In her piece, Tendy emphasizes the importance of clear communication with clients, including how a well-crafted engagement agreement can establish a solid foundation for drama free legal representation, by addressing essential details such as the scope of work, fee structures, and a road map to dispute resolution.

To learn more about the benefits of effective engagement agreements and how they can enhance your legal practice, we encourage you to read Tendy’s article linked below.

Minding Your Own Business: Creating a Strong Attorney-Client Relationship Through Effective Engagement Agreements

About Sheila Tendy

Sheila Tendy advises corporations, not for profits and financial institutions as outside general counsel, managing a wide range of corporate and litigation matters.

Learn more about Sheila Tendy

Documentary Overview

We Go Higher was supposed to be a poignant documentary that shared the personal stories of children who lost their parents in the 9/11 attacks. The film was meant to focus on their experiences, grief, and resilience, providing a platform for them to express their journey. But that never came to pass. Colaio sued Women Rising Productions, with whom he had partnered to produce the documentary.

Legal Dispute and Resolution

Sheila Tendy succeeded in her fight to get Colaio his rights to hundreds of hours of footage and any production related work. The lawsuit, which highlighted how production management can go wrong, and the complexities of ownership rights and creative control in the documentary film making process, was settled confidentially in February of 2024.

Tendy was quoted in the article stating, “We can confirm, however, that Delaney Colaio-Coppola owns and controls the exclusive, worldwide full rights to any and all footage and any and all work product related to the documentary film project.”

The resolution of the case ensures that Colaio has complete creative and legal control over the documentary, allowing the project to move forward under his direction.

Impact on Documentary Filmmaking

The article sheds light on the legal challenges that can arise in documentary filmmaking, particularly when dealing with sensitive and personal subjects like the 9/11 attacks. Tendy’s work not only protected Colaio’s rights but also ensured the integrity of the footage and the future of any documentary that could be made. Read the full article in The Hollywood Reporter: The 9/11 Documentary You’ll Never See.

While many people are familiar with in-house or general counsel, they may not have heard of an Outside General Counsel. In-house counsel are often used by large corporations that can afford to keep full time attorneys on staff who are familiar with the operations of the business. However, in-house counsel can be prohibitively expensive for most businesses that simply cannot afford a team of lawyers. By acting as Outside General Counsel, we can provide the same benefits of in-house counsel for organizations that do not need attorneys on staff full-time.

What is an Outside General Counsel?

Attorneys acting as Outside General Counsel have their own firm (and other clients) but can perform the same role and functions as in-house counsel for a fraction of the cost. It’s key to learn about the operations of each client’s organization, its goals, and typical legal needs. This way, whenever legal issues come up, you are prepared to address the client’s concerns in a way that is best for all aspects of the organization, not just the individual assignment. For someone to be a quality Outside General Counsel, they should be highly experienced across multiple business sectors and legal areas, which may include contracts, employment, intellectual property, compliance, or litigation. This allows for efficient representation without the high costs of an on-staff, in-house counsel. No matter what type of client you have, you can save your client’s time, money and energy by ensuring all of their legal needs are managed in one place, at a budget tailored to their business.

As a good Outside General Counsel, you can become a trusted advisor who serves as the first phone call whenever a business needs legal guidance. Where many attorneys structure their practice to specialize in one area of the law, you are knowledgeable in many areas of practice, so are in a position to help no matter what issue your client faces.

An easy way to understand the role is to think about how large corporations operate with in-house general counsel addressing all legal needs of the organization. This leads to one group of lawyers who are responsible for knowing the business from top to bottom and, when the need for legal work arises, they oversee a plan to get it done. This streamlines the process for the business owners, who can communicate with the same attorneys each time, knowing the team understands their operations and objectives and will provide the level of quality the business is accustomed to.

How does Outside General Counsel benefit the client?

The biggest benefit for a client using Outside General Counsel is that they will develop a long-term relationship with highly experienced counsel who understands their business but without the cost of keeping them on staff. Outside General Counsel can be retained on an hourly or monthly basis.

As Outside General Counsel, you are your client’s go-to advisor for all aspects of their business. In the event a very specialized need arises, a good Outside General Counsel will have many trustworthy contacts that they can rely on to work with them. You can help your clients by taking the guesswork out of finding the right specialist by identifying quality specialized attorneys and business professionals, such as auditors or public relations experts. You can also provide value to clients by managing the work performed by practice specialists, ensuring that the budget is appropriate for your clients’ business, and considering the overall business objectives as part of the project. There is an important difference from an attorney who simply refers a client to another professional but does not manage their overall legal needs. An Outside General Counsel can save a business owner considerable time and effort navigating legal issues.

Hiring Outside General Counsel is also an efficient option for non-profit organizations. Non-profits face additional oversight from government agencies and often have more restrictive budgets than their for-profit brethren. An Outside General Counsel skilled in advising non-profits will be able to anticipate questions from regulators to ensure compliance with relevant laws and regulations.

What qualities do you need to be Outside General Counsel?

One of the most important qualities an Outside General Counsel can have is trustworthiness. Your clients will expect that they can come to you with any legal problem and you will help guide them to the solution. This requires strong trust built on a foundation of strong strategic guidance.

