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Ethics

Legal Ethics Forum

Covering Legal Ethics

Post Frequency: 11.2/day

Last Entry: August 14, 2020 at 13:23:48

California Judiciary (on behalf of the Judicial Council) to the California Legislature (and to its allies on the bench): Let us handle this

Posted on March 16, 2011
At first it looks like a classic turf battle between the California judiciary and the California legislature. But in the recent battle to overturn management initiatives of the previous Chief Justice, the legislature has the backing of some of the...

Lawyer is 3rd Top Paying Job for Women

Posted on March 16, 2011
The ABA Journal cites Forbes for that statistic.

State Bar of California seeks interim suspension of foreclosure lawyer who advised homeowners to break into their foreclosed homes

Posted on March 15, 2011
Press release here.

Ron Rotunda, "Resolving Client Conflicts by Hiring 'Conflicts Counsel'"

Posted on March 15, 2011
[edited] US legal conflict of interest rules are unusually broad and strict. That's created a need for the options of conflict waivers, advance waivers, carefully negotiated and documented definitions of who's the client, etc. Ron Rotunda's new article discerns a...

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Bruce Green, Prosecutors? Ethical Duty of Disclosure: In Memory of Fred Zacharias

Posted on March 15, 2011
The article is here. This is the abstract: ABA Model Rule 3.8(d) establishes an ethical duty on the part of criminal prosecutors to ?make timely disclosure to the defense of all evidence or information known to the prosecutor that tends...

Future Ed 3 (The Future of Legal Education) / NYLS April 15-16, 2011

Posted on March 14, 2011
Liz Chambliss sends along this notice about the upcoming "Future Ed 3": Help Invent the Future of Legal Education We started our contest of ideas at New York Law School in April, 2010. Participants presented thirty proposals at Harvard Law...

Codification of Claims Facilities

Posted on March 14, 2011
Not surprisingly, there is a bill pending in Texas to codify the kind of claims facility that BP and Kenneth Feinberg established for the Gulf oil spill. The bill protects defendants who are responsikble for negligent acts that cause death,...

Peter Margulies on Advising Terrorism: Hybrid Scrutiny, Safe Harbors, and Freedom of Speech

Posted on March 12, 2011
Professor Peter Margulies has posted his article ?Advising Terrorism: Hybrid Scrutiny, Safe Harbors, and Freedom of Speech.? His thoughtful analysis of Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project includes an important discussion of lawyers as agents for democracy, and he offers an...

Bill Henderson on law schools reporting employment stats: "We likely have one last chance to get it right."

Posted on March 11, 2011
At Legal Profession Blog, Bill makes a guess about what the US News & World Report is up to, and urges law schools to make things transparent. US News has published the letter it sent to law school deans, urging...

What the State Bar of California is looking into -- perhaps a nice topic for some serious writing?

Posted on March 10, 2011
This article recounts the various initiatives being pursued by the state bar prosecutors in California. (Disclaimer: the new Chief Trial Counsel, Jim Towery, is a friend.) They're systematically looking at over 100 cases of possible prosecutorial misconduct, and given the...

Justice Scalia and recusal in the Wal-Mart case

Posted on March 10, 2011
According to this news wire account, some are calling for Justice Scalia's recusal in the upcoming and uber-important Wal-Mart class action case, on the theory that Scalia's son has represented Wal-Mart in other cases. From the article, I can't tell....

Amazing Prosecutorial Misconduct Case

Posted on March 10, 2011
Here's a question for readers: How far do you get through the Tennessee Court of Appeals' opinion in State v. Dawson before your jaw drops and you say, "they did WHAT?" To briefly summarize, a sheriff's department officer posed as...

Do Short Sellers Drive the Regulatory Agenda?

Posted on March 09, 2011
I have not formed an opinion one way or the other about for-profit colleges, but here is a disturbing story. Apparently speculators are shorting the stock of companies operating for-profit colleges and then going to the Department of Education (DOE)....

Stephen Gillers Wins ABA's Michael Franck Professional Responsibility Award

Posted on March 09, 2011
Congratulations to co-blogger Stephen Gillers for winning the 2011 Michael Franck Professional Responsibility Award. The list of past winners reads like a legal ethics Hall of Fame and includes another co-blogger, Monroe Freedman. Congratulations Stephen!

