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Program Details
2026-11-24 12:00:00
Over 1,000+ webinars
Course Overview
2026-11-24 12:00:00
2h CLE Credits
Intermediate
2
This session examines the concrete legal consequences that follow when incivility enters the litigation record. It opens with the fee-reduction pathway, showing how a court can reduce a prevailing party’s fee award through negative lodestar multipliers. It then walks through the sanctions taxonomy under inherent power, § 1927, and Rule 11, and the threshold incivility must reach before each applies. Bar discipline follows, covering the Model Rules, the California Supreme Court’s September 2025 rejection of proposed Rule 8.4.2, the disciplinary tools that remain, and how deposition or discovery misconduct translates into a license suspension, including the role of contrition. The session closes with practical risk management for protecting clients and the litigation record, including steps that keep incivility out of a published opinion or a fee-reduction order, followed by Q&A and takeaways.
This session gives litigators a step-by-step framework for documenting an opponent’s misconduct during depositions and written discovery, from the first improper objection through a fully supported sanctions motion. It begins with the rule framework: what conduct is sanctionable under FRCP 30(d)(2), what the record needs to show, and how Rule 37 and state-level innovations like Nevada’s AO 22-08 create enforceable duties. It then turns to ABA Formal Opinion 508, its coaching guardrails for remote depositions, and how to put those ground rules on the record. Case law shows what courts have sanctioned and the transcript-analysis and evidentiary techniques they rely on when awarding sanctions or terminating sanctions. The tactical toolkit covers building the same incremental record in interrogatories, document requests, and boilerplate objections; meet-and-confer letter strategy; video-deposition ground rules; when to adjourn and seek a protective order versus pressing on; and the limits of a defending attorney’s obligations when the client is the one misbehaving. The session closes with Q&A and takeaways.
Laffey Bucci D’Andrea Reich & Ryan, LLP
Laffey Bucci D’Andrea Reich & Ryan, LLP
Guy D’Andrea is a civil trial lawyer and Co-Managing Partner of Laffey Bucci D’Andrea Reich & Ryan, LLP in Philadelphia, with more than 100 jury trials and hundreds of bench trials behind him. He teaches deposition practice and advanced trial advocacy at Drexel University Thomas R. Kline School of Law. His practice is devoted to survivors of sexual and physical abuse in institutional settings, and he has litigated against the Catholic Church, the Southern Baptist Church, the Seventh-Day Adventists, the Evangelical Lutheran Churches of America, and Scientology, among others.
Laffey Bucci D’Andrea Reich & Ryan, LLP
Guy D’Andrea is a civil trial lawyer and Co-Managing Partner of Laffey Bucci D’Andrea Reich & Ryan, LLP in Philadelphia, with more than 100 jury trials and hundreds of bench trials behind him. He teaches deposition practice and advanced trial advocacy at Drexel University Thomas R. Kline School of Law. His practice is devoted to survivors of sexual and physical abuse in institutional settings, and he has litigated against the Catholic Church, the Southern Baptist Church, the Seventh-Day Adventists, the Evangelical Lutheran Churches of America, and Scientology, among others.
Requirements
The Alabama State Bar MCLE Commission requires attorneys to complete 12 credits, including 1 ethics, by December 31 of each year. All credits must be reported by February 15 of the following year. A maximum of 12 credits, including 1 ethics credit, may be carried over for 1 year only.
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