Additionally, it is critical to the success of an Outside General Counsel to be aware of the areas of law where they need the guidance of other attorneys, either within their own firm or not, to rely on when advising the client. For that reason, you need a reliable network of professionals you trust for questions where you need another opinion.

Finally, to succeed as Outside General Counsel, you need to be able to address new and challenging topics on a regular basis. While specialized counsel may draft similar contracts or motions on a regular basis, you can expect to have clients ask unique questions so that most assignments aren’t repetitive of those you’ve done before.

For attorneys who enjoy the idea of being able to assist their clients with all of their legal needs, Outside General Counsel can be a great option to consider as an alternative to specializing.

This article first appeared on The NewJurist.

Under the Article 81 Guardianship Statute, part of the Mental Hygiene Law in New York state, the courts have unfettered discretion, without any doctor’s evaluation, to have someone declared incapacitated, resulting in the appointment of a permanent personal and financial guardian who controls every life decision and every penny an incapacitated person can spend.

But “incapacitated” is not what you think. If you think the person has to be incoherent, think again. The standard for incapacity in New York grants broad discretion to courts, built into a machine that is virtually impossible to escape. See Sheila E. Shea and Carol Pressman, Guardianship: A Civil Rights Perspective, NYSBA Journal (February 2018). And it is, by far, women who bear the brunt of the machine’s impacts. A study by the American Bar Association (ABA) found that, in New York state, 68% of guardianship proceedings are brought against women. Guardianship Proceedings in New York State: Findings and Recommendations, ABA (April 1, 2016). Since guardianship statutes are exclusively the purview of state law, in every state these statutes range from scary to harrowing in empowering a pathway to deprive women of all decision making power. Adult Guardianship Statutory Table of Authorities, ABA Commission on Law & Aging. The ABA is now urging Congress to work to modernize these statutes. Annual Meeting 2020—House of Delegates Resolution, 105.

It is an abusive and arcane process in protective clothing, and it should be stopped.

Britney Spears’ situation is the most high-profile example but not an anomaly, as civil liberties are aggressively being taken away every day in this country under these blistering state guardianship statutes. Indeed, while the Britney Spears’ example is extreme, women are being declared incapacitated every day for far less. And New York state, for all its purported progressive credentials, is among the worst offenders.

What is particularly outrageous under New York Guardianship law is that relatives who stand to inherit under a will automatically have standing to declare a person incapacitated. As a result, the Guardianship statute in New York has become weaponized by families as a path to maximize their inheritance. It is also frequently used in divorce cases as leverage. Nursing homes in New York make use of guardianship statutes to ensure their fees get paid through Medicaid when their wards are poor, by having them declared incapacitated.

Just like with Britney Spears, once a case is filed, it is a runaway train, with an army of expensive court appointees that make it all happen. Unfortunately, court appointed guardians and attorneys are part of the machine, with their own financial incentive to see a person declared incapacitated when they stand to be appointed as a permanent guardian—which creates, for the guardian, a stream of recurring revenue. Even more disturbing, the allegedly incapacitated person is, in most cases, required to pay the fees of every appointee in this machine, including those of the petitioner and the Court appointees, along with their own legal fees. As a result, there is no downside financial risk to attempt to have a family member declared incapacitated as your fees will get paid by the allegedly incapacitated person.

Indeed, it’s so hard to get out from under the Guardianship statute in New York that women often have to negotiate something less than an absolute declaration of incapacity to avoid total control of their lives… and the resulting shame that comes with it.

We need to acknowledge that women are being coercively controlled in New York State through the abuse of the legal process that was designed to protect them. The unconstitutional New York Guardianship statute must be repealed and rewritten on an emergency basis. If the law doesn’t allow us to hold someone for psychiatric reasons overnight without three doctors agreeing, we certainly shouldn’t be able to control the rest of someone’s life by taking away all of their civil liberties without so much as a doctor’s evaluation.

We also need to understand that the problem is not only what happens after a person has been found incapacitated. The problem at a baseline is how easy it is for someone with no medical expertise to make allegations of incapacity, far too often resulting in a woman being declared incapacitated in violation of their constitutional rights of due process along with a complete deprivation of their civil liberties.

Proposed federal legislation, the FREE Act sponsored by U.S. Representatives Charlie Crist (D- FL) and Nancy Mace (R-SC), requiring guardians to be conflict free, will not improve the fate of someone accused of incapacity. Just like with Britney Spears, a guardian can control even the counsel an incapacitated person may employ.

We wouldn’t deprive accused criminals or those who are psychiatrically ill of these rights without due process, so how can we do it to women so easily using the guardianship statutes? Likely this is because there is still the paternalistic view in our society that women need to be protected and don’t have the skills to manage their own affairs. Unfortunately, that leaves them ripe for abuse by family members who have discovered a magic bullet in the guardianship statutes when they want control over the life of their allegedly incapacitated family member.

