Ethics

    For a talk at an upcoming ethics conference at the University of Akron School of Law, I decided to write about the Ohio Supreme Court's Rancman opinion, which not only rejected litigation funding as champerty and maintenance, but used rather hostile language to do so and utterly failed to weigh the merits of the practice. Rancman is on my 10 Worst Cases list for the field of lawyer regulation. 

    The title of the talk is Waiting For Good Dough: Litigation Funding Comes To Law. 

     The criteria for membership on the 10 worst list are described below. Maybe you want to suggest additional criteria. Not every bad case gets this honor. Anyway, case nominations are accepted. (Footnotes omitted; if you want them let me know.)

    "Over the years, I have kept a mental list of the worst court decisions in the area of lawyer regulation. Admission to this list is limited to ten. Being wrong is not enough. The opinion must be very wrong. Even that?s not enough. Is the opinion thoughtful nonetheless? Does it purport to be a serious treatment of the issue? Is the court influential? How much harm will the opinion likely cause? Has it since been limited? Each question must be posed and no single answer is determinative. Membership on the list shifts as new opinions appear and displace old ones or cases are overruled. Someday, I may write an article called The Ten Worst Opinions in Professional Responsibility. Or maybe that should be the topic of a future panel discussion, with each panelist taking an opinion or two. 

            "My current list includes Birbrower, Montalbano, Condon & Frank P.C. v. Superior Court, Matter of Cooperman, Evans v. Jeff D., Mickens v. Taylor,  Professional Adjusters, Inc. v. Tandon, and Rancman v. Interim Settlement Funding Corp. Ranta v. McCarney had been on the list but Birbrower displaced it. Birbrower is from a more influential court and it addresses a lawyer?s virtual as well as physical presence in a state in its analysis of unauthorized practice of law by out of state lawyers. Its implications, if unrestrained, were breathtaking."