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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

The Law and Ethics of Paying in Cash

Posted on February 04, 2011
It is not uncommon for merchants to offer a slight discount if a consumer pays with cash instead of a credit card. But suppose someone is doing work on your home and offers to give you a particularly sizable discount...

Kenneth Feinberg Not Neutral, Judge Rules

Posted on February 03, 2011
The headline in today's New York Times is: "Fund Official Not Neutral, Judge Rules." The judge's opinion is a victory for tens of thousands of oil spill victims who have been the victims of fraudulent settlements. (If anyone knows how...

Asking Lateral Candidates to do Legal Work as Part of the Hiring Process

Posted on February 02, 2011
May a law firm ask a lawyer who is applying for employment to draft a memo or prepare a response to a complaint as part of the application process? What ethics issues are raised by this hypothetical situation? Of course,...

Texas Supreme Court puts E2k Revision of Texas Disciplinary Rules Out for Referendum

Posted on February 02, 2011
Since 2003, the State Bar and the Texas Supreme Court have worked on revising the Texas Disciplinary Rules. The proposed draft was completed in late 2010 and the Supreme Court separated the referendum on the proposed rules into six separate...

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Fifth Circuit Opinion on the Constitutionality of Louisianna Advertising Rules

Posted on January 31, 2011
The Fifth Circuit's opinon is here and is definitely worth reading for anyone interested in the constitutionality of lawyer advertising rules. Ultimately, the Court affirmed the constitutionality of several provisions, but struck down as unconstitutional the following Louisianna Rules of...

Supreme Court Update

Posted on January 30, 2011
The Supreme Court's 2010 term opened with five cases involving the law of lawyering on the docket, and we're now up to a total of eleven by my count. Here are the cases, those decided listed first, then argued but...

Office of Special Counsel Releases Report on White House Political Activity

Posted on January 27, 2011
The Office of Special Counsel (OSC), the agency charged with interpreting and enforcing the Hatch Act, this past Monday released a report on political activity by the White House Office of Political Affairs (OPA) on behalf of Republicans in the...

Unauthorized Practice of Law

Posted on January 27, 2011
I have never done any work on the issue of unauthorized practice, unlike Steve Gillers, who said that he has ?research[ed] the rules in 6 jurisdictions and read the class action filings and various (and some lengthy) documents surrounding the...

The appeal and the danger of social media

Posted on January 27, 2011
The February issue of the ABA Journal magazine features a story on the appeal and danger of social media for lawyers--Seduced: For Lawyers, the Appeal of Social Media is Obvious. It's Also Dangerous (link here). You can read about the...

Ben Barton, "The Lawyer-Judge Bias in the American Legal System"

Posted on January 26, 2011
Ben Barton's new book is available. I'll be on a SEALS panel this summer addressing the book. Here's the product description: Virtually all American judges are former lawyers. This book argues that these lawyer-judges instinctively favor the legal profession in...

Kevin Michels, "Lawyer Independence: From Ideal to Viable Legal Standard"

Posted on January 26, 2011
When I first starting poking around on the topic of comparative legal ethics, I was surprised to see how central the concept of independence is in some systems, whereas in the US approach the concept is always present but never...

What Should We Do About Ethics and Conflicts at the Supreme Court?

Posted on January 26, 2011
As we know, the Code of Conduct for U.S. Judges does not apply to the Justices. They are the only judges in the nation not governed by ethical rules. The disqualification statute does apply. But a motion to disqualify is...

Bill Simon asks, "Does the lawyer have to tell the client when she helps out the other side?"

Posted on January 25, 2011
Columbia's Bill Simon has sent in the post below in response to an earlier post by Monroe Freedman: In a recent article in the Georgetown Journal of Legal Ethics, I argued that lawyers sometimes have a duty to disclose adverse...

Legal Ethics Items (January 24, 2011)

Posted on January 24, 2011
Is a "civil Gideon" program the answer to unemployed lawyers and the mortgage foreclosure crisis? Jonathan Turley discusses the price of Justice Scalia's political stardom: "At best, Scalia's appearance [at an event for new conservative members of the House of...