That is how Britney Spears’ father has been able to control who she talks to, whether she procreates, who she dates, what books she reads, and how she spends her money. And he got rich using a poorly drafted piece of legislation to abuse his daughter for over 13 years. These paternalistic statutes harken back to the era in New York state when young girls were regularly imprisoned for years if they were not following their parents’ rules. On April 10, 1933, according to records at the New York State Archives, Westchester County judge George W. Smyth sentenced a 15-year-old “colored” girl named Ella Fitzgerald to the New York State Training School for Girls in Hudson, N.Y., because she was “ungovernable and will not obey the just and lawful commands of her mother.”

Britney Spears was too humiliated to tell the world that she was being abused by her father under the guise of protecting her but she has finally found her voice. This may have been especially complicated for Ms. Spears when her abuse had no bruises because it was legalized coercive control. That beautiful voice may now be able to help scores of women who have faced a similar fate.

It’s time to expand the definition of #MeToo to include dismantling the legalized abuse of women using these paternalistic and arcane guardianship statutes that allow a declaration of incapacity without due
process and in violation of our civil liberties.

Published 10/1/2021 in the New York Law Journal

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The failings of the Catholic Church and other similar institutions offer lessons not just for religious organizations, but any organization faced with issues that could result in potential scandal.

The Catholic sexual abuse scandal again came to light after a Pennsylvania grand jury found that over 1,000 victims had been sexually abused by more than 300 priests over 70 years and that many employees of the Catholic Church were involved in covering up the abuse. How was it that so much abuse was able to be hidden from the public eye for so long? The answer to this question holds lessons for all institutions who want to ensure they take the right steps in the face of allegations of misconduct.

The most likely explanation is that the Catholic Church was protecting its reputation and rather than deal with the optics of priests being investigated and convicted of sexual abuse against children, the church tried to cover up the details and deal with the problem internally. In other words, the church created a de facto policy that when allegations surfaced that its priority would be to ensure that the allegations were not made public and the abuse not reported. When details did surface in the community, the Catholic Church would simply transfer the priest to a new church where the parishioners would not know he was a child abuser. As the grand jury put it, the church followed “a playbook for concealing abuse.” That “playbook” was policy. More details about this policy may be coming to light after the New York State Attorney General’s Office issued subpoenas to every Catholic diocese in the State as part of its investigation into sex crimes committed by Catholic priests.

All businesses, especially churches, should have a policy “playbook” in place so that when something goes wrong, there’s a procedure to follow with a reporting protocol. While it makes sense to consider public image, there are legal, and often more importantly, ethical considerations that should go into those policies. An organization must have a policy in place that’s rooted in doing what’s right, rather than covering up shortcomings. Buy-in from the highest levels—including the general counsel—along with resources devoted to implementation of protocol, is the only way to ensure effective compliance with policy.

This is critical when the safety of children is involved. During the decades that this abuse was ongoing, it should have been obvious to the church employees that covering up sexual abuse raised serious ethical concerns and liability.

Willow Creek Community Church, a megachurch near Chicago, recently dealt with a similar issue when the entire leadership team resigned due to frustration with the response of church elders when allegations of sexual misconduct were made against the pastor. In 2013 and 2014 the church elders were made aware of a number of complaints of harassment during the prior two decades, including unwanted touching, kissing and sexual comments made to parishioners and church employees, according to the Chicago Tribune. The church was slow to bring any investigation or punishment against the pastor, exacerbating an already damaging situation.

The churches involved in these scandals would have benefited from policies that focused on identifying abuse, reporting the abuse to authorities and demonstrating transparency with the congregation. Focusing on the safety of the children and other parishioners would have, in turn, protected the organization from reputational harm and liability. Instead, these churches went to great lengths to protect their own employees, despite knowledge of the terrible acts they had engaged in. Even though many priests may be protected by the statute of limitations, it will take years for the organization to regain the trust of the community it depended on for charitable donations.

Putting safety first isn’t an issue unique to churches. For example, it didn’t take long for a lawsuit to be filed on behalf of the families of several victims of the July 19 duck boat tragedy in Branson, Missouri, where 17 passengers drowned. The complaint, filed in federal court, seeks $100 million for negligence, wrongful death and product liability from Ripley Entertainment, Ride the Ducks of Branson, Herschend Family Entertainment and other defendants.

This unspeakable tragedy could have been avoided entirely, the complaint alleges, if the defendants had simply not sent the boat out onto the water with the reports of a storm approaching or if they had required the passengers to wear life vests. The defendants are also alleged to have ignored safety recommendations made by the National Transportation Safety Board following a duck boat accident in 1991. The defendants weren’t required to follow these recommendations by law, but they had ethical obligations to protect the safety of their customers. The defendants’ failure to create critically important policies or follow their existing policies may be to blame for the tragic deaths of their customers.

Many businesses will likely face similar decisions, even if not on the same scale as protecting thousands of children from abuse. Businesses may be tempted to create policies with the goal of saving money or alleged protection of reputation. However, more often than not, prioritizing safety through sound policy is the best investment a business can make.

This article can be viewed on Corporate Counsel.

Reprinted with permission from the “September 21, 2018” edition of the “Corporate Counsel”© 2018 ALM Media Properties, LLC. All rights reserved. Further duplication without permission is prohibited. ALMReprints.com – 877-257-3382 – reprints@alm.com