Spilling the Tea on Legal Ethics Missteps and DeepSeek Drama

Episode Notes

Transcript

Announcer:

It is a Legal Toolkit kit with Jared Correia, with guest April McMurrey. We play a game of Colorful Colorado and then following Jared’s dream of being the next Julia Childs, he shares how to get that perfect crust on your cheese Danish. But first, your host Jared.

Jared Correia:

It’s time for the Legal Toolkit podcast and the Doomsday clock is 89 seconds to midnight. Okay? And yes, it’s still called Legal Toolkit Podcast, even though I still don’t know what a Legal Toolkit is. Maybe I’ll never know. I’m your host Jared Correia. You’re stuck with me because Space Coast was unavailable. He was flying from coast to coast, literally. I’m the CEO of Red Cave Law Firm Consulting, a business management consulting service for attorneys and bar associations. Find us online@redcavelegal.com. Now, before we get to our interview today with April McMurray of the Colorado Supreme Court Office of Attorney Regulation Counsel. Yeah, that’s the whole name of the organization. We’re going to talk about legal ethics. Yeah, we’re on that shit again. I’ve got even more AI drama for you before that. Yeah, I guess we’re on that shit again too. If you haven’t heard yet, there’s a new generative AI tool on the block.

It’s called Deep Seek. It’s been built by a Chinese company and their AI costs a lot less to train or requires less computing power than open AI’s Chat, GPT of which you may have heard the formerly most popular chatbot. More on that in a second. It’s free chatbot, deep Seeq R one released on January 10th, 2025. By January 27th, it has surpassed chat. GPT is the most downloaded free app on the app store in the United States. Deep Seeq is also an open source technology such that its source code is freely available to use AI for all, I guess. Wasn’t that what open AI was supposed to be? Whoops. Some folks are now starting to compare the race to develop more and more effective and efficient AI to the space race, which occurred between the United States and the Soviet Union in the fifties and sixties. So I guess it’s on, but you probably knew all that or you could at least find it out by reading Wikipedia.

Just like me, I’m mostly here for the drama. We’ve got ourselves a little technology telenovela. So first OpenAI is beefing with deep seeq because deep seek probably used open AI’s model to train its model. Yeah, they probably assuredly did. The argument is that deep seek uses strategy called distillation, where one LLM is trained using data generated from another LLM. And as we know by now, my friends and neighbors AI uses large language models to populate data and produce responses and make connections. That part of it is really tragic and my feelings on the matter are as follows, ha ha, ha ha. So OpenAI, which is definitely using copyright works, it doesn’t have the rights to train its own model, and which also tried to steal Scarlet Johansen’s voice that’s Scarlet Johanssen from home alone. Three, by the way, is now upset because wait for it.

Another company is trying to do the same thing to them. Fuck off forever. Sam Altman, Karma’s a bitch. Now second deep seek is kind of towing the line for the Chinese government in terms of its embedded worldview. That’s I guess something you got to consider when you’re building software and or not authoritarian regime. So if you ask the AI about whether Taiwan is an independent country for example, or if anything unusual ever happened in Tiananmen Square, you’re going to get that Chinese party line, which is no and nothing. As John Lennon once wrote, if you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao, you ain’t going to make it with anyone. Anyhow, there are two other interesting components to discuss here, and one more which I’ll get into before we finish up. This seems to me to be part of a disturbing trend of popular technology tools bending the need to shitty government actors that’s been happening in China forever and Russia, but in the United States, Twitter is basically a Nazi propaganda site at this point.

Amazon Prime is developing a Melania Trump documentary at exorbitant costs. Yeah, I’ll not be watching that one. And Facebook just paid Donald Trump $25 million for shutting down his account after January 6th. Sam Altman of OpenAI also recently said that he had changed his mind about Donald Trump when he posted about two weeks ago. The implication, by the way, in case he didn’t pick up on it, was that this was a positive change of mind if he happened to be as incredulous about that as I am. So who knows what’s going to happen with open AI now? I mean, will we ever truly know who won the 2020 presidential election? Spoiler alert, it was Joe Biden. None of this is good and it’d be bad the other way. By the way, if these services just became liberal mouthpiece, this doesn’t help anyone. I’d like these to be neutral spaces and they were much more neutral before, but I don’t know if that’s going to be the case ever again, or at least for a long while.

Now, from the standpoint of potential law firm users of deep seek, there are legitimate security concerns including over using services that are not US-based, including with respect to server storage, and there are already stories out about Deeps Seeq exposing data, but if you’re a smart law firm owner, you’re not using a free generat of AI tool anyway and dumping confidential client info into it. So that’s actually a pretty easy answer. Last thing on deep seek for now, I’ll probably come back to this, is it’s using older less advanced processing chips and performing. So they claim at the level or close to it of open AI’s existing technology. That’s a problem for companies claiming that only the latest processing chips can run AI at that level. Nvidia shares fell precipitously, for example, after the launch of Deep Seek, and that’s one of these companies that is producing high-end processing chips.

