Goodlawyer’s Code of Conduct for Lawyers

Introduction and Context

How to Use This Document

Standards of Conduct

Rule of Play 1 — Be Professional and Ethical

• Act with the highest degree of professionalism and ethical behaviour in your interactions with others. This means that your actions must not only be legally compliant, but must also show a commitment to honesty, fairness, and professionalism. Be a good lawyer and a good person.

• Uphold the principles of the Code and any other ethics codes you have agreed to be bound by through admission to a law society, bar, or Barreau, as well any other licensing or registration requirements to be a qualified lawyer.

• Adhere to the Goodlawyer Terms of Service and other applicable policies or agreements Lawyers have required to follow.

• Never initiate or participate in any intentional activity that may risk lawyer disciplinary action or any other civil or criminal process.

• Act with integrity by being honest, equitable, and consistent in your words, behaviour, and choices.

• Demonstrate integrity by being transparent in disclosing the basis for pricing or charging for your services.

• Protect your reputation.

• Protect Goodlawyer’s brand and reputation as if it were your own.

Rule of Play 2 — Relentlessly Deliver High Quality Work

• Always produce and give high quality work.

• Offer clients personalized advice and recommend products and services suited to their needs. To give them the right advice or deliverable, you must know their business, their financial situation, and understand their priorities and concerns.

• Only accept client mandates that you’re competent to serve. Only take on legal matters in which you are confident and competent. Be open and honest with Goodlawyer staff, yourself, and clients about any limitations in your experience, knowledge, and capabilities in the related area, or anything else that may affect your handling of the matter.

• If you’re not the right Lawyer for a particular job, refer the client to Goodlawyer's customer support team so we can find a more suitable professional for their current need.

• Do not sacrifice quality just to get the job done for the price you quoted.

• We’re all human and mistakes happen. When they do, be honest and take responsibility. Never hide, or try to hide, any mistakes you discover, whether it’s with Goodlawyer or the client. Once you discover a mistake — whether it’s in your work, advice, a bill, or something else — promptly contact Goodlawyer's customer support team for help in resolving any issues.

• Avoid overpromising and under delivering. Be realistic with your capacity to meet client timelines.

• Make sure the work and the advice you give are tailored to the client’s risk tolerance.

• Communicate to your audience. Communicate in business terms, not legal terms. Keep correspondence simple, straightforward, and free of any legal jargon.

Rule of Play 3 — Offer Phenomenal Customer Service

• Treat a Goodlawyer client with the same care, attention and professionalism as one of your non-Goodlawyer clients. This applies to quality of work, responsiveness, prioritizing files, meeting deadlines, etc.

• Adopt a client-centric mentality. Be a service partner, not a service provider. We do this by:
• Promptly responding to client communications.
• Maintaining a consistently upbeat attitude, even with difficult clients.
• Actively listening to clients and not being on “autopilot.” Show clients they are valued by being focused and present.
• Telling clients how long you expect things to take and updating them on progress.
• Seeing a client as a person and not “just another job.” Build a rapport when you first meet them. Let your personality shine through.
• Sending new clients a welcome message prior to an initial consultation.
• Being mindful of where you take calls from. Don’t take calls in your car, in a crowded or noisy space, or while walking outside.
• Dressing appropriately and having a good setup for video calls (lighting, background, etc.)
• Being punctual and prepared for all scheduled meetings.

• When a client contacts you, you must respond or acknowledge receipt of their communication promptly; barring any emergencies, this should be by the next business day.

• Deliver on your commitments.

• Always give clients advanced notice if you cannot meet a deadline.

• Reach a clear understanding with the client before starting any work. Make sure you both understand the objectives, scope, timeline, action plan, fees, and the expected outcomes of the project.

• Let active clients know when you will be unreachable or out of office.

• Inform clients of any changes in matter scope as soon as possible along with an explanation for those changes.

Rule of Play 4 — Be Transparent and Fair When Charging for Your Services

• Goodlawyer is committed to fairness and transparency in the delivery of legal services and in charging and collecting fees. You are expected to honour and uphold this commitment by:
• Working with clients to design relevant and accurately scoped legal engagements and corresponding price estimates to address their area of legal need. When fixed fee engagements are not possible, give the client the best information you can on the expected cost;
• Substantiating the basis for pricing your services. Goodlawyer is not responsible for explaining your quotes to your clients;
• Charging fees that are representative of reasonable market rates for the mandate at hand, as completed by a Lawyer of your experience and expertise;
• Charging fees that are less than or equal to the fees you charge to non-Goodlawyer clients;
• being upfront about any required changes to the scope of a matter and explaining the reasoning for any changes in fees;
• never surprising clients with the timing of a bill or unexpected charges on an invoice;
• never nickel and diming clients with disbursements or other miscellaneous charges. Costs for administrative or business overhead expenses (e.g., printing, postage, couriers, long distance calls, etc) are not to be charged to clients.

