Ethics

Story here and here.  Eric Turkewitz, a New York lawyer/blawger, broke the story.  [Then professor Alberto Bernabe, of the John Marshall School of Law, blogged about it.]

A solo cannot describe his or her practice with the phrase "and Associates" if in fact there are no associates there.  It's false and misleading.  The story also raises the issue of whether Sotomayor could have called her practice "The Law Offices of Sonia Sotomayor."  I raised that issue on two legal ethics listservs, both of which are full of ethics gurus, and there was wide disagreement.  (When I opened my solo practice, I chose the safe route of going with "John Steele, Attorney at Law.")

"Neither bar opinions nor cases to date have held that it was misleading for a sole practitioner to use the name 'and Associates' in such private communications...In fact, in the early 1980s, no rule prohibited the use of 'and Associates' in these circumstances and the only authority regarding the use of 'and Associates' in an advertising context was advisory, not mandatory, and thus not readily enforceable."

Well, that's a handful of lawyerly quibbles!  Note how it says that no authorities held it was misleading "in such private communications."  But they don't say that there was no basic prohibition on false or misleading statements about one's law practice.  There was.  There is.  Of course, I understand how politics work, and I suppose it's just not tenable for the White House to say, "she was young and she goofed in a 'no harm' way that lots of solos have goofed."  

Update 2:  Here's some key language from the ABA Opinion 318, from 1967.  I'm guessing that this is the authority the White House described as "advisory, not mandatory."  But note that the opinion itself cites mandatory rules about not being misleading when describing one's practice.

Accordingly, in Formal Opinion 310, this Committee sanctioned [i.e., approved] the use of the term "and Associates" in conjunction with an individual or partnership name where employed attorneys conduct a portion of the firm's legal business.

But presumably if Sotomayor had no such employed associates working for her, it would be misleading.  A more recent treatment of the issue is the Minnesota opinion cited above.