And that brings us full circle to the physical components that allow generative AI technology that actually generates shit and what version of those products is necessary or viable in the marketplace. Yes, AI continues to be a moving target. Deep seeks logo, by the way, looks like a killer whale swallowing everything Uhoh. Stay tuned for our next episode of As The World of AI Turns. But in the meantime, stick with us for our interview with April McMurray, who is the Deputy Regulation Counsel at the Colorado Supreme Court’s Office of Attorney Regulation Counsel. And we’re going to get deep seek on legal ethics including questions around ai of course. But before we do all that, let’s hear more from our sponsors. Okay, everybody, let’s get to the meat in the middle of this legal podcasting stand, which today’s meat I’ve selected Rocky Mountain Oysters. Let me just tell you, they are not real oysters. I found out the hard way. You need to cook them first. Alright, that’s enough of my shenanigans. Let’s do some real serious legal talk. We’re going to introduce our guest today on the Legal Toolkit we have in her first ever appearance. Maybe our last, we’ll see, it’s April McMurray, who’s the Deputy Regulation Counsel for the intake division of the Colorado Supreme Court Office of Attorney Regulation Counsel. Now I need an app. April, welcome to the show. How are you

April McMurrey:

Jared? Thanks so much for having me. I’m great.

Jared Correia:

Do I have your full title? Correct. Is that true?

April McMurrey:

You do have the full title of both The office and my title.

Jared Correia:

That is quite the mouthful. Can you break that down and let us know what you do?

April McMurrey:

Absolutely. So our office is an office of the Colorado Supreme Court, although we are independent and within the office really we oversee the beginning through all aspects of the regulation of the practice of law. So our office handles admissions. When you think of theBar exam and administering the exam, doing character and fitness investigations, vetting folks who are coming in when you think of them being licensed and overseeing continuing legal education, handling registration fees, and then when you think sometimes of the regulation piece. And so that’s the side that I,

Jared Correia:

That’s the bad part. If you’re a lawyer and you don’t think to this, that’s the bad

April McMurrey:

Part, right. So yeah, so known for that piece. Although I will tell you, I think especially, and this is probably not just unique to Colorado, but probably in the last 15, 20 years, a lot of what we do is education. So some of what we do on the regulation side is discipline, but a lot of what we do is education.

Jared Correia:

I don’t know if this is the case in Colorado, but I’ve worked with boards of bar overseers regulation departments across country and it seems like a lot more time, resources, effort is being spent in diversion both in terms of education in advance, but also trying to divert people to help before you do more aggressive solutions like suspensions or disbarments. Is that the case? Have you seen that happening as well?

April McMurrey:

Absolutely. I mean that really is the case in Colorado that what we try to do, especially at the intake division, we call it our triage division, and we’re looking at those cases and trying to make sure that only the ones that really need more investigation that may look like they’re teed up for some sort of discipline that those are going to the trial division. We really at intake try to handle as much as we can and to your point, when we can divert or even dismiss with educational language or dismiss conditioned upon attendance at our ethics school, when we can remedy a situation with education, that is certainly a preferred track.

Jared Correia:

So you have an ethics school, what does that look like?

April McMurrey:

We do our ethics school. We host that five times a year. It has been remote for a while now, but it’s essentially where it’s by invitation only. And so lawyers who have participated in our process are asked to attend and it’s an all day course and we try as much as possible to cover kind of the top issues that we see and do a refresher on ethics. And so that’s again, usually we’ve got about 17 to 30 people attend that for those five sessions.

Jared Correia:

Yeah, I was going to say, do you have to be in an investigation or can you just show up if you’re like, yeah, I want to brush up on my ethics stuff.

April McMurrey:

No, you’re right. You need to have been at some point in our process and that’s why it’s by invitation only.

Jared Correia:

I like how you put it as by invitation only. That makes it sound pretty good. It seems to me like the equivalent you get one too many speeding tickets, then you got to go to that DRIVERY training class, that kind of deal. Alright, so I’m going to start here. We’ll start dark and then we’ll get lighter. So I think everybody who talks to people in your position are interested in the salacious part of it, which like, oh, lawyers are in trouble and you’re the ones who to the lawyers who are in trouble. So in the spirit of ethics school, can you talk to me about some of the more common ways that attorneys get in trouble from an ethics standpoint? What are they doing wrong? Mostly

April McMurrey:

I think I would preface this response by saying, and of course my experience has been,

Jared Correia:

Well, you’re a lawyer, you have to add a disclaimer. I feel like that’s part of the job.

April McMurrey:

Well, I add this because I think there perhaps is a perception that as a regulator you have a lens that everybody’s doing lots of bad things. And I would say absolutely to the contrary. I think the majority of the people that I have encountered both in my time in intake and I have worked in our trial division, find people doing the best they can. A life circumstance or something kind of unique comes in. Of course there is that small percentage where somebody is engaged in some sort of intentional misconduct, but that is really few and far between to your point, the more common things that happen. But it’s again, folks who I think are trying their best, but they’re already on a bit of a shoestring and so something happens and that’s kind of brings them to the process. Now I will say a lot of the cases we have is to circle back what you and I were just discussing. There are situations that are not necessarily terribly serious and some education will assist and that comes in the front of maybe you didn’t have good communication with a client. We see a lot of bad fee agreements, which again, we may circle back to when we talk about technology.