Balanced article on recent campaign about judicial ethics of Justice Scalia and Thomas

Posted on March 08, 2011
Via Politico. Cover both angles -- i.e., that this is a carefully constructed campaign geared toward the healthcare case and that this is a deep concern about justices acting in biased ways.

Ouster at Lieff Cabraser

Posted on March 07, 2011
This ALM article about the ouster of a partner at Lieff Cabraser gives us an unusual peek at the how the ouster mechanisms work and sheds light on the ways that strategy disagreements within a firm can lead to irresolvable...

Fees and Costs Awarded in Patent Litigation

Posted on March 07, 2011
There seems to be a steady stream of these cases: patent litigators are held to have crossed the line from litigation to economic harassment and as a result costs and millions in attorneys fees are awarded.

Tooting my own horn: A Nice Review of Patent Litigation Ethics

Posted on March 07, 2011
David L. Schwartz, Assistant Professor of Law at Chicago-Kent College of Law published a helpful review of my book, Patent Ethics: Litigation (Oxford University Press) available here.

Google Docs: Unethical for Lawyers?

Posted on March 07, 2011
When you use Google Docs, you give Google the following license to "Content" which is, basically, everything you put up: 11. Content license from you 11.1 You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in Content which you...

Of Conflicts of Interest and Full-Time Professors

Posted on March 05, 2011
All law schools that I'm aware of have some sort of limitation on outside work (consulting, lawyering) by full-time professors. In part, this is driven by ABA standards, and no doubt in part by past abuses. One thing that some...

Issuing RFA's can fall under Fair Debt Collection Practice Act

Posted on March 05, 2011
This new Ninth Circuit case -- holding that Requests for Admission can be covered by the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act -- is part of that trend we've discussed, by which more and more ordinary legislation will apply to legal...

Robert Hillman Posts a New Article on Lawyer Mobility and Partnership Agreement Provisions

Posted on March 04, 2011
The article is entitled ?Law Firm Risk Management in an Era of Breakups and Lawyer Mobility: Limitations and Opportunities? and can be downloaded here. Here is the abstract ? To say that law firms and lawyers are restricted by the...

William Simon comments on Lester Brickman's new book

Posted on March 04, 2011
Bill sends along these thoughts: Lester Brickman has a new book that criticizes the excesses of tort plaintiffs? lawyers ? LAWYER BARONS: WHAT CONTINGENCY FEES REALLY COST AMERICA. As I say on the back cover, I think it is fascinating...

A Critique of Philosophizing About Lawyers' Ethics

Posted on March 04, 2011
I have had posted A Critique of Philosophizing About Lawyers' Ethics on SSRN. Here is the abstract: In a recent article Professor William Simon wrote yet another critique by a moral philosopher about role differentiation as the source of all...

Does Justice Scalia Have a Woman Problem or Are His Polemics Gender Neutral?

Posted on March 04, 2011
Justice Scalia dissented in MIchigan v. Bryant this week. We can understand his annoyance. The Court's opinion further chipped away at Scalia's ingenious repositioning of the Confrontation Clause in Crawford v. Washington. The Court has long been at sea on...

random observations (March 2, 2011)

Posted on March 03, 2011
I've been critical about the way law schools supply useful information to applicants, so I'm glad to see that there's now a report on how well law schools place into the NLJ 250. That is a nice proxy for hiring...

No Retraction or Apology to the National Review is in Order

Posted on March 03, 2011
The National Review has demanded that I retract or apologize for the following paragraph in my post on Huffington: ?Liu is not the first nominee to go through a barrage of unfair attacks. Louis Brandeis, the first Jewish American to...

NYT's "The Ethicist" calls it quits

Posted on March 03, 2011
Christine Hurt, at Conglomerate, has news and thoughts (that I agree with) on Randy Cohen's decision to stop writing The Ethicist columns for the NYT.

The Confirmation Circus Continues

Posted on March 03, 2011
USCA 9 nominee Goodwin Liu had an interesting confirmation hearing yesterday. Meanwhile the attack on Liu and on anyone who defends Liu continues. The link below includes a video of Liu discussing the legacy of slavery in America. This is...

Can a retired judge give a legal opinion on the meaning of a judgment he gave?

Posted on March 03, 2011
There have been a number of posts here lately on matters of judicial ethics, generally related to the involvement by the judge or his/her spouse in political causes. An issue of what I see as judicial ethics came up here...

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