E21: Employee Communication with Special Guest Louise Hughes

In this episode, we talk with Wimberly Lawson Wright Daves & Jones' office manager Louise Hughes about the importance of effective employee communication. Resident expert Kathleen Jennings and her brother/podcast host Thom Jennings also chime in with some anecdotes and case studies in this spirited episode of the podcast.

Podcast Episode Transcript

Narrator (00:04):
You are listening to Cover Your Assets, a podcast that discusses the timely and significant legal issues faced by employers. Kathleen Jennings is an attorney who has over 30 years of experience in advising employers as to their legal responsibilities and has written extensively about employment law. Inner Popular Cover Your Assets blog. If your business has employees you cannot afford not to have your assets covered.

Thom Jennings (00:30):
Hello everyone. Welcome to the Cover Your Assets podcast. And before we begin, we just want to start with thanking everyone for tuning in and help us grow the podcast if you would please, and maybe write a nice review or share an episode. And we just received some interesting news via email and I'm not really sure what to make of it, but Kathleen, it looks like we are one of the top five podcasts in Morocco. How did that happen?

Kathleen Jennings (00:59):
I, I think that's fantastic news, Thom. I think that we can now say that we are an international success.

Thom Jennings (01:06):
Yeah. Morocco, I don't know who's listening in Morocco, but if you are thank you. And we would be happy. You know, I've, I've told my sister that one of my ultimate goals with this podcast is to take it on the road. And so if there is a Moroccan promoter out there, please, please contact us.

Kathleen Jennings (01:25):
Well, Thom, I think the road to Morocco's already been done.

Thom Jennings (01:29):
Oh, is that like, is that a Bing Crosby Bob Hope thing, or is that a Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis on?

Kathleen Jennings (01:35):
Yeah. Yeah. Probably most of our listeners will have no clue Right. What's all about. But for our, for our listeners of a certain age, they'll appreciate that reference.

Thom Jennings (01:44):
That's right. And speaking of listeners of a certain age, and we have a guest today and someone who's a, a fellow New Yorker, and now you're, we are recording this in two locations, one in New York and one in Georgia and down in Georgia. We have a fellow New Yorker to discuss our topic today. Kathleen, I'm gonna pass the pass this over to you. And please give us an introduction to our special guest today.

Kathleen Jennings (02:09):
Well, first of all, Thom, you didn't introduce me as the resident expert, so I am your resident expert, Kathleen Jennings. I'm an attorney, and today I happen to be in my law office in Atlanta, Georgia. And with me is a very special guest, Louise Hughes, who is our firm's administrator and woman of many talents. And she has agreed to join us for the podcast today to talk about our topic, which Thom is what

Thom Jennings (02:40):
The topic today is, employee communication. And and I will, and I will say that I didn't communicate to our listeners that you were indeed our resident expert slash slash attorney, but you know, you're, you, you're mentioned in the, the intro, so I don't know how much more introduction you need, <laugh>. Well,

Kathleen Jennings (02:58):
I, I always like the introduction, but Louise, tell our listeners a little bit about yourself and, and welcome to our podcast.

Louise Hughes (03:05):
Well, thank you. I am Louise Hughes. I've lived in Atlanta since I moved here from New York State, and that is upstate New York as opposed to New York City since 1977. Done a lot of things, but right now I'm helping these folks manage their law firm. So I do everything that isn't law.

Kathleen Jennings (03:32):
And, and when she says everything, she means everything because attorneys need a lot of handholding. I don't know that people are aware of that, but not all attorneys are great business people, and so this is a business, and luckily we have Louise here to help us run the business like a business.

Thom Jennings (03:53):
Yeah, and, and you know, it, it's important regardless of what business you're in, to be able to communicate effectively with your employees. And in terms of it becoming a legal issue, I'm sure that, that we can all think of examples where a potential issue related to anything from discrimination to a person feeling that they've been disrespected could potentially turn into a lawsuit. So this is an important topic, not just for attorneys, but for all HR people. So, Louise, I wanna start out with, you know, first of all, when, when you have something that needs to be communicated to the entire workforce, what do you find is the most effective way to get the message to everyone?

Louise Hughes (04:38):
Well, I go back to the three basics of communication, which are tell them what you're gonna tell them, then tell them, and then tell them what you told them. And I do that through email and in person early and often.

