No Tennessee lawyer has been disciplined for lack of competence or neglect for mistakes made in complying with the statutory procedural provisions affecting healthcare liability or medical malpractice actions.

If a lawyer agrees to communicate with a client by means of text messages, or allows the client to do so with her consent, then the lawyer is obliged to respond to text messages from the client under Tennessee Rule of Professional Conduct 1.4, just as she is required to respond to telephone communications.

A lawyer may ethically include in her contingent-fee agreement with her client a provision that provides for payment of an hourly rate if the client declines a reasonable settlement offer.

Under certain circumstances, a lawyer may renegotiate a fee agreement with a client where the circumstances of the representation change significantly, but the lawyer need not comply with the requirements of Tennessee Rules of Professional Conduct 1.8(a) on business transactions with a client.

It is unethical for a lawyer to accept outside counsel guidelines from organizational clients that try to define who the lawyer’s clients are.

Prosecutors are governed in writing about their cases by Tennessee Rule of Professional Conduct 1.8(d) concerning literary rights of clients.

Lawyers have an ethical duty to review and be aware of metadata associated with electronic documents they produce in discovery.

Under the Tennessee Rules of Professional Conduct 1.8(a) and 1.5, a lawyer may be able to secure an existing divorce client’s outstanding, and perhaps future, fee obligation with a mortgage against the client’s property.

Crowdfunding with services like KickStarter is unethical under the ethics rules of every jurisdiction.

Under Tennessee Rule of Professional Conduct 1.10, is one lawyer in a prosecutor’s office is disqualified from a particular case because of a conflict under Rules 1.7 or 1.9, every other lawyer in that office is also disqualified.

Under Tennessee Rule of Professional Conduct 1.18, a lawyer has no obligation to maintain any confidentiality of communications with prospective clients, unless they eventually become clients.

Federal prosecutors may freely post online about developments in their cases because state ethics rules do not apply to them.