Recently I waited an hour past my appointment time to see a pediatrician. No apology or explanation was given. The next week I had to cancel an appointment at the last minute because of outside factors beyond my control. Same doctor sent me a bill for $25. Clearly, we have a different way of looking at things, and she will get her $25 but also never see any of my family again. So she made her co-pay for that allotted time, but she loses all the future co-pays and more importantly my good will. Yes, I've already had one of those "catch up" conversations in the grocery store parking lot with a fellow mom looking to move pediatricians and I thoroughly trashed this doctor's office policies.
I hated ethics class in law school because the professor was a west coast philosophy major who had never stepped foot in the real world to practice law and the course was in no way geared to prepare us for the MPRE. In fairness to the professor, this was my last year and I was totally over it.
I have to give that professor credit though, because she taught me a concept that has never steered me wrong: Equity is always the exception.
This doctor with the cancellation fee not only needs to think harder about her business model but about fairness in general. She has lost two new patients in less than 3 weeks, all for $25 because I guess my cancellation messed up her one hour ahead overbooking policy.
I hope she buys a coke and a smile with it.
JAS
Copyright 2013 Julie Ann Sombathy All Rights Reserved
Thursday, October 17, 2013
Thoughts on Women Attorneys and the Conundrum of Appearance
I was sworn in by the late Judge Clinton Foster in September 1994. My husband, Bob, was two years ahead of me in law school and was working as an assistant public defender. Bob's entire case load was on Judge Foster's docket so Bob asked Judge Foster to do the honors when I got my bar exam results.
After the pictures and congratulations he told me to "make an appointment with my girl and come talk to me. I'd like to give you the benefit of my 40 years of practicing law." So I did. Judge Foster had a lot of good advice that day, but the one thing he said that has stuck with me for 19 years is this:
You are probably thinking that this was an awful thing for him to say and it was (I'm sorry Judge Foster!): it is sexist, for starters. But don't beat up Judge Foster too much.* For all the faults to be parceled from what he said, this bit of our conversation remains to this day to be one of the best lessons I have ever learned about the practice of law.
Whenever I have a conversation with a new woman attorney, I always tell this story. Why? Because it illustrates the main concept that influences how I present myself every day as an attorney.
Dress for your audience.
As an attorney, it doesn't matter how you feel about how you look for court. How you feel is totally irrelevant. You are there to do a job: if you are in the courtroom or chambers it is to convince the judge to do what your client wants or needs. If it is in trial, it is to convince the jury to see the facts your way and the judge to see the law the way that best benefits your client. In the negotiation room, it can be any of a number of goals depending on the particular dynamic. Meeting with clients? You want to develop a good rapport and impress them without being unapproachable.
Does it matter how you look when you are doing your job? I'm sorry but yes, it does. That is life. Everyone is influenced by the appearance of the people around them. I cringe when I hear younger women attorneys talk about how they are going to dress like they want and force everyone to deal with it. That's a nice sentiment. I guess. But this isn't Utopia, and our jobs as attorneys is to persuade. We teach our children that they shouldn't judge a book by its cover but the truth is that we all do it to some extent. Maybe not "judging" but we are influenced by how we perceive other's appearance. My goal with my appearance is always to wring the maximum benefit out of it in any given situation. If you are not doing that, for whatever reason, are you really doing your job well? I don't think so. I think you are letting a major advantage pass you by, and maybe hurting your client in the process.
Early in my career someone told me that the late Judge Bower's father was a "holiness" preacher. I don't know if that is true, but from that point on I wore only demure "Sunday" dresses or the rare dress and blazer combination in his courtroom. Same goes for Judge Foster. Both of our recently retired female judges were very sharp dressers, so I always made sure that my look was totally on point when I had court with Judge Costello or Judge Pittman. A law school classmate of mine was recently appointed to the circuit court. When I eventually have court before Judge Gay you may rest assured I will be wearing my best and that it will also be my most fashion forward because Shonna Gay knows her clothes and shoes. I know a private criminal defense attorney who once made her fabulous hot pink high heels the centerpiece of her closing argument. She won because she has skills not because the jury liked her shoes, but the point remains that she made an argument using the shoes on her feet to persuade the jury to come back not guilty.
This is not a concept that only works for (or against) women. Men do it too, it is just easier for them. Basically, all men need to do is wear a suit and tie, get a good hair cut, keep up their basic personal hygiene. Beyond that, throw away the clown ties (personal pet peeve) and buy some decent shoes. Depending on the situation, tone it down. If you work for the public defender, maybe don't wear a $1,000 suit. Simple things, really.
My advice to women attorneys is ignore all the "how to dress" type articles out there. Don't even read them, all I ever do is get mad when I do. Invariably, another woman has made a list which consists of: Wear a skirt. Put your hair up. Don't wear pants. Wear hosiery. Wear makeup, but not too much (you'll look aggressive/slutty/frivolous/stupid) or too little (you'll look dowdy and no one likes a sexless spinster). Wear enough make up so you look "put together" or "polished" and above all else, "natural." Wear heels, but not too high because that's slutty and not too short because that's dowdy. Look attractive and soft but not too soft because you have to look serious and above all, don't look "manly" because the death of your career is some man thinking you are too aggressive. Make sure you look "feminine." Don't look trendy but don't dress dowdy either.
Who has time for that? Not me.
For women attorneys, there's a lot more to consider with respect to our appearance, and there is no one foolproof suit we can wear that works for any situation. So, I start every day with a review of who I'm going to interact with and how. When in doubt, I go for the more conservative clothes, hair and makeup. For shoes (my favorite part), in addition to the above considerations, I think about comfort and whether or not I can wear them all day if that is on the agenda.