So these things that are not necessarily going to be discipline conduct but brings the lawyer to the process. And in the course of our investigation, we’ve got some feedback for them. So some feedback in the form of, again, education, that’s some of the lower level stuff. What I tell lawyers all the time is, and I think I’ve seen this in the time I’ve been with the regulation office, that a confused client is a complaining client. And so at every opportunity that you as the lawyer have to avoid confusion and to bring clarity that behooves them. And so a number of the cases that come to us don’t leave our intake division because there isn’t misconduct, but the lawyer perhaps could have done a better job explaining and communicating. So it’s not necessarily that, again, it’s a rule violation that we would take further steps with, but it is probably an opportunity for the lawyer to do a little bit of examination if we contact them in Colorado system, we get complaints from clients and others, but if in our phone call or initial communication with the complainant or determine we don’t need to reach out to the lawyer, we don’t have that point of contact.

So in that case, the lawyer is not going to know.

Jared Correia:

I mean, I think what a lot of people don’t know who are outside of this space is that, yeah, lawyers get in trouble, but a lot of times at I found, and I think you alluded to it was like there’s some kind of stressful financial component or there’s sometimes a mental health issue involved. So let’s talk about fixing these situations because the trend is toward diversion as we talked about. So let’s start with fee agreements. Do you have some tips about how lawyers can draft effective fee agreements if they’re not doing it in the status quo or doing it as well as they could?

April McMurrey:

Yeah, most definitely. So there’s a portion of people, your audience I think we want to talk to about sort of how do you uplevel the fee agreement you have. I will tell you, there’s certainly a portion of the audience I want to talk to say, if you don’t yet use a fee agreement,

Jared Correia:

Yes, that should be mentioned. Go on.

April McMurrey:

And I will tell you, I’ve learned not to take anything for granted, so let me go back and start there. If you don’t yet have a fee agreement, please begin doing that and thinking to yourself that in a lot of instances, this is a person’s first interaction hiring for legal services, and so this is your opportunity to tell them this is how the relationship works. Now, if they’ve already had counsel again still, I want you to do this because you want to distinguish, this is how I run the practice. So if you got really comfortable working with this other lawyer, this is the way I do it. This is I think, a fabulous opportunity to address that piece I talked about when we can avoid confusion, and so it isn’t just addressing the basis rate of the fee and expenses. It’s a great opportunity to talk about when and how you communicate. What type of technology are you using? I know you and I are and your audience

Jared Correia:

Savvy too, tech throw an AI clause in there. Yeah,

April McMurrey:

I’m down for that. Absolutely. Let’s talk about if you’ve got some sort of technology that records everything, because I know in some jurisdictions including Colorado, that might be an issue that comes up. So let the client know, hey, every time you reach out, and then of course I know there’s some lawyers who would say, I don’t want to record everything, but there are so many things we can talk about billing and how often and really to have clarity about your jurisdiction’s rules with respect to fee agreements, because this is an area I have found, if you’re going to take the time to do this, but you craft a fee agreement that doesn’t comport with your jurisdiction’s rules about fees, but then you follow it. Now not only do you have a bad fee agreement, but that may have paved the path for you to mismanage funds and of course that can get us into problematic results and outcomes and so on. So again, being really mindful of spending the time and in preparation for chatting with you, I’ve listened to a number of you were podcasting.

Jared Correia:

Oh, you prepared? I didn’t. Okay, go ahead.

April McMurrey:

Well, there was a gentleman,

Jared Correia:

At least one of us did.

April McMurrey:

We’ll see, we’ll see. But there’s a gentleman you interviewed a few weeks ago, and I loved this and I thought, wow, this is amazing because he’s a private practitioner and talking about this, but as a regulator, this is what I would also be encouraging, and it is systematize, systematize, systematize. Don’t spend time redoing the low hanging fruit over and over again. Even if it means you spend time and money getting ethics counsel to review a fee agreement so you’re in great shape,

You slightly modify an update, but now you’re off and running and you’re not reinventing the wheel every time you can feel really good about this. Again, it’s the document that says, this is what you can expect of this attorney-client relationship, and then if problems come out, you are able to hold up the document and say, remember client, I told you out the outset, you may be speaking to my paralegal as the first point of contact whenever you contact. And then they pass it on to me and I’m in court most of the time, and so then I’ll be back in touch. But I find that’s helpful. Go through set expectations, have ’em sign and date it, keep a copy, have them take a copy. A lot of these things that Jared, they’re best practices, but they go a long way. And then if that person is really frustrated and they call our office and they’re complaining about the fees, and a question we ask is, was there a fee agreement? What does it provide for? That can start to close the loop for us on figuring out do we even need to go further versus the call, Hey, well what’s the fee agreement? What do you mean?

I got a text that it was going to be $300 an hour. Okay, well, so again, really kind of pulling everything in that we can as the lawyer to clearly communicate set expectations. I think that goes such a long way to building the scaffolding for a successful attorney-client relationship. It also says to the client, I’m particularly professional. Right? It just starts you off on a really good foot. Yes, exactly.

Jared Correia:

Okay, let me ask you this. I want to veer into tech a little bit, but the first piece I want to ask you about that is related to the fee agreements. Are you seeing firms or are you advising or suggesting firms place AI terminology in their engagement agreement? This is what we do, this is how we use it, that kind of thing, or not yet?

