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Legal Ethics Forum 

Covering Legal Ethics
Post Frequency: 11.2/day Last Entry: August 14, 2020 at 13:23:48 Recent Entries: 2870
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Some Arguments for Screening
Posted on January 02, 2009Next month the ABA House of Delegates will take up Report 109, which recommends amending MR 1.10 so that the conflict of properly screened lawyer would not be imputed to other lawyers in the conflicted lawyer's firm. I favor the...
Year-end Blawg Reviews, Wrap-ups, and Lists
Posted on January 02, 2009I will add more as I find them or as you mention them in the comments. 2008 White Collar Crime Awards, from White Collar Crime Prof Blog. Law Blog Newsmakers of 2008, from the WSJ Law Blog. Our own Top...
Top Ten Legal Ethics Stories of 2008
Posted on December 31, 2008Here???s my Top Ten Ethics Stories of 2008, which is my 5th annual list. Your comments are welcome and I expect to revise this post based on those comments. Below the fold are the Honorable Mentions under each category. In...
The Madoff Scandal Slams Legal Services
Posted on December 31, 2008The recent economic turmoil is going to hit public interest organizations particularly hard, including public defender offices. Now it appears that Bernie Madoff's scandal is going to make the situation even worse. Quite a few prominent legal services organizations are...
Interesting Texas Ethics Opinion on Hiring All Lawyers Solely to DQ them
Posted on December 28, 2008The opinion, Texas Ethics Opinion No. 585, is available here. It addresses what I know sometimes happens: a party does initial interviews with key firms in a city or state to preclude each firm from representing the opponent in major...
Patrick O'Donnell's bibliography on terrorism
Posted on December 27, 2008One of our top topics here has been the role of lawyers in the Global War on Terrorism and in particular in the use of torture. One of our top commenters has been Patrick S. O'Donnell, who teaches philosophy at...
Two examples of Rule Three
Posted on December 19, 2008I teach six rules of survival, the third of which is: Assume everything you do or say will become publicly known.One reason for the rule is that you may be speaking to more people than you know. Today's news brings...
This Seems Right
Posted on December 19, 2008Law.com reports the New Jersey Supreme Court has ruled that an in-house attorney may maintain a wrongful discharge claim based on internal complaints even if she did not report the alleged misconduct to outside officials. It seems odd that the...
Two examples of Rule Three
Posted on December 19, 2008I teach six rules of survival, the third of which is: "Assume everything you do or say will become publicly known."One reason for the rule is that you may be speaking to more people than you know. Today's news brings...
This Seems Right
Posted on December 19, 2008Law.com reports the New Jersey Supreme Court has ruled that an in-house attorney may maintain a wrongful discharge claim based on internal complaints even if she did not report the alleged misconduct to outside officials. It seems odd that the...
New Jersey Supreme Court Vacates Ethics Opinion on Super Lawyer Ads
Posted on December 17, 2008Last year, New Jersey's Committee on Attorney Advertising concluded that ads touting a lawyer's listing in the Super Lawyers publication are likely to create an unjustified expectation as to results and were impermissible. I offered some criticism of the opinion...
New Jersey Supreme Court Vacates Ethics Opinion on Super Lawyer Ads
Posted on December 17, 2008Last year, New Jersey's Committee on Attorney Advertising concluded that ads touting a lawyer's listing in the Super Lawyers publication are "likely to create an unjustified expectation as to results" and were impermissible. I offered some criticism of the opinion...
New York Adopts Long-Awaited Changes to Its Ethics Rules
Posted on December 17, 2008The amendments are significant and (finally) align the New York rules to the numbering and style of the ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct. New York had been one of only a handful of jurisdictions that had not adopted the...
New York Adopts Long-Awaited Changes to Its Ethics Rules
Posted on December 16, 2008The amendments are significant and (finally) align the New York rules to the numbering and style of the ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct. New York had been one of only a handful of jurisdictions that had not adopted the...
McCain Palin and Confidential Information
Posted on December 15, 2008Andy and I have repeatedly blogged and spoken about lawyer obligations to safeguard client confidences, and so this story from CNN caught my eye: their campaign sold off a bunch of Blackberries to recoup some money, but they left all...
Ethics Materials for City Attorneys
Posted on December 15, 2008At the request of our new city attorney, Jan Goldsmith, on Saturday we had an all-day seminar on ethics issues relevant to city attorneys. I am posting the materials here in the event other offices wish to use them. You...
The saga of Marc Dreier
Posted on December 14, 2008NYT story here. (free reg. req'd) What drove him to (allegedly) steal at least $35 million and hurt so many people? Who knows. Sometimes the ethics issue is straight-forward and the psychological issues are hard to fathom.
