The times are a changing. Nearly every year I have attended a three day seminar that is provided (for a fee!) by the State Bar of Texas that is called the Advanced Personal Injury Law Seminar. The purpose is to meet Continuing Education Requirements, meet the requirements of the Texas Board of Legal Specialization and to keep up with the new case law, new statutes and new developments in trying lawsuits.
The Texas Board of Legal Specialization requires an attorney specialized in personal injury to have at least 20 hours of continuing legal education a year in their field of specialty. In addition to the personal injury seminar, I have also attended seminars for family law attorneys, criminal law attorneys and civil litigation.
The personal injury seminar covers a multitude of topics, focusing on evidence, new case law, new statutes and new topics in the personal injury field. Motor vehicle accident cases, product liability cases, medical negligence cases, premises liability cases and uninsured/underinsured motorist cases are some of the topics covered. One topic that has increasingly been discussed is medical liens. Medical liens involve hospital liens, statutory liens, ERISA liens, Medicare liens, Medicaid liens and health insurance liens. Resolving a lien issue in a case is sometimes the key to working out a settlement.
Additionally, in keeping up it is a challenge to keep information current and accurate on the Internet. An individual emailed me (thankfully!) and said she had been receiving some of my calls, which is not a good thing for lots of reasons. It took a while, but I found an Internet posting on Google that had my telephone number off by one digit. This error was redirecting calls to the person who fortunately contacted my office. It's not an easy fix to change information on the Internet. Not only did I find this error, but also found some old telephone numbers coming up under my name. So we went to work on fixing that as well. I've learned a lot more than I ever imagined I would about managing information on the Internet, and it's definitely an ongoing process.
I recently handled an expunction hearing without any significant issues before the Court and the Court granted the order to remove the criminal history. But, the real challenge is getting it off of the Internet! The client and my office have been working to clean up the information on the Internet and it takes diligence to make that happen.
If you run across an Internet content problem, I am reluctantly becoming skilled with dealing with the same!