April McMurrey:

And I should note, because of the role our office plays, we have to be

Jared Correia:

Really just say what you can say. Oh yeah.

April McMurrey:

Well, actually I think I’m okay to speak on that, but to be clear that when we are working with a lawyer perhaps and we see problematic provisions, we are well placed to say these are problematic. We are not. However, in a position to say to a lawyer, fix it, bring it back, and we’ll give you a yay or nay on it that we do not do.

Jared Correia:

Oh yeah, you’re not approving terminology. I

April McMurrey:

Can’t sense. You can’t prove terminology. I think though the issue or the question you raised that topic of do I need to include something if I’m using ai? It’s interesting and kind of multilayered when we talk about the type of AI and if it’s generative and if there’s going to be a confidentiality piece. I know all this from

Jared Correia:

People who are listening. I think a lot of people conflate AI with generative ai, which is just one type of AI like chat GPT or tools like that. So that’s a good point that you made to distinguish those.

April McMurrey:

Yeah, no, thank you. I think that also for those of us who are not as steeped in tech to be sure we understand the difference and understand the tools that we’re using, is it generative? Because as you and I both know when it’s generative, the beauty of it is it can create stuff and maybe understand that and feel comfortable or maybe you didn’t and you were looking for kind of what I think of ai, but prior iterations of AI that doesn’t have that generative capability. So understanding, first of all, what am I using? Who has access? Is this something where I would need to have a confidentiality discussion with the client and have informed consent to go forward? So that’s why I say I think it’s nuanced. I think if a lawyer says, I’ve got the provision so I’m good to go, I would say proceed cautiously to the extent that you’re letting a client know, here’s some of the technology I’m using that may satisfy it for the technology, but if more is required to get their consent than just this sort of boilerplate paragraph in the fee agreement may not be

Jared Correia:

Enough depending on the client, they’re going to probably dictate that term more than a lawyer. If you’re just working with somebody, do their estate plan, it’s a different thing. Obviously if you’re working with Apple and they got trade secrets to protect and are going to want to know what you do with AI with their info, let’s talk about tech in general. So I can’t remember exactly when this started. Maybe God, I’m old 15 years ago, 10 years ago, most of the states, I think Colorado has added this comment to rule 1.1 around competency, which is basically that lawyers have to stay abreast of technology. I get a lot of questions about that. What does that mean? Do you have advice on that for lawyers? How up to date do you have to be, be okay from an ethics standpoint?

April McMurrey:

When is enough enough

Jared Correia:

To

April McMurrey:

Be competent? And particularly in the really quickly evolving landscape with technology? So again, this is coming from me as kind of a gauge, but I say to lawyers, I think it’s instructive. I hope to think of it this way. If I am for my own competence, I should be able to explain to a client, why did I select this technology? What does it do? What am I using it for? What are the confidentiality concerns, if any? What about security for this? So again, you don’t necessarily have to be in it guru in your spare time, but you’ve got to be able to explain in a way that the client has, I think at least a basic understanding of this is what you chose, this is why you chose, this is what it does, this is who has access. And if you as the lawyer go through and you are uncertain on some of these aspects, I think that’s a good time to pause. And so using that notion of can I explain this to the client, I think is a nice litmus test for how comfortable am I really with respect to the realm of competence. Now I think that’s answered one aspect of your question. I do think there’s another piece which is just generally maybe from a regulatory perspective, what is enough today?

Jared Correia:

Yeah, it’d be great if you could talk about that a little bit.

April McMurrey:

Yeah, and I think in that realm, it’s interesting. A number of the rules give us so much discretion and certainly competence is one of them. Even the comment that I know a lot of states have adopted some version of, as you alluded to, and I still think there’s quite a bit of discretion for lawyers and appropriately so.

Jared Correia:

Yeah,

April McMurrey:

I’ll say this. We have encountered lawyers who say, I still do my bookkeeping and handwriting, or I don’t want to use the

Jared Correia:

Not even a spreadsheet at this point.

April McMurrey:

I don’t want to use the Colorado courts e-filing system. And on those two fronts, I would say, you’re probably too out of date, right? That’s probably not enough. On the other hand, if we talk to a practitioner today who says, I have not yet. I use Westlaw or Lexus, but I have not yet incorporated generative AI into the practice. Well, on that way other end of the spectrum, you’re probably okay, but somewhere in the middle as far as number one, what makes the practice more efficient? Well, the book research probably not when we’ve got these really fast and efficient and accurate search engines. And so again, I would think that would make sense to use, although I don’t think it’s wrong if you’re somebody who wants to do the book research, but at a point, Jared, I think in some ways, in addition to lawyers being mindful of what does it mean to be competent, I do think, and I think you hit on this frequently, the market is going to begin to dictate some of this,

Jared Correia:

For sure. Yeah.