Thom Jennings (04:58):
And you know, I I'm glad that you mentioned in email and in person, because I know we, we talked a little bit about this before the show and, and the importance of it that, you know, in as much as we like to think that email communication is the be all end all, and I know that there's, there's, there's different camps. Some people say, oh, everything's gotta be on paper. And there's other people like, oh, everything's gotta be on email, or everything's gotta be in person. But I, I think you'll agree that you really have to make sure that everybody, that you, that you take into consideration everybody's comfort level with technology and maybe, you know, the best way to communicate with, with people on an individual basis, rather than assuming that everybody communicates the same way that you do.

Louise Hughes (05:43):
Oh, yeah, absolutely. I think there are probably as many different communication styles as there are people in the world, and some people understand things very directly when you put it succinctly. And some people sometimes need you to come at things sideways. And that, that puts a burden on anybody that is trying to work with very, and, and I'll say this about attorneys, a really actually very creative set of people because they are looking to solve problems for their clients. And it takes a lot more creativity than you would think it might.

Thom Jennings (06:33):
Well, and I would imagine too, just from, just from a monetary standpoint, you know, you're, you're looking at if a message doesn't get to the right person or it doesn't get to the workplace you could lose, you could lose a client's business and really cause some problems on their end as well.

Louise Hughes (06:49):
Oh, absolutely. And, and that has happened. I'm sure that there are many, many cases that every can, everyone can always think about, whether it's very plain to see in, in sales, you know, communication style from a salesperson. And believe me, attorneys are also salespeople because they have to sell their time to their client and sell their expertise to their clients. And yeah, if they don't recognize the communication style that their client prefers, they can lose a client very easily.

Thom Jennings (07:26):
And Kathleen, I know that, that we've brought this up, in fact, it was our, our inaugural episode, our very first one. We, we talked about ocean inspection. So let's, let's talk about maybe in, in some cases that you deal with, if you're working with someone that has an upcoming ocean inspection or they know an inspector is on site, I mean, I, I would assume you would, you would wanna let your, your client communicate to their staff that there's gonna be an ocean inspection and at least, you know, watch what you're doing during that period of time.

Kathleen Jennings (07:57):
Well, and this, this kind of touches on the issue from the lawyer's perspective of what do we wanna have in writing and what don't we wanna have in writing? So in the case of an upcoming ocean inspection, what I would like to see in writing is something that shows that the employer cares about safety and is reinforcing the training that's already been done. I don't want something in writing that says, Hey, you better clean up your area for the first time in 50 years because we're gonna have an ocean inspector here. So from the attorney's perspective, we like to see things in writing that help us, and we don't like to see things in writing that hurt us. So when you're sending an email, think about how is this gonna look in front of a jury of people who know nothing about you and nothing about your business.

Thom Jennings (08:51):
And, and to you, Louise, I, you know, with, with Kathleen bringing up a an excellent point, E everything is documented if you put in the form of an email or if it's paper, or I guess to a certain extent, you never know if something's recorded. So even verbal communication can be recorded as well. What are some of the things that you take into consideration in terms of like tone and way that you communicate things to the workforce that I, I, I guess, you know, to, to, to put it in simpler terms, how do you make sure that the words that you use are not misconstrued?

Louise Hughes (09:26):
I, i try not to say really <laugh>. And I, I, I mean that truly there are times when I am, have been in a, in a meeting and I have communicated at the meeting through my words that things were going to be done a certain way. And an example is we have a small staff, and in September we have three of our top people who will be out on vacation in some overlapping time space for that. And so one of the things that we talked about in a staff meeting and told everybody about was, oh, please be sure you do not schedule a doctor's appointments, or we can't, you know, avoid anything that is unforeseen, but if you can avoid doctor's appointments or dental appointments or anything that cross this timeframe, that would cause you to not be in the office. When we have the three highest powered staff people out who also are working with the, you know, the firm anyway, the what I had the next day was somebody say, well, I have to take such and such a day off because, you know, that's the, when I can get my next doctor's appointment.

Louise Hughes (10:54):
And it was like, what did we talk about yesterday? I mean, and it was really hard for me to not say, say really <laugh>.