In the end, I think women attorneys have an advantage here, however subtle.
My advice is this: use it.
Julie
*I loved Judge Foster to pieces and the point of this post is not to run him down in any way. He was a great jurist and attorney, and a good, decent human being. So please do not judge him by this one anecdote. He always did what he thought was the right thing, even when it wasn't popular or easy. He once found a couple suffering from AIDS guilty of cultivating marijuana (which back then was used to alleviate the side effects of the medications) and rejected their defense of medical necessity. He withheld adjudication, and sentenced them to one year of unsupervised probation and 500 hours of community service only to be discharged by rendering "care, comfort and concern to each other." The sum of Judge Foster's character was made of way more than this one off the cuff comment he made to me in the Fall of 1994.
Copyright 2013 Julie Ann Sombathy All Rights Reserved
After the pictures and congratulations he told me to "make an appointment with my girl and come talk to me. I'd like to give you the benefit of my 40 years of practicing law." So I did. Judge Foster had a lot of good advice that day, but the one thing he said that has stuck with me for 19 years is this:
"Let me tell you how I feel.
The thing I hate to see the most is a
woman attorney trying to act like a man."
Whenever I have a conversation with a new woman attorney, I always tell this story. Why? Because it illustrates the main concept that influences how I present myself every day as an attorney.
Dress for your audience.
As an attorney, it doesn't matter how you feel about how you look for court. How you feel is totally irrelevant. You are there to do a job: if you are in the courtroom or chambers it is to convince the judge to do what your client wants or needs. If it is in trial, it is to convince the jury to see the facts your way and the judge to see the law the way that best benefits your client. In the negotiation room, it can be any of a number of goals depending on the particular dynamic. Meeting with clients? You want to develop a good rapport and impress them without being unapproachable.
Does it matter how you look when you are doing your job? I'm sorry but yes, it does. That is life. Everyone is influenced by the appearance of the people around them. I cringe when I hear younger women attorneys talk about how they are going to dress like they want and force everyone to deal with it. That's a nice sentiment. I guess. But this isn't Utopia, and our jobs as attorneys is to persuade. We teach our children that they shouldn't judge a book by its cover but the truth is that we all do it to some extent. Maybe not "judging" but we are influenced by how we perceive other's appearance. My goal with my appearance is always to wring the maximum benefit out of it in any given situation. If you are not doing that, for whatever reason, are you really doing your job well? I don't think so. I think you are letting a major advantage pass you by, and maybe hurting your client in the process.
Early in my career someone told me that the late Judge Bower's father was a "holiness" preacher. I don't know if that is true, but from that point on I wore only demure "Sunday" dresses or the rare dress and blazer combination in his courtroom. Same goes for Judge Foster. Both of our recently retired female judges were very sharp dressers, so I always made sure that my look was totally on point when I had court with Judge Costello or Judge Pittman. A law school classmate of mine was recently appointed to the circuit court. When I eventually have court before Judge Gay you may rest assured I will be wearing my best and that it will also be my most fashion forward because Shonna Gay knows her clothes and shoes. I know a private criminal defense attorney who once made her fabulous hot pink high heels the centerpiece of her closing argument. She won because she has skills not because the jury liked her shoes, but the point remains that she made an argument using the shoes on her feet to persuade the jury to come back not guilty.
This is not a concept that only works for (or against) women. Men do it too, it is just easier for them. Basically, all men need to do is wear a suit and tie, get a good hair cut, keep up their basic personal hygiene. Beyond that, throw away the clown ties (personal pet peeve) and buy some decent shoes. Depending on the situation, tone it down. If you work for the public defender, maybe don't wear a $1,000 suit. Simple things, really.
My advice to women attorneys is ignore all the "how to dress" type articles out there. Don't even read them, all I ever do is get mad when I do. Invariably, another woman has made a list which consists of: Wear a skirt. Put your hair up. Don't wear pants. Wear hosiery. Wear makeup, but not too much (you'll look aggressive/slutty/frivolous/stupid) or too little (you'll look dowdy and no one likes a sexless spinster). Wear enough make up so you look "put together" or "polished" and above all else, "natural." Wear heels, but not too high because that's slutty and not too short because that's dowdy. Look attractive and soft but not too soft because you have to look serious and above all, don't look "manly" because the death of your career is some man thinking you are too aggressive. Make sure you look "feminine." Don't look trendy but don't dress dowdy either.
Who has time for that? Not me.
For women attorneys, there's a lot more to consider with respect to our appearance, and there is no one foolproof suit we can wear that works for any situation. So, I start every day with a review of who I'm going to interact with and how. When in doubt, I go for the more conservative clothes, hair and makeup. For shoes (my favorite part), in addition to the above considerations, I think about comfort and whether or not I can wear them all day if that is on the agenda.
In the end, I think women attorneys have an advantage here, however subtle.
My advice is this: use it.
Julie
*I loved Judge Foster to pieces and the point of this post is not to run him down in any way. He was a great jurist and attorney, and a good, decent human being. So please do not judge him by this one anecdote. He always did what he thought was the right thing, even when it wasn't popular or easy. He once found a couple suffering from AIDS guilty of cultivating marijuana (which back then was used to alleviate the side effects of the medications) and rejected their defense of medical necessity. He withheld adjudication, and sentenced them to one year of unsupervised probation and 500 hours of community service only to be discharged by rendering "care, comfort and concern to each other." The sum of Judge Foster's character was made of way more than this one off the cuff comment he made to me in the Fall of 1994.
Copyright 2013 Julie Ann Sombathy All Rights Reserved
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)