Respond to the assignment topic completely.Cite the particular MD Attorneys' Rules of Professional Conductfor authority to your response. ABA Model Rules and paralegal association ethics rules are irrelevant here.

Julie is a senior paralegal in a very small Gaithersburg, MD law firm that does a significant amount of personal injury law work. She has been a working paralegal for almost 25 years and, as the only paralegal in the firm, her supervising attorneys attach a great deal of significance to her impressions and opinions about new cases as they come in.

A new client has come to the firm with a potential case for property damage and personal injury against a delivery company. It seems that a truck for the delivery company ran a red light and collided with the plaintiff's car. However, as the supervising attorney has noted in his interview notes from the initial client interview, at which Julie was not present, there may in fact be a probability that the plaintiff ran the red light and not the delivery van. Knowing how skilled Julie is in investigating and formulating opinions about culpability, the supervising attorney hands the case file to Julie and instructs her to investigate and get back to him about the merits of the case. When Julie opens the file she immediately notices that the would-be defendant in the case is the delivery company owned and operated by her husband and her husband's family.

a) Explain in detail what course of action Julie should follow in handling this work assignment, and why.

b) Are there any negative implications for the law firm in handling this case? Why or why not?