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PR is hot, hot, hot.  Renee Knake's new article alerts us to six -- count'em six -- pending cases at the Supreme Court dealing with the law of lawyering.  In Prioritizing Professional Responsibility and the Legal Profession: An Emerging Trend in United States Supreme Court Jurisprudence?, Knake wonders what this means for the legal profession.  (I will try to get all six cases listed.  Who knows, maybe we can have a pool for our readers to see who predicts the most outcomes.)  Two of the six deal with federal stautues; four are constitutional or procedural.  Abstract:

During the 2009-2010 term, the United States Supreme Court will hear no fewer than six cases related to the role of attorneys and the practice of law. This body of cases represents a significant departure from dockets in recent history, where typically the Court considers no more than two or three matters involving regulation of the legal profession (and at times none). This article surveys the upcoming cases in an effort to gain insights about the Court?s apparent increased interest in questions that address the obligations and duties of attorneys. Two conclusions are reached: first, these cases are important not only for their quantity but also for their substance, as each individually raises issues that have the potential to alter the day-to-day practice of law for attorneys in a variety of settings; and second, when viewed collectively, these cases signal the Supreme Court?s prioritization of professional responsibility and, depending on their outcomes, may shift jurisprudence on the legal profession in dramatic and meaningful ways.

Her article might usefully be read in conjunction with John Leubsdorf's recent, Legal Ethics Falls Apart, which has this abstract:

In recent decades, the law governing lawyers has begun to fragment. A host of new regulators, mainly federal, has entered an area formerly reserved to state supreme courts and the organized bar. Their regulations typically restrain the freedom of lawyers to pursue their clients' interests, protecting instead the interests of the government or of opposing parties. Often, the new measures are highly detailed, and regulate only certain specialized kinds of legal services, though at the same time they may cover nonlawyers providing similar services. The new regulations supplement and change previously applicable rules such as those found in the Model Rules of Professional Conduct, sometimes by providing more stringent sanctions, and sometimes in other ways. This article describes and analyzes these developments.

When I read those articles and see the proliferation of federal regulation of lawyers, I worry about who has "the big picture."  That is, if various federal actors exert control over this piece of the profession or that piece, will we have a coherent regulatory framework?  I'm not being reactionary.  I know that federal regulation must come and will accelerate.  But every regulator has its strengths and weaknesses and I'd expect that piecemeal federal regulation will cause difficulties.  There could even be something like a tragedy of the commons if various federal regulators nibble away at confidentiality or other protections (a possibility I wrote about a few years back).

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