• Send all quotes for legal services through the Platform for the client’s acceptance. Don’t start work until the client accepts the quote through the Platform or otherwise gives you written acceptance of the quote and confirms that you can change the quote status from pending to accepted.

Rule of Play 5 — Respect Our Shared Relationship in Serving Goodlawyer Clients and New Client Opportunities

• You and Goodlawyer share an economic relationship with all clients and new client opportunities generated by and served through the Goodlawyer Platform. Lawyers are required to honour this shared relationship by never taking clients or prospective clients “off platform” to circumvent Goodlawyer’s service and/or administrative fees.

• You must never bill Goodlawyer clients or new client opportunities generated by Goodlawyer Platform without the use of Goodlawyer’s billing Platform unless otherwise ensuring that Goodlawyer receives its service and/or administrative fees.

• By way of example, your shared economic relationship with Goodlawyer includes:
• any fixed-fee services solicited, booked or otherwise generated through the Goodlawyer Platform;
• any unique scope of legal work or custom advisory services solicited, booked or otherwise generated through the Goodlawyer Platform
• any fractional legal counsel engagements, secondments or employment opportunities solicited, booked or otherwise generated through the Goodlawyer Platform
• legal service mandates, in the nature of any of the foregoing, requested by a Goodlawyer client
• legal service mandates, in the nature of any of the foregoing, that, but for your association with Goodlawyer, you would not have known about
• For example, Jane’s client (off platform) approaches her for IP work. Jane seeks an IP referral through the Good-Lawyers Huddle Slack workspace. That IP work, whether provided to Jane to pass through to her client, or directly to Jane’s client, is a Goodlawyer job, to which our shared economic relationship applies. But for Goodlawyer, Jane would not have been able to efficiently service the needs of her client.

• Do not directly or indirectly solicit clients or Lawyers for a competitive platform, product, service, or service provider, including advertising on the Platform to recruit clients or Lawyers to join another legal services platform or company.

Rule of Play 6 — Contribute to the Goodlawyer Community

• The Goodlawyer community is a place of respect, trust, kindness, fairness, and camaraderie.

• Use our community channels and events to connect with your fellow Lawyers. We love it when Lawyers welcome newcomers, respond to questions, celebrate each other’s wins, and post about something they've seen or read recently.

• While you might ask more questions when you first join the Goodlawyer community, remember to then help newcomers by sharing experiences, answers, and links to anything you found useful when you were starting.

• Be open to working with, learning from, or mentoring other Lawyers.

• Share your experiences, precedents, and best practices.

• Look for ways to collaborate with other Lawyers, especially on larger files or client referrals.

Rule of Play 7 — Support Goodlawyer’s Continuous Improvement.

• We expect all Lawyers to use the tools we provide through our Platform, including for billing and invoicing, client and file management, client communication, secure file exchange, task management, etc.

• We welcome feedback and suggestions about our Platform or operations, including any bugs, errors, or other issues you may encounter. The more feedback we get, the better we become.

• You are responsible for staying up to date with the changes and improvements Goodlawyer continuously makes to our Platform, workflows, and business practices.

• Never stop learning about what’s happening at Goodlawyer by participating in monthly Lawyer Huddles, training or demo sessions, reading the Playbook or other Goodlawyer communications, testing and using Goodlawyer resources, and staying informed of changes in our policies.

Rule of Play 8 — Drive Positive Change in the Legal Industry

• Access to Justice: Leading legal industry reports tell us that 77% of legal problems go unaddressed, ignored or unsupported with professional help. We call this the access to justice crisis, it causes major issues for the public and it’s what inspired Goodlawyer. Goodlawyer can help promote greater equity and fairness in the legal system.

• Efficiency: Goodlawyer aims to streamline legal processes and make them more efficient, accurate and scalable. We want to reduce the costs and improve the speed and accuracy of legal services.

• Transparency: Goodlawyer promotes transparency in the legal profession by providing information about legal processes and fees to improve and restore public trust and to promote greater accountability for the legal profession.

• Innovation: Together, we can drive innovation in the legal profession by encouraging the development of new technologies and approaches to legal service delivery.

Breach of Conduct and Enforcement

Getting Help

• The Goodlawyer customer service team

• Lawyers working for Goodlawyer (e.g., Pauline Chan, Matt Scrivens, or Marty Finestone)

• Goodlawyer’s General Counsel, Josh Weinberger

• A mentor or other Lawyer

Feedback

Acknowledgement