Pera Chairs PLI Webinar on “The Law and Ethics of NewLaw 2025”

Adams & Reese Partner Lucian Pera, one of the leading legal ethics practitioners in the nation, chaired a Practising Law Institute (PLI) webinar on “The Law and Ethics of NewLaw 2025.” The six-hour program offered up to seven hours of CLE credit and was one of the most widely attended in the program’s history.

The webinar brought together top legal ethics practitioners from around the globe to discuss new forms of law practices, new business arrangements between lawyers and others, new vehicles for the delivery of legal services, and the main issues surrounding NewLaw – purely online delivery of legal services by lawyers through virtual law firms, and its intersection with artificial intelligence (AI).

Pera was joined by speakers Merri A. Baldwin (Rogers Joseph O’Donnell P.C.), Brian S. Faughnan (Faughnan Law, PLLC), Crispin Passmore (Passmore Consulting), Trisha M. Rich (Holland & Knight LLP), Damien A. Riehl (vLex, LLC), Allen Rodriguez (ONE400), Anthony Sebok (Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law), Gregory Siskind (Siskind Susser PC), and Mark L. Tuft (Womble Bond and Dickinson LLP).

Lawyers and others are experimenting as never before with online document-preparation and para-professional services, with and without lawyer involvement. Service companies provide everything, but the lawyers, to a law firm, including client-lawyer matching and legal-services bidding sites, and do-it-yourself tools provided by law firms to clients and even non-clients.

The webinar discusses how dangers lurk all around – from great variation in rules among jurisdictions to licensure restrictions to restrictions on fee-sharing, ownership of law practices and law firms by those who are not lawyers, and the unauthorized practice of law (UPL).

At Adams & Reese, Pera is a Partner in the firm’s Memphis office. For more than 30 years and licensed in Tennessee and Arizona, Pera has practiced in commercial litigation, media law, legal ethics, and lawyer regulation – advising lawyers, law firms, and businesses on legal ethics, compliance, risk management, and innovative legal service models.

Recently, Pera published “The Playbook: How to Extend the Reach of an Arizona ABS Law Firm to the Entire United States,” in which he provides a practical survey of tools and models now used by innovators to deliver legal services and extend the reach of ABSs.

Pera is an award-winning lawyer recognized for his significant contributions to the field of legal ethics – receiving the prestigious Michael Franck Award from the ABA Center for Professional Responsibility. He has played a leadership role in revising the ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct and continues to be a prominent voice on the ethical challenges facing the evolving legal services market.