Thom Jennings (11:02):
Yeah. But that's, that's, that's very important though. I mean, it, it, it really tho those one word responses can get, can get you into a lot of trouble. I mean, it, it said that's a form of community. And I think, you know, I, I don't know if you were aware, I assume you were aware you were, were saying, but even the verbiage that you used in terms of, you know, say if you can avoid it, as opposed to making things sound so rigid. And, and it, it's funny that that employee obviously didn't get the message because you did say that. You're like, look, if you gotta take, if you gotta make an appointment, make the appointment, we're not telling you not to seek medical attention. Or if you had a doctor's appointment already scheduled, but don't just schedule one on this day because this is an important day for you to be here.

Louise Hughes (11:45):
Right.

Kathleen Jennings (11:48):
Yeah. There's some emails that, and this is from the, well, I guess just in general, there are some people that I consider so annoying that I have a 24 hour rule that I will not respond to an email for 24 hours because if I respond right away, I am likely to say something that is less than professional. So the, sometimes I, if somebody sends you an email that is obnoxious or annoying or even inappropriate, it's not a good idea to respond in kind. You really have to rise above that kind of thing. And, and that goes for everybody because as, as our mother used to tell us two wrongs, don't make a right.

Thom Jennings (12:39):
I don't, I don't remember our mother telling us that. Did she really tell us that?

Kathleen Jennings (12:44):
She told us that all the time.

Thom Jennings (12:47):
<Laugh>, I guess I was just doing so many things wrong that she never gave, she just figured 300,

Kathleen Jennings (12:53):
You had

Thom Jennings (12:54):
Trunks. Yes.

Kathleen Jennings (12:54):
You don't need to do anything more wrong. <Laugh> a hole in the head, <laugh>, that didn't even work.

Thom Jennings (13:01):
Oh, goodness. So Luis, do you, do you have any stories that come to mind of maybe a, you know, an an email or a, a message or something that needed to get out that really just, just one of going wrong, maybe through nobody's fault of their own, but you know, you look back in retrospective and said, man, I'm never gonna do that again.

Louise Hughes (13:22):
Well, fortunately, I, I, I don't have any from here, but I do have a phishing email story where here in our law firm, we have a couple of, perhaps a little bit older attorneys, and I have two attorneys who do not use a computer, which means they have a legal assistant for that. And so all of their emails come through their legal assistant. And so one of the things that happens in the world today is people get all kinds of emails purporting to be from people they do not know. I'm on the board of an association of legal administrators, and I receive an email. I was, I've been the treasurer for a couple of years. And every year as the officers changed, as the president changed and the secretary changed and the vice president changed, I would get an email or two or three from the person who was currently the president saying, Hey Louise, can you pay this bill via Venmo?

Louise Hughes (14:39):
You know, I'm, I'm out of the office and I can't do it right now, and I I need you to do it. And then, you know, they're very nicely saying, yeah, this is, this is Amy, or this is Anne. And and so the first thing I do is I pick up the phone and I call 'em and I say, are you asking me to Venmo money out of the association to you or to somebody else? And they're like, I'm sorry, I don't know what you're talking about. And it's like, good, it was spam. But in the office here, we received an email from our major partner, we all received this email and it said, I'm running late and could you stop by somewhere and pick up some iTune gift cards in a specific denomination? I need five of them. And and that came from our senior partner. Now our senior partner is one of those people who does not use a computer. As a matter of fact, he usually hands his phone to somebody when he says, can you look up, make this thing look up where I can find a barber? 

Louise Hughes (15:53):
So, so I, I'm came out of my office and I said, did anybody else get this email? And people were like, oh, yes, we got it, we got it. I said, okay. This is phishing. You know, I mean, this is w when was the last time that some this partner came to you? The email when he was already in the office And they were like, well, he doesn't, he comes around and talks to us. And it's like, yeah. But I did have one attorney who had gotten up from their desk and run over to Target, and then actually we called him and he said, well, good. I was just about to call and say that I can't find that denomination of iTunes gift cards. And it's like, good cause it's not real. Since then, we've had a, a change of IT policies and we now do fishing tests every month, and I get a report. But that's, that's a, that's an interesting thing that happens in today's world where email people just expect it came through the email and they assume that it came from the person that they received it from.

Thom Jennings (17:08):
Yeah, I, I mean that, and that's it, that's a huge issue. I mean, that could cost from a lot of money if they, they bite into some, I mean, l luckily this one only happened to be iTunes cards. But, and, and I'm, I mean, I wonder, well, I guess people don't realize too that it's, if you are really determined to, to phish that they'll, they'll figure out a way to, to take an email address a legitimate email address and, and send out an email. So I mean, how did you recognize other than the fact that you knew the individual, I mean, other, other than that, did the email look like it was authentic?

