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How's this for a depressing lead sentence, from the Modesto Bee: "The recession has driven an increasing number of California lawyers to cheat and steal, say State Bar officials, who expect to discipline or expel hundreds of them."  As the economy toughened, I had expected firms to make marginally more risky choices about client intake, but I hadn't assumed that theft was an option.    . . . .     Are "unbundled services" the future of the "middle class" of the legal profession?  Unbundled services are increasingly common in family courts across the country.  But even at the expensive end of the profession, we are seeing the "disaggregation" of legal work, by which the client breaks the job into pieces and farms out each piece to a cost effective provider.  I wrote a risk management piece on that ( Download BeazleyBrief_0109-3 ), and Mitt Regan and Palmer Heenan are writing a major article on it.   . . . .    Here's a blurb on a NY legal malpractice case that raises issues of "but for" causation, the lawyer's alleged failure to anticipate that key evidence would be excluded, and the risk management importance of giving clients good advice, in writing if possible, about the pro's and con's of settlement.

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