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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

Planting spies at a law firm?

Posted on July 22, 2009
According to news accounts, German private investigators hatched a plan to collect information by planting an intern at a German law firm -- but the plan was scuttled before anyone was planted. The story made me recall how during the...

Basis for decision in Dan Rather's suit that documents were not privileged?

Posted on July 22, 2009
The NYT story is here. After Dan Rather reported on George W. Bush's military service, and the report was shown to be based on forged documents, CBS convened an investigatory panel which in turn hired a law firm -- K&L...

Paul Lippe on big firm decisions not to hire 2010 summer associates

Posted on July 22, 2009
Provocative as ever, Lippe says it's Armageddon. The decision by several large firms to cancel Fall OCI and not have summer associates will ripple through firms and law schools over the next 18 months.

"Transnational Legal Practice," by Terry, et al.

Posted on July 22, 2009
SSRN page here. Abstract: This article reviews developments in transnational legal practice during 2008, including international developments, U.S. developments, and regional developments in Australia and Europe. The article begins by reviewing international legal services statistics and information about legal education...

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Rule of Necessity; Who Controls Cause Litigation?; Holland-Dozier-Holland Sue Law Firm

Posted on July 21, 2009
The rarely invoked "rule of necessity" may permit NY judges to rule on an issue affecting their own pay. . . . . This story, unfortunately behind a registration wall, details the ongoing power struggle over the anti-Prop 8 litigation...

Corporate "Miranda warnings," "Upjohn warnings," at issue in Broadcom, Ruehle, and Irell matter.

Posted on July 21, 2009
Article here. It's always a little dangerous to sort out the facts through media accounts, but as far as I can tell, in the Broadcom investigation the Irell lawyers did give the CFO "Upjohn warnings" that what he said to...

Lying prosecutor; criminal defense lawyer as defendant; lots of ethics issues

Posted on July 20, 2009
What steps can criminal defense lawyers take to collect fees from clients with no visible means of lawful employment? And can a prosecutor lie about secretly recording a meeting? Story here.

Evade an in limine by asking a verboten topic as if were a hypothetical?

Posted on July 15, 2009
It may get you two days in jail for criminal contempt. Order here. Article here.

Good judges are like good umpires. Seriously.

Posted on July 14, 2009
?Judges are like umpires.? John Roberts made that claim, but the analogy isn?t universally popular. I?ve always liked it myself. For several seasons I referred basketball at a high level and I?ve sat as the arbitrator in a few dozen...

Another Confidentiality Study

Posted on July 12, 2009
Here's yet another study of what seems to me to be self-evident -- that people are less likely to reveal embarrassing or harmful information if not assured of confidentiality. In a study published in The Journal of Family Psychology, researchers...

Jenia Turner, on how sharply a lawyer can criticize the (international) court

Posted on July 09, 2009
At Concurring Opinions, Jenia Turner has this interesting post about a French lawyer who was warned after a sharp reference to the possibly corrupt nature of the court. Of course, this arises in the US as well. Perhaps the most...

Wisconsin adopts slightly modified ABA Model Rules 3.8(g)-(h) effective July 1, 2009

Posted on July 08, 2009
On July 1, 2009, Wisconsin became the first jurisdiction to adopt a version of ABA Model Rules 3.8(g)-(h), which impose new duties on prosecutors who receive evidence creating a reasonable likelihood -- or clearly establishing -- that a defendant was...

Public-Record Exception to Confidentiality

Posted on July 08, 2009
I have been wondering whether the public-record exception will (and maybe should) be interpreted much more broadly than in the past, in view of the ready availability of information on the internet. Here is a BNA report of a recent...

Confidentiality and client suicide

Posted on July 07, 2009
Our recent discussion on the merits of the Mass. exception permitting disclosure to prevent wrongful incarceration got me thinking about the issue of disclosure to prevent client suicide. Based on what I could discover, in Massachusetts, like in Alberta, a...

Sonia Sotomayor "and Associates"

Posted on July 07, 2009
Story here and here. Eric Turkewitz, a New York lawyer/blawger, broke the story. [Then professor Alberto Bernabe, of the John Marshall School of Law, blogged about it.] A solo cannot describe his or her practice with the phrase "and Associates"...