Louise Hughes (17:45):
It looked like a very casual email. But it was coming from a person who doesn't know casual email.

Thom Jennings (17:54):
Yeah, that's crazy. Now just just outta curiosity, I I don't know how you do it. I know I've worked a lot of different places and they have different ways of, of handling things, especially when it comes to memos, whether it's electronic or in paper, everything. And it's, we're on paper, everything. And some, some people say, oh, reply to this email just to prove that you got it. Most programs will show whether you've opened an email or not, and some people use sign in sheets and all that kind of stuff. Is there anything that you do to ensure that you have some record that says this message was sent out and everybody received it?

Louise Hughes (18:33):
You know, in, in email today, you can do that. You can actually put settings on the email. I don't depend on just email to communicate things that have to be communicated around the firm. So I, I have not made use of those tools on the email, mainly because it would just increase the amount of email that came into my inbox. So one of the things we as a firm use is we use an electronic document management system and all client communications email and any notes that typically attorneys take when they make phone calls are stored in that electronic document management system. And and that is really how, and, and of course, you know, especially when a, an attorney is calling a client, they are memorialized in a billing entry <laugh>. So those are those,

Thom Jennings (19:36):
Of course, we would not want attorneys not to be able to bill for every phone call. I agree with that.

Louise Hughes (19:41):
Well, I, I mean, you know, I, I think, I think that people do have to remember that attorneys, what they're selling is their time. True.

Thom Jennings (19:49):
No, I agree. I I'm only picking on my sister Louise. It just, you know, just remind, it's, it's that old stereotype. I, I used to read a lot of John Grisham novels and that was always the big, the big thing was that the, the billable hours, you know, but but I digress

Kathleen Jennings (20:04):
Actually. That is a big thing for us, and it still is. So that's how we make our money.

Louise Hughes (20:12):
It is how they make their money, and

Kathleen Jennings (20:14):
It is, it's how we make our money.

Louise Hughes (20:15):
And it, I, you know, I have specific and strong feelings and opinions. <Laugh>, the attorneys have heard my opinions

Kathleen Jennings (20:23):
<Laugh>, but Thom, you know, I, I think going to the, to the fishing and the spam, one of the issues that also comes up where you have to make your employees aware of those types of fake emails is the, the cases where you're basically, you can get an email that will hold your system hostage and ask for a ransom in Bitcoin usually, which right now isn't worth a whole heck of a lot, but it, it can absolutely shut down your business if you don't have access to your servers because of this ransom demand. So that's another reason when we're talking about covering your assets, you want your employees to make sure that they're not clicking on strange attachments or replying to strange emails because that can have a really huge adverse effect on your business.

Thom Jennings (21:25):
And I would, I would imagine that from a labor and employment law perspective, that if a hacker was able to gain entry into your system, they would thus be able to find private information. And that's where you could be looking at a legal issue in terms of, you know, if you've stored employee social security numbers, medical information, any of that stuff, I mean, that could expose you to a heck of a lawsuit, wouldn't it?

Kathleen Jennings (21:51):
Absolutely. Yeah. It, it could. Yeah. If, if you don't protect that kind of private information in a way that would keep those kinds of hackers out, if you don't take any precautions, for example, you really are opening yourself up to possible legal action if something happens and the information is disclosed. And just for us from a, from a legal perspective, we have to make sure we protect the attorney-client privileged information as well. So and if you have a business with competitors, you certainly don't want your competitors hacking into your system and getting trade secrets or other information that may be used against you in a, in a competitive environment. So there's a lot of reasons why you want your employees to be savvy about emails that they open and don't open or know the procedure for reporting these types of emails to the correct person so that you can protect the company from any kind of attack or infiltration.

Thom Jennings (23:00):
And Louise, you, you mentioned something, you, you're doing a test in TER like every month that the firm is, is doing like a, a spam test. What, what did, what does that involve? I mean, that sounds interesting.

