Ethics

Q:  What's the ethical issue when you realize your client overpaid the bill?

A:  Should you tell your law partners?

It's an old joke, and is told in various ways.  (For details, see Marc Galanter's book.)  But a recent discipline case in New Jersey asks if it was unethical for a lawyer to accept a $50,000 gift from a client and not inform his law partners.

In years past, I have asked my students this multiple choice question (strictly tongue in cheek):

            You are Able.  Baker, your only partner at Able & Baker, is out of town taking depositions. 

            Mr. Kramer enters your office seeking a simple will, which you prepare for $100.  Preferring cash transactions, Kramer hands you a crisp new $100 bill and departs?whereupon you realize that Kramer inadvertently had handed you two new $100 bills stuck together.  This raises an obvious ethical dilemma.  Should you:

                        (A)            Put the extra $100 in your wallet; or

                        (B)            Split the extra $100 with you law partner.

I kept a collection of good responses, but this one, from a student whose name I can't recall, is my favorite:

An extra Ben Franklin he gave me,

So I'm thinking ethically, maybe,

If half without pause

To the judge's pet cause,

The rest can be spent on my baby.