April McMurrey:

If I can hire somebody who’s really adept with AI and they oversee it and I don’t run the risk of having confidentiality compromised and they can do something much more efficiently than the person down the street who doesn’t use it at all, and that saves me a lot of money and time, then that person probably will start to have the majority of the business,

Jared Correia:

The market will decide. All right, one more, I dunno. Garden variety, I guess ethics question, which is, I see this all the time too. You mentioned it, lawyers are terrible communicators. They’ll work really hard to talk to people until they convert ’em, and then you have a client and it’s like crickets. And people are like, oh, what happened? So how can lawyers get better about communicating with, I gave some really good tips like explaining the fee agreement, how the relationship is going to work, but how can they fulfill that by staying in contact with people more regularly?

April McMurrey:

I like that too. And I will tell you on occasion, we see a case where it’s crickets and you just think, oh my gosh, even if the person was doing work, you’ve so aggravated the client by not conveying that now they’re calling us.

Jared Correia:

Even some lawyers, it takes them months to bill even sending out a bill.

April McMurrey:

Absolutely, and I will never understand that, but that you can imagine, does Garner oftentimes a complaint, especially by the way

We say this to lawyers, if you tell someone you’re going to bill monthly, please bill monthly. Don’t wait 18 months and then send the biggest bill they’ve ever seen. But to your question, it’s so bad it’s not great. To your question about communication, I guess I would encourage lawyers to think about being very real with themselves in the practice. So if you are somebody with a high volume practice and you don’t yet have help, it probably makes sense to get some help so that you can have somebody running that interference with communication and obviously supervised and directed by the lawyer. So if you’re not able to be doing that and you haven’t invested in that help, if you have invested in that help, making sure you have a really good dynamic with the person and or people who are helping. So you trust the types of communication that’s being had, obviously with the client, but then also you may have the same feeling. I feel like a decade ago, maybe a little bit longer, the notion of lawyers texting was like, oh my gosh, this is what teenagers do. Lawyers don’t do this, and now

Jared Correia:

Lawyers want TikTok until it gets banned.

April McMurrey:

Indeed. I’ll have to stop laughing so I can answer. But yeah, this notion of texting here, again, if you do that and the client is okay with that, I think that can work. Now, I will also say though, be sure you have a program that is capturing the text messages, so you can put that that’s part of the client file. And by the way, when a client, I can think of a couple examples, is complaining to our office, they send in the stack of printed text messages, so they are keeping it. So as a lawyer, oh God, don’t be fooled into thinking, well, this was an informal way of communicating it. So it’s not actually the record of our communication. I think that it is, and also, again, I think it can fill that gap to an extent if you want, as a lawyer. Now, I know there are some lawyers, and I don’t necessarily disagree with this. That notion of texting makes you necessarily very available a lot, and maybe you don’t want to have that dynamic with the client. So again, at the outset, thinking and talking to them and explaining, this is how I generally communicate. This is what you can expect. I return calls in this amount of time or you’ll be hearing from paralegal. And so again, just setting the expectations I think goes a long ways on this front. Thinking about that communication piece, especially when you’re doing a ton of work for somebody, it really makes sense to stay in touch with them. And that’s also, frankly,

I think billing, monthly billing, even if it’s no

Jared Correia:

Charge, or even more frequently frankly, which I see some attorneys doing

April McMurrey:

Okay, or more frequently, but that can be a nice communication device.

So nothing’s happened in the case, so no charge, but it’s an opportunity to let them know nothing has happened in the case, so don’t forego. Again, some of those, what I think are a little bit easier opportunities to just have point of contact and let ’em know what’s happening in the case, whether they’ve done the reach out or not. I’ve never, ever, ever heard from a client, this lawyer was in touch with me too much. It really became so annoying. They just gave me way too many updates. So you don’t run that risk of overdoing, I don’t think, and they appreciate knowing, okay, nothing happened or that was a no charge or a lot happened this month, and so more was going on in the case. Yeah, yeah,

Jared Correia:

It’s a good marketing opportunity. All right. So one thing I’m interested in, and I know a lot of attorneys are interested in, so I usually ask about it when I get somebody who’s ethics adjacent or ethics affiliated on the podcast, is alternative business structures. So if you don’t know, those are law firms that can perform. They’re effectively hybrid businesses. They can perform non-legal services, they can be owned by non-lawyers. You can share fees with non-lawyers. Arizona’s basically repeal the ethics rules around that disallowing that in Utah and now Washington have sandboxes. What are your thoughts on that? Do you think that continues to grow? Do you think that comes to more states?

April McMurrey:

Oh, Jared, that’s a good question. And I saw this week

Jared Correia:

One of my favorite topics.

April McMurrey:

Yeah, absolutely. And it’s one of the topics that I think both regulators and practitioners alike are watching in so far as how is the profession evolving?

Jared Correia:

A lot of lawyers, a lot of practicing lawyers want to do this, and they’re like, why can’t I do it?

April McMurrey:

Why can’t I do it yet? Yeah, I mean, I will say, I think it’s, is it KP MG, the big accounting firm this week came out, and so I know that that is taking off, particularly in those three places. I don’t know that I would be well placed to give us a prediction. I see.

Jared Correia:

You don’t need to. Whatever you feel comfortable with, I

April McMurrey:

Can handle

Jared Correia:

The predictions.