Louise Hughes (23:12):
Well, it is, it's something that a lot of IT support or IT management companies can offer to a company like ours or any company. And what they do is they actually create emails that are fishing types of emails and they count the clicks, they count how many people opened it, they count if anybody clicked on the thing that they were being asked to click on and they report it back to me. Our system also, if people fail it three months in a row, it automatically signs them up for a class and they have to spend about 30 minutes taking the class. And we do have some, we have had repeat offenders early on, but are happy to report that people are becoming a little bit more cautious. The other thing that happens of course, is when that happens in a month and it doesn't happen the same time, people call me up and they say, I got this email and it's from IT services at our email address. And it's like, okay, great, we don't have an IT services email. So yes, that is spam.

Kathleen Jennings (24:34):
Well, it's great and I'm happy to report that I have not been sent to spam school <laugh>, so apparently I have passed the spam tests and I'm, I'm very happy about that.

Thom Jennings (24:46):
And on an unrelated note I happen to be a fan of the actual spam meat, but I'm not allowed to have it in the house because my wife just absolutely ab whores it. So

Kathleen Jennings (24:57):
Because it's disgusting. Well,

Thom Jennings (25:00):
It's to each his own. But you know, I, I think going back to that practice, it, it's almost like, you know, my day gig is as a teacher, I mean, we do fire drills, we do fire drills because you never know when there's gonna be a fire. And it, it's a heck of a lot easier to make sure that the kids and the staff and everybody's attuned to heading out when there's a fire drill. So when a real fire happens, everybody knows what to do. Obviously the same thing with the spam. And I, I mean, I don't, we can't underscore enough that there's so many issues that you can run into if you're not just doing something like that. So if there's services out there, I'm, I'm not gonna rec recommend any in particular, unless they want to be our sponsor. Maybe we should talk to them, Kathleen. And 

Kathleen Jennings (25:42):
No, that's a great

Thom Jennings (25:43):
Idea. It's a great idea. But it sounds like a great service. There's a couple other quick things so we can wrap up cuz we're getting a, at a to about the 30 minute mark, which is where we like to be. And Louise, it's been great at, first of all, if I forget, I want to thank you very much as always. Well, not as always, but for this one time, I always thank my sister of course. And she always thanks me.

Kathleen Jennings (26:02):
I do, I, because I enjoy doing this

Thom Jennings (26:05):
<Laugh>. We've been having a good time doing this.

Kathleen Jennings (26:07):
Are you my favorite brother?

Thom Jennings (26:09):
<Laugh>. So, well,

Louise Hughes (26:10):
Thank, thank you both. I, I have enjoyed it.

Thom Jennings (26:13):
So let's start, there was something that you told me again before we got on air, which I thought was great and it wasn't anything that I had thought about. But you had mentioned something, a practice that you, when you have an employee meeting that you tell everyone there's something that they cannot do. And can you explain that and, and why you go ahead and do that?

Louise Hughes (26:32):
Well, sure. I I do have staff meetings typically about once a month and I try to keep them to 20 minutes or less, but, and because they're 20 minutes or less, I have asked people not to bring their cell phones into the meeting. And one of the reasons is that I had noticed that over the past couple of years, I have one person who would spend most of their time at the meeting not looking at me or not joining into the conversation, but spending that 20 minutes on their cell phone. And then after I would follow up on something that we had said in the meeting with that person, I was told, well, I never heard that before. And and again, i i, I don't wanna say really in front of them, but my tone probably becomes a little like that because I just have to say, well, it's something we talked about in the staff meeting and we made a point of it. And so I guess I'm telling you now twice.

Kathleen Jennings (27:40):
Yeah. And, and Thom, you know what? I think that's a, a topic for a future podcast, sort of re distracted working people using their cell phones at work or policies where people can't use their cell phones at work. I know we have some clients who don't allow it, but maybe we'll talk about that on a future podcast. What do you think?

Thom Jennings (28:03):
That sounds like a great topic. And then we'll, we'll close up with just one of my, we didn't really get to talk about it at length and we don't have to, but one of my, my amazing pet peeves when it comes to email and communication, and that is the email intended for one person that is sent to everyone. If anyone out there is doing that, please stop. And I will tell you, I'm announcing my candidacy for president of the United States for 2024. And the only issue I'm gonna run on is that if I am elected, I will outlaw that practice because I just think it's ludicrous.