Update: the ethics of Patrick Fitzgerald's public comments
Posted on December 10, 2008The taped conversations of Gov Blagojevich were jaw-dropping, but how far can Patrick Fitzgerald go in his public statements? Model Rules 3.6 and 3.8(f) permit prosecutors to inform the public of certain information related to an accusation. But some of...
Laurel Terry on "The Future Regulation of the Legal Profession: The Impact of Treating the Legal Profession as 'Service Providers'"
Posted on December 10, 2008Laurel Terry's new paper is available on SSRN here. It traces the recent history of treating the legal profession as just one of many service providers, and offers predictions about where that approach will lead. What follows is my interpretation...
Interference with university-based law clinic's autonomy?
Posted on December 09, 2008Via Leiter's Law School Reports, here's a story about a university challenging a decision by a university-based law clinic to represent unionizing workers at another university. Here in the US we've had some controversies along those lines but I haven't...
David Giacaline on the ethics of value billing
Posted on December 03, 2008David Giacalone discusses the high price of legal services and the importance of value billing -- and he calls out this blog for failing to address the issue.
Mistake reveals firm's efforts to stem defections
Posted on December 03, 2008This article, making use of an inadvertently disclosed document, shows how one firm implemented financial penalties to stem partner defections. That's a murky area of firm management. The various techniques are rarely made public and there isn't much case law...
Bill Henderson on gaming the LSAT scores
Posted on December 03, 2008Bill Henderson has the data: the rule change regarding the reporting of LSAT scores has led students to take the test multiple times. (Bill cross-posts at Legal Profession Blog as well.)
Maine on Metadata: Don't Look
Posted on December 03, 2008The Maine Professional Ethics Commission of the Board of Bar Overseers has concluded (in opinion 196) that "it is ethically impermissible for an attorney to seek to uncover metadata, embedded in an electronic document received from counsel for another party,...
"You want to make society a better place? You want to eliminate poverty? Become a corporate lawyer"
Posted on December 03, 2008Stephen Bainbridge (UCLA) offers his views on teaching and being a corporate lawyer here.
ABA Opinion on Law Firm Ethics Counsel
Posted on December 02, 2008The ABA has issued an important opinion regarding the ethical obligations of lawyers who serve as their firm's ethics counsel. The opinion (08-453) is here, and the press release is here. (Thanks to the ABA Journal Daily News Letter for...
Incivility (and Dishonesty) in Support of "Civility"
Posted on December 01, 2008I have just read the opinion by Federal District Judge Stephen P. Froit of the Western District of Oklahoma, in Graves v. Mazda Motor Corp., 2008 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 95600 (11/24/2008). He postures as a supporter of civility, but in...
The ABA's Top 100 Blawgs
Posted on December 01, 2008We made the list again despite our supposed "academic approach." The only reason that I note the "accomplishment" (and have pasted a link to voting here and on the side of the blog) is to make sure that we beat...
Update on the Ben Kuehne prosecution in Miami
Posted on December 01, 2008Wall Street Journal law blog has the latest. Are the feds criminalizing the practice of law?
Blog Ads and Worthy Causes
Posted on December 01, 2008Our blog ads caused some controversy a few weeks ago, so we thought it was worth mentioning what we're doing with the balance of our (modest) ad revenue for the year. We decided to donate the funds to the National...
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Did I harass someone?
Oh, yes. This can be taken in as so many things, especially since you had testif...
How to evict a roommate?
First, in most jurisdictions "self-help" is not a remedy available to any party ...
I have worked for this employer for only three weeks. The employer makes up his own rules as to what he chooses to report for the purpose of property taxes. He tells me to "let them come after us". He defines Entertain
He arrogantly insists, "let them come after us." Well, if you are invo...
This has happened 3 or 4 times a month now- they have turned the electric off 2 days consecutively, the water off about 9 or 10 times now, and our heat has broken 5 times (once it would not shut off, and we were forced t
i say stick with the apartment. eventually, everything possible will be replaced...
The company I worked for forced me to quit instead of dealing with someone harassing me, what can I do?
Look up CONSTRUCTIVE DISCHARGE...................this looks like what happened t...

Did I harass someone?
Oh, yes. This can be taken in as so many things, especially since you had testif...
How to evict a roommate?
First, in most jurisdictions "self-help" is not a remedy available to any party ...
I have worked for this employer for only three weeks. The employer makes up his own rules as to what he chooses to report for the purpose of property taxes. He tells me to "let them come after us". He defines Entertain
He arrogantly insists, "let them come after us." Well, if you are invo...
This has happened 3 or 4 times a month now- they have turned the electric off 2 days consecutively, the water off about 9 or 10 times now, and our heat has broken 5 times (once it would not shut off, and we were forced t
i say stick with the apartment. eventually, everything possible will be replaced...
The company I worked for forced me to quit instead of dealing with someone harassing me, what can I do?
Look up CONSTRUCTIVE DISCHARGE...................this looks like what happened t...