Political Affairs Office Will Move to Chicago (and out of the White House)

Posted on January 21, 2011
According to the New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/21/us/politics/21obama.html The White House Office of Political Affairs (OPA) staff spend much of their time, and encourage other political appointees to spend much of their time, on partisan political work for the President's political...

The Legal Ethics of Groupons

Posted on January 20, 2011
Many of you may be familiar with Groupons, a rapidly growing and popular online service where consumers can find great deals from merchants in a particular geographic area. Not surprisingly, lawyers want to use Groupons to offer discounts on popular....

Trollope

Posted on January 20, 2011
For three years, Kate Stimpson (graduate school dean emerita) and I have been using novels by Anthony Trollope in our law and literature seminar, which we've taught together for 12 years. More than Dickens or Shakespeare or any of the...

Is DOJ's new discipline unit a good thing?

Posted on January 20, 2011
DOJ issued the press release below on Tuesday. It claims that the change will improve discipline of its lawyers. USA Today actually played the story as a positive change. I think that's wrong. I see the change as making discipline...

Claims Facilities and Nullification of Ethical Duties

Posted on January 19, 2011
The BP-Feinberg matter raises an issue that goes well beyond that case. That is, the use of a ?Claims Facility? to permit a law firm to avoid otherwise applicable ethical rules. This device can be used in any case in...

ABA Commission Releases Choice of Law Paper

Posted on January 19, 2011
The ABA Commission on Ethics 20/20 released a paper today on choice of law problems arising from cross-border practice. The paper is here.

LawWithoutWalls Kickoff

Posted on January 18, 2011
I?m just returning from the Kickoff Conference for LawWithoutWalls (for information about the program see here). The event provided an incredible learning opportunity for students from around the world. Equally wonderful were several panels featuring experts on the legal profession...

The MIssing Piece in the Times Story on Litigation Funding

Posted on January 17, 2011
Today's story reports the situation of several borrowers who took money from litigation funding companies (LFCs) and wound up having to pay big sums once they collected in court. The story reports that the LFCs, while willing, even eager, to...

Are disciplinary sanctions for tax crimes too lenient?

Posted on January 16, 2011
Why are lawyers who are convicted of willful failure to pay taxes (state, federal, other) treated more leniently in discipline than lawyers who steal or "borrow" from escrow accounts or charge their firms for client expenses they did not have?...

More Information on BP and Feinberg

Posted on January 15, 2011
There was a post earlier about the relationship between BP and Kenneth Feinberg. As it was presented, ?In essence, the question is whether there is something improper about him getting paid by BP to write [an expert opinion] letter [about...

After five years as a stock broker and doing okay financially, guy goes to law school, incurs huge debt, makes less, and then gets dinged on character and fitness

Posted on January 14, 2011
No, not making it up. Story here, with links to opinion. Salt in the wound!?

Is the Rule 1.9 DQ Burden in N.J. Right?

Posted on January 12, 2011
The NJ Supreme Court says that once a former client has shown a prior representation and present adversity, the law firm "bears the burden of going forward to demonstrate that the matters at issue...are not 'substantially related,'" but the former...

The Law School Racket

Posted on January 11, 2011
Sunday's New York Times had a long article on the front page of the business section, asking whether law school is a losing game. Bill Henderson (who blogs at our arch-rival, LPB) was quoted as saying that "Enron-style accounting standards"...

Ethics Affirmations for Foreclosure Lawyers

Posted on January 11, 2011
The New York Times describes a new affirmation procedure in New York, where foreclosure lawyers have to sign a special statement that affirms the factual accuracy of the documents that they are submitting. The story suggests that the new procedures...

Unabomber's former lawyer to represent Arizona shooter: the problem of client autonomy when the accused has mental health issues

Posted on January 10, 2011
News accounts say that Judith Clarke,who formerly represented the Unabomber, will represent the Arizona shooter, Jared Lee Loughner. Legal ethics types may recall that the defense of the Unabomber was quite controversial, in that some believed the defense lawyers usurped...

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