Kathleen Jennings (28:38):
I I I will support you on that, Thom. I don't think if anybody enjoys that practice, then I don't understand them. It's not good for employee morale. It probably doesn't even directly address the problem that you're trying to address, because you could do that in a conversation or, I mean, these days, if the person is working remotely, you can do it in a Zoom or in a phone call. Yeah. I'm with you there. I will agree to be your vice president on that platform,

Thom Jennings (29:12):
<Laugh>. And we, we can, we're in different states. This actually works out, so Yeah. Yeah. And

Kathleen Jennings (29:17):
We're both old enough, just barely, I,

Thom Jennings (29:19):
My, my favorite ones are the, are like the real common sense ones. Like you got the one employee that's late every day, which could be me cuz I'm late every day, but anyhow, you know what I'm saying? So then they send out an email that says, just reminder, you're expected to be to work on time every day, <laugh>. I'm like, is this really an email? But I'm telling you, I've received that email at least a thousand times in my life. And you know what, if I'm your president, I promise none of you will receive that email again. Ever Lu Luis, will you be, will you be our communications director or press secretary or something?

Louise Hughes (29:56):
Well, actually I'm, I'm hoping not to be working in 2024. So <laugh>, I would respectfully decline.

Thom Jennings (30:04):
You

Kathleen Jennings (30:05):
Could be, we might be able to lure her out of retirement at that point. I

Thom Jennings (30:08):
Know. Hey, you know what, retirement is just a fancy word for getting paid to be a consultant, right? Come on, Louise. You know, we can, there you go. We could just, we could just throw you 20 grand to show up for one day and tell us something. You know what I mean? That's

Louise Hughes (30:20):
<Laugh>

Thom Jennings (30:21):
That's the ultimate gig. That's the one we're looking for. All right. Well, fantastic. Louise, thank you so much for being such a fantastic guest. Kathleen, why don't you handle the the takeaways and then we'll, we'll wrap this baby up today.

Kathleen Jennings (30:36):
Well, I guess the takeaways that we have from today's episode R think before you email, think about your tone, think about what you're saying, think about who you're sending it to, think about whether you really need to send that email to everybody, because if you do, it's not gonna make Thom happy. Also, make sure that your employees understand and recognize emails that could be dangerous. The spam, the fishing, the ransomware, anything suspicious if you need, if you want to go and get an outside vendor to help train them, that can only help the situation. But there's a lot of danger out there and you don't need your employees bringing it into your business.

Thom Jennings (31:25):
All right. And Louise, anything we missed?

Louise Hughes (31:28):
I don't think so, but thank you. All

Thom Jennings (31:30):
Right. Have, have, but the most important thing is, did you have a good time?

Louise Hughes (31:33):
I had a great time. And

Thom Jennings (31:35):
Do you understand why people in Morocco are flocking to this podcast?

Louise Hughes (31:39):
Absolutely. I see.

Thom Jennings (31:41):
All right. Well, again, this is your host, Thom, Janice, best

Kathleen Jennings (31:44):
Guest ever. Right?

Thom Jennings (31:46):
<Laugh> best guest ever. We do, we do since, well, you know, come on. My son was a guest. I mean,

Kathleen Jennings (31:52):
Junior was an excellent guest also.

Thom Jennings (31:54):
So Louise, as much as I, I loved having you guest

Kathleen Jennings (31:56):
One of the best guests ever. Yeah,

Thom Jennings (31:58):
<Laugh>, definitely. But thank you very much everybody out there for listening. We do appreciate it. Especially our listeners in Morocco, Russia. We prefer listeners in the United States and, you know, we did forget what's contact information, Kathleen, and then go ahead. I'll let you do the sign off.

Kathleen Jennings (32:15):
Wow. Well thanks Thom. And I wanna thank Louise also for stepping in and doing this with us. It's been a lot of fun. My information is K j j@wimlaw.com. I wanna thank everybody for listening. If you have any comments, suggestions, we'd love to hear them. Any ideas for topics, shoot 'em our, our way. Otherwise, be careful out there and cover your assets.

Podcast Disclaimer

The Cover Your Assets-The Labor and Employment Law Podcast is produced by Thom Jennings of the Caronia Media Group. For more details, you can contact him at thom@caroniamediagroup.com.

The information provided in this podcast is for informational purposes only and not for the purpose of providing legal advice. You should contact your attorney to obtain advice with respect to any particular issue or problem. Use of and access to this podcast or any of the e-mail links contained within the site do not create an attorney-client relationship between Kathleen J. Jennings. The opinions expressed at or through this site are the opinions of the individual hosts and guests.