April McMurrey:

It’s interesting. Unlike I think some of the other movements to how do we change the practice, I don’t know that I see that one taking off as quickly now between you and me, maybe it doesn’t need to because there are three places that it’s happening. And so once you open the door a crack, you’re just going to have a lot of this happening, Utah, Arizona, and dc. But I don’t know how many other states are actively pursuing that right now, and I don’t know, they may be, but I’m not sure.

Jared Correia:

I mean, some have rejected it, even I think voted against it when it came up, which was I guess somewhat of a surprise to me. So we’ll see where that goes. I think there’s momentum going towards it, but also there’s been this whole notion forever that lawyers are like this protective guilt, and that’s why you keep others out. But I think that sentiment’s starting to change a little bit.

April McMurrey:

I think you’re right about that, and also,

Jared Correia:

At least with attorneys who I talk to on a regular basis, like practicing attorneys.

April McMurrey:

Yeah, I would agree that there’s again, a willingness to look at it as to how much momentum and how fast that I think remains to be seen.

Jared Correia:

Let me ask you this, what are important ethics issues that attorneys do you think are going to be grappling with through the end of the decade? We’re halfway through the 2020s already, which is crazy. Is it all going to be AI related, or are there other things that are going to be happening that attorneys should be aware from an ethics standpoint?

April McMurrey:

Yeah, I think AI gets the most play right now for sure.

Jared Correia:

Yeah.

April McMurrey:

And perhaps will be the thing that touches most people most quickly. But to your point, there are these questions about alternative business structures and will that happen in other jurisdictions? What about multi-jurisdictional practice? Will we move to a system whereby it’s much easier to cross borders and continue practicing really almost without interruption? I think there’s interest in exploring that as well. I think there’s some interest in saying it’s been a long time since regulation has had real significant change, and should we be looking at that? I know you may know Lucian Para and others drafted a couple of years ago, an article to this point to say, is it time for us to once again look at regulation? Which again is a little adjacent to the question you asked just for lawyers generally. That’s, sorry,

Jared Correia:

You’re allowed to explore the studio space here on the show.

April McMurrey:

Alright. Alright. So I think that there’s interest in saying is what we have working as well, Jared, with this notion of having other folks licensed. We have a new structure in Colorado that permits that, and that’s, we’re essentially trying that for domestic relations cases, which again, I personally think it will be very interesting because the limited license idea, at least specifically for Colorado, has been done with an eye towards access to justice.

Jared Correia:

I mean, Starlight nurse practitioners in the medical field, it’s not different at all really, in my opinion.

April McMurrey:

I think that there’s a good parallel to be drawn now as to whether we, and by that I mean other jurisdictions go that direction or there’s a sense that some form of AI is helpful in also filling this space. And I don’t know, frankly, you’d be better to address this, but I wonder how AI may just continue to grow in such a way that it eclipses and or fills in some of the spaces of things that we’re moving a little more slowly with on like, Hey, maybe we should do, and then all of a sudden we’ve got this technology that can fill the space.

Jared Correia:

Yeah, it’s going to be like Wally up in here. We’re going to be on our gliding rocking chairs and recliners. Drinking big golfs should be interesting. We’ll see where this all goes. I got one more question for you.

April McMurrey:

Okay,

Jared Correia:

Thank you. You’ve been very generous with your time. So you’re pretty involved with the American Bar Association. I know they got their 50th anniversary Professional Responsibility conference teed up in the spring.

April McMurrey:

Yes.

Jared Correia:

So here you go. Give me a little commercial. What are you guys doing? Should people be going down there to the DC area? What’s happening with that? The conference?

April McMurrey:

Absolutely. Yeah. So that is going to be the end of May, and that is going to be the 50th conference. And I love that you brought it up because I would love to give a plug plug away for folks that are interested in the topics we’ve talked about today. We’re going to take a deep dive. We’re putting together the lineup. It’s really an all-star lineup. I know before we began, I confirmed with you. I understand you’re going to be there. It’s

Jared Correia:

I’ll be there.

April McMurrey:

You’ll be there.

Jared Correia:

One more reason. Do you need to come

April McMurrey:

Indeed?

Jared Correia:

Honestly,

April McMurrey:

Maybe we could have a table for you to come and meet Jared. I’ll step by that. Yeah,

Jared Correia:

I’ll podcast there. We’ll do a podcast.

April McMurrey:

Absolutely. But we’re going to have excellent programming. It’s a great way to connect with colleagues. I mean, I can’t really say enough about the opportunity. You’re going to get a ton of your CLE credits. We’re going to be in Pentagon City, so we’re going to be in a really, I think, interesting and vibrant city talking about these up and coming issues. And again, it’s a great way to connect and network, meet folks, do some of those things that I think we lost a little bit of through the pandemic. So we’re really, really excited about it. Thanks for giving me an opportunity to

Jared Correia:

Mention that. Oh, sure. So if people want to find out more about that, if they want to register, what do they do?

April McMurrey:

Where do

Jared Correia:

They go?

April McMurrey:

You’re going to go to the ABAs website and look at the Center for Professional Responsibility, and there’s a notation about it. The agenda’s going to be coming out soon, so you’ll find out more information about the programming that we’re going to have, but it’s sure to be a really good one. I’m excited.