You Know You're a Legal Ethics Wonk When....

Posted on July 06, 2009
You think it's fun to create a document like this. Use the comments for other ways to finish my sentence.

Secret recordings and California's "no contact" rule

Posted on July 06, 2009
The WSJ Law Blog has this fascinating story about a criminal conviction of a government official that was secured mostly through the prosecutor's use of an audio recording of the defendant that was made in violation of California's "no contact"...

Non-Written Consents to Conflicts?

Posted on July 06, 2009
I've been reviewing the new Illinois rules of professional conduct, and I noticed that they do not require a client's consent to a conflict to be in writing. See, e.g., Rule 1.7(b)(4). (The previous version of Illinois Rule 1.7 also...

Miriam Baer on the OPR's track record for disciplining federal prosecutors

Posted on July 06, 2009
Over at Prawfsblawg, Miriam Baer explores whether the statistics on OPR enforcement within DOJ show that enforcement is a "reverse lottery."

Illinois Adopts Long Awaited Rule Revisions

Posted on July 03, 2009
On July 1, the Illinois Supreme Court issued an order that repeals the existing rules of professional conduct and replaces them with a new set of provisions, effective January 1, 2010. Links to the new rules are here, and a...

Bill Henderson on Paul Lippe's article about the future of legal practice

Posted on July 02, 2009
Bill has cross-posted his thoughts. The first paragraph from Lippe's article articulates a point that i discuss with students every semester: If I need some insight into the future of medicine, I might head over to Stanford Medical School. If...

Judge Kozinski cleared of misconduct (but "admonished")

Posted on July 02, 2009
Story here. Opinion here, issued by the Third Circuit.

Bad debt=bad character

Posted on July 01, 2009
For this applicant to the bar anyway: here. The circumstances seem unfortunate, and the purpose served by excluding this applicant unclear. Does he pose a threat to the public interest, or merely seem the wrong sort of person for lawyers...

To Send a Message

Posted on June 30, 2009
Not lawyers' ethics, but morality. I'm interested in whether others share my (and Kant's) concern with sentencing Madoff to the max in order to "send a message," as Judge Chin said. Without doing any research on it, my recollection is...

Bill Henderson on the decline and fall of the bi-modal associate salary

Posted on June 29, 2009
Must reading if you're interested in the US legal profession.

Here's one way to boost your law school's post-graduation employment rate

Posted on June 26, 2009
Words fail. In one e-mail exchange, University of Illinois Chancellor Richard Herman forced the law school to admit an unqualified applicant backed by then-Gov. Rod Blagojevich while seeking a promise from the governor's go-between that five law school graduates would...

Once enacted by a jurisdiction, who owns the copyright on a set of model rules? Pre-enactment, who does?

Posted on June 25, 2009
It's a long simmering question. Pre-enactment, does the body that urges widespread adoption of a set of model rules grant a license to others? Post-enactment, does the authorship in the model rules merge with the law itself such that no...

Hmm. Justice Kennedy cites the Model Code for a duty of zeal?

Posted on June 25, 2009
In the new case, Melendez-Diaz v. Massachusetts, Justice Kennedy's dissent cites Canon 7-1 of the Model Code as support for his belief that criminal defense counsel has a duty of zeal. I'm a big fan of zeal (when it's properly...

Our very own Brad Wendel, on "The Torture Memos and the Demands of Legality"

Posted on June 24, 2009
Paper here. Abstract: This review essay considers five recent books concerning the role of governmetn lawyers in the Bush Administration's war on terror: Harold Bruff, Bad Advice (2009); Jack Goldsmith, The Terror Presidency (2007); Jane Mayer, The Dark Side (2008);...

Judges and "Invidious" Discrimination

Posted on June 24, 2009
In response to John's post last week on Sotomayor and the Belizean Grove, I posted a comment suggesting that maybe she was right to claim that resignation was not required. The 2007 version of the Model Code of Judicial Conduct...

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