Jared Correia:

Thank you, April. This was great. And as you may know, if you’re a regular listener, we kind of lack professional responsibility on this show. So April, are you willing to hang around for one last segment to that end?

April McMurrey:

Absolutely.

Jared Correia:

Alright, we’ll take one last break, everybody, so you can hear more about our sponsor companies and their latest service offerings. Then stay tuned. As always, for the Rump Roast, it’s even more supple than the Roast Beast. Welcome back, everybody. That’s right. We’re at the rear end of the Legal Toolkit podcast. It’s the Rump Roast. It’s a grab bag of short form topics. All of my choosing. Why do I get to pick? Because I’m the host today, April, we’re going to play a little game. I like to call Colorful Colorado. Now, for those of you who don’t know, the Legal Tide Network studios are actually based in Denver. I myself am in Denver quite a bit as I have relatives out there in April, as you just heard, works for the Colorado Supreme Court in Denver. So April, here’s what we’re going to do. I got some questions teed up for you about Colorado. All you need to do is answer and we’ll keep score as we go. We’re going to do a little bit of weird Colorado stuff. Are you ready?

April McMurrey:

I think so. Let’s do it.

Jared Correia:

Okay. Starting on a personal note, two times ago, second to last conference I went to in Denver, I walked into a bar and I saw a man who was standing at theBar, completely nude, taking a shot, and then I saw four stray dogs wandering about theBar, which I know you don’t see that often at bars. So my question for you is, is that a true story or am I making it up

April McMurrey:

As you began this? I think I would say making it up, but you know what? Sometimes reality and truth is stranger than fiction.

Jared Correia:

Well, your sense is correct. I was mostly telling the truth. There were actually three stray dogs, not four, but everything else I said was true. Is that the kind of experience one could expect coming out to Colorado or is that an outlier?

April McMurrey:

I’m going to say it’s an outlier. At least I’m hoping it’s an outlier.

Jared Correia:

Yeah. So I went into this bar and there’s this guy who was like, no clothes on, just doing a shot. And the bartender’s like, bill, put your clothes back on. This happened regularly.

April McMurrey:

Jared, what was theBar?

Jared Correia:

Good times?

April McMurrey:

I can’t remember the name. You can’t remember the name.

Jared Correia:

I blocked it out of my memory. I’ll find out. I’ll let you know offline. I probably should have looked it up so that people can avoid it or go there depending on what you want to do.

April McMurrey:

I should clarify. I mainly wanted to avoid it, but yes,

Jared Correia:

That’s fair. That’s fair. Me too. All right. I’m going to give you that one. You’re one for one, the dog thing that was tricky and shady. I’m not going to do that to you. Okay. Number two, the Denver International Airport has on his grounds a giant statue of a Mustang nicknamed Lucifer like Satan, Lucifer. It’s got red eyes, glowing, red eyes, blue testicles, and at one point during its construction, a section fell off of the sculpture and killed the sculptor. People listening outside of Colorado, they’re probably like, this sounds fake, but is this true? April, is there such a statue?

April McMurrey:

Oh, oh yes. A hundred percent. The statue exists and there is some story behind it, but you can’t miss it.

Jared Correia:

It’s right outside the airport, right?

April McMurrey:

It’s right outside the airport when you’re driving out airport. It’s interesting.

Jared Correia:

As freaky as hell is what it is. Did you know that part about the sculptor dying?

April McMurrey:

I don’t know. Jared, I wondered if you were going to ask me if that piece was true, because I knew

Jared Correia:

It’s really true.

April McMurrey:

I knew he was deceased. I don’t know if I knew that. It was in conjunction with the creation of Lucifer.

Jared Correia:

He was killed because when he was building it, a support beam fell off and part of the sculpture fell on him and it killed him. This is the creepiest piece of communal architecture I’ve ever seen. If you’re the Denver International Airport is definitely worth your time. Alright, let’s keep going. Okay, you’re two for two. Alright. I’ll make things a little bit easier and less

April McMurrey:

Crazy

Jared Correia:

From here on out. Is it true that you can’t buy a car on Sunday in Colorado? Is that really true?

April McMurrey:

I think that that is no longer true.

Jared Correia:

Ah, okay. Educate us. Blue laws reversed.

April McMurrey:

Yeah. I’m trying to think though, Jared, because our grocery stores now can sell alcohol. So the issue of not buying alcohol on Sundays and having liquor stores closed,

Jared Correia:

Look at you guys modernize,

April McMurrey:

Right? Indeed. We also recently passed a law that you can’t hold your phone while driving.

Jared Correia:

That’s good though. I like that.

April McMurrey:

It is good. It’s challenging for some of us. I will confess that it’s hard.

Jared Correia:

So on any given Sunday in Colorado, I go buy a car, stock it full of liquor, and then just put my, as long as I put my phone down,

April McMurrey:

I’m

Jared Correia:

Good to go.

April McMurrey:

I have to pause on the car one. I’m not sure that piece, I’m not sure. But the other two I can tell you it’s a yes. Yeah,

Jared Correia:

We’re not really into fact checking around here. Okay. Alright, we get another one. So I am saying you’re three for three. We could be in line for a perfect rum Pro score, which is, lemme tell you, very rare Jolly Ranchers. Are you familiar with Jolly Ranchers candies?

April McMurrey:

Oh, I am.

Jared Correia:

They’re delicious. What’s your favorite flavor?

April McMurrey:

Watermelon.

Jared Correia:

Yeah, good choice. I am a green apple guy myself. Jolly Ranchers were invented by Colorado residents in 1949. True or false?

April McMurrey:

You know what I’m going to say? True

Jared Correia:

And you’ll be correct.

April McMurrey:

Okay. So I had a friend growing up. Her dad worked for Jolly Ranchers, jolly Rancher, and when I would spend the night there, she would take us in her parents’ closet. When you opened it, it was boxes and boxes. It was just a wonderful, wonderful treat to partake of.

Jared Correia:

Sounds like heaven.

April McMurrey:

All these boxes of jolly Ranchers, and you could take as many as you wanted. So I had a sense of our Colorado connection. I did not know they were created here. So you’ve enlightened me.

Jared Correia:

Good guess so. Okay. So Bill and Dorothy Harmson invented Jolly Ranchers in 1949 in Golden, Colorado, where I think Coors is located too. They opened an ice cream shop and they named it Jolly Rancher to evoke a friendly western feel.

April McMurrey:

Oh, I like it. How about that? How about that? I like it. I like

Jared Correia:

It. Okay, I got two more and you get a perfect score. Simply two more. No pressure.

April McMurrey:

Alright.

Jared Correia:

No pressure. The last two will be a little tougher.

April McMurrey:

I’m

Jared Correia:

Just going to lay it out there. Denver is the only city to ever turn down hosting the Winter Olympics once it was awarded. Is that true or false? It’s a tough one.

April McMurrey:

I’m going to say false, but the fact you’re asking makes me wonder if it’s true, but I’m going to say false.

Jared Correia:

Well, you were so close to the perfect score, but we’ve lost it.

April McMurrey:

We should,

Jared Correia:

But I wouldn’t expect you to remember this. Okay, so, or even have heard of this.

April McMurrey:

Tell me about it. Tell me about it.

Jared Correia:

Denver was award the 1976 Winter Olympic Games in May, 1970, and they beat Vancouver and other cities, but they realized that the costs were going to be too high for them to put it on, and then public opinion turned and they basically gave it back. Bonus question.

April McMurrey:

Wow. Okay.

Jared Correia:

Do you know where the 1976 Winter Olympics ended up being held? Was far away from Denver. This is not part of the actual trivia, but

April McMurrey:

No, just

Jared Correia:

A little fact.

April McMurrey:

I don’t. And Jared, you know, that was a momentous year for me just coming into Colorado for the first time. That’s the year of my birth. So enlighten me to enlighten me.

Jared Correia:

Innsbrook, Austria.

April McMurrey:

Oh,

Jared Correia:

Innsbrook, Austria. I know how they made that

April McMurrey:

Determination a good competitor. Fascinating. How didn’t know that.

Jared Correia:

We’ll have our research team that doesn’t exist. Get on that. Okay, last one. We got one more for you. This I thought was really interesting.

April McMurrey:

Okay.

Jared Correia:

The mountainous regions of Colorado, just the mountains are six times the size of Austria. Is that true?

April McMurrey:

Just the mountainous portion of Colorado.

Jared Correia:

Just the mountains.

April McMurrey:

Yeah. So are Western Slope six times the size of Austria. I don’t know that I have a great sense of the size of Austria and that would be helpful right now. That’s how I would phone

Jared Correia:

Frame. That’s why we do these live. Don’t want anybody looking shit up,

April McMurrey:

Let’s say. Let’s say yes. Let’s, I’m going to say yes.

Jared Correia:

Oh

April McMurrey:

No. Well, we should have stopped while we were

Jared Correia:

Ahead. I know. We should have just done the floor. I was pretty devious about this one. The mountainous areas of Colorado are actually six times the size of Switzerland.

April McMurrey:

Oh. Oh my goodness.

Jared Correia:

Okay. That was nasty. Now I feel bad.

April McMurrey:

No, you’ve been wonderfully kind and generous helping me with a number of these, so

Jared Correia:

I have no complaints. We like to make it fun. 9,600 miles of fishing streams, 2,850 lakes and over 1000 mountain peaks that are at least two miles high. All things I didn’t know. In other words, everyone, there’s a lot of mountains in Colorado, in case you didn’t know.

April McMurrey:

It’s a pretty spectacular place.

Jared Correia:

April, thanks for coming on, for being a good sport, for doing the rump roasts. I appreciate it.

April McMurrey:

Hey, thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it.

Jared Correia:

Take care. If you want to find out more about April McMurray and the Colorado Supreme Court Office of Attorney Regulation, visit Colorado legal regulation.com. All three words smooshed together, Colorado legal regulation.com. Now, for those of you listening in Old Roach in Colorado as opposed to New Roach, Colorado, I suppose I’ve got a playlist full of Colorado songs for you. There are lots and lots of songs about Colorado, by the way. A lot of musicians live there. Sadly, I’ve run out of time today to discuss different types of pastries, but I’ll remain open to that discussion at any time at a later date. This is Jared Correia. That’s all folks.

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