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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

Dishonesty or a Convention?

Posted on September 16, 2010
Derek Jeter got to first base in the Rays game yesterday (9/16/10) by making believe that a pitch had hit his arm, when in fact it had hit his bat. As the NYT reported this morning: Rays Manager Joe Madden...

Florida law firms object to web advertising rules

Posted on September 16, 2010
Details and fun quotes, pro and con, are here. It'll be interesting to see if Florida can maintain is out-of-step approach to lawyer advertising.

Fifth Circuit: courts lack inherent powers to sanction lawyers for behavior at arbitration

Posted on September 16, 2010
Positive Software Solutions v. New Century Mortgage Corp. If the lawyer's bad behavior was not before the court itself, or in defiance of a court order, the inherent powers of the court do not include the power to sanction the...

Legal Ethics Items (September 16, 2010)

Posted on September 16, 2010
Here's an interesting new case from the Supreme Court of Oklahoma: In re Application for Reinstatement of Stewart. The lawyer had failed to pay off her tax liability but had the liabilities discharged in bankruptcy. In weighing the bid for...

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Satire site, The Onion, mocks law school application process

Posted on September 16, 2010
Mock news story here, and as a special bonus they made up a bogus quote from one of our top legal ethicists.

ABA Section Endorses the Uniform Bar Examination

Posted on September 16, 2010
The movement towards a Uniform Bar Exam is gaining momentum. The ABA's Council of the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar just finalized a resolution that encourages states to consider adopting the UBE. The Conference of Chief...

Derek Jeter and lawyers

Posted on September 16, 2010
Thanks to Monroe for calling attention to Jeter's "performance" last night. I thought of a recent article I read in our local paper about a Christian college volleyball team that has begun confessing to the official when the ball has...

Australian blog, on New Zealand's standard for professional discipline

Posted on September 16, 2010
Australian Professional Liability Blog twice revisits a 2008 case from New Zealand, Z v. Dental Complaints Assessment Committee, on whether the criminal standard should apply in professional discipline cases. Does anyone know of a handy compendium of what the standard...

Grievance filed against Righthaven CEO

Posted on September 15, 2010
Las Vegas Sun has the news about the grievance filed with the Nevada State Bar. (In a nutshell, the Las Vegas Review Journal, Righthaven and their lawyers have filed a large number of copyright infringement suits against people who post...

Legal Ethics Items (September 15, 2010)

Posted on September 15, 2010
Legal Profession Blog: alleged billing fraud by GM's outside counsel. ABA Journal: In South Carolina, having sexual relations with a client's wife is per se unethical. Main Justice: a new hearing date has been set for the contempt hearing against...

Forbes to rank law schools on employment?

Posted on September 15, 2010
According to the ABA Journal, Forbes may be preparing law school rankings based upon employment and job placement. Great idea, if they can pull it off.

U.S. News Law Firm Rankings

Posted on September 15, 2010
If you think that the U.S. News law school rankings are subjective, you're really not going to like the first U.S. News law firm rankings, which were just released. Earlier this year, the ABA House of Delegates passed a resolution...

Legal Ethics Items (September 14, 2010)

Posted on September 14, 2010
Everybody's getting into the act: Main Justice reports that the DOJ Inspector General will join the OPR in conducting investigations into the DOJ's handling of civil rights and voting cases. We've been hearing from ex-DOJ lawyers and from journalist/pundits with...

Akzo Nobel NV: European Court of Justice rejects privilege for in-house lawyers

Posted on September 14, 2010
Story here at The Lawyer, and covered lots of places in the blawgosphere. Here's the decision. The European tradition puts far more emphasis on the lawyer's independence and this ruling reflects a belief, fair or not, that employee lawyers just...

and a few more (September 14, 2010)

Posted on September 14, 2010
Vorhees' New Jersey Legal Malpractice Blog looks at a new unpublished New Jersey case involving a family trust -- a case that seems to set a very low standard for finding conflicts and perhaps an "impossibly high" standard for attorney...

Advocaten voor Advocaten: fighting globally for the rights of lawyers

Posted on September 13, 2010
Twice recently, I've asked our readers if there are any organizations of lawyers that advocate for lawyers around the world who face political pressure (or worse) because of their work as lawyers. A commenter, Maria Rohaly, steered me to this...

Legal Ethics Items (September 13, 2010)

Posted on September 13, 2010
From Blog of the Legal Times: The Justice Kagan recusal watch has bumped up to 21 cases, but it's not clear to me that this was any reason not to nominate her. Two articles from the WSJ regarding that battle...

Reforms in Turkey raise concerns among judiciary about its independence

Posted on September 13, 2010
Story here and coverage at The Corner. UPDATE: (h/t: commenter Patrick O'Donnell) Juan Cole, at Informed Consent, says: "[The reforms] will also weaken the autonomy of the judiciary. Admittedly, the latter step could prove pernicious, and there are legitimate concerns...

Hofstra Seeking Lichtenstein Distinguished Prof. of Legal Ethics

Posted on September 13, 2010
HOFSTRA LAW SCHOOL seeks nominations and applications for the Howard Lichtenstein Distinguished Professorship in Legal Ethics. This professorship is designed to advance the study, teaching, and practice of professional responsibility. To fill this position, we are looking for a distinguished...

Michigan State?s Kelley Institute of Ethics Annual Lecture

Posted on September 12, 2010
This week here at Michigan State University College of Law we?ll be hosting the second annual Kelley Institute of Ethics Lecture. We?re thrilled that Deborah Rhode is delivering the lecture, Lawyers as Leaders, with her remarks to be published in...

Legal Ethics Items (September 12, 2010)

Posted on September 12, 2010
JD Journal: DC lawyers have the second highest billing rates. The National Association of Defense Counsel and the ACLU will sue Homeland Security over the seizure and inspection of laptops. HIspanic National Bar Association has announced that is to issue...

Some recent scholarship (September 10, 2010)

Posted on September 10, 2010
Arthur Greenbaum, Multijurisdictional Practice and the Influence of ABA Model Rule of Professional Conduct 5.5 - An Interim Assessment. Lester Brickman, Anatomy of an Aggregate Settlement: The Triumph of Temptation over Ethics. Woolley, Wendel, Simon, Pepper, Markovits, Kruse & Dare...

Legal Ethics News (September 10, 2010)

Posted on September 10, 2010
New York Law Journal (h/t: TaxProf Blog): In the huge criminal trial arising from the Jenkins & Gilchrist tax opinion fraud, the judge has ruled that Sonnenschein cannot represent both a defendant and a cooperating witness. (I may be mistaken...

An interesting Twist to Federal Courts and Choice of Law in Ethical Matters

Posted on September 10, 2010
In many federal courts, state rules do not control "ethical' issues even if the local rules of the district court adopt the state rules. Some circuits go so far as to say that the district court errs if it feels...

Legal Ethics Professors Take a Stand for Private Property, Free Exercise of Religion and Against Abusive Lawsuits.

Posted on September 10, 2010
Several legal ethics professors, many of the Jewish faith, are soliciting contributions for the new Mosque and Islamic Cultural Center in midtown Manhattan. As a Christian, I could say that this matter is not my concern, but it is my...

Lucille Jewel, "I Can Has Lawyer? The Conflict Between the Participatory Culture of the Internet and the Legal Profession"

Posted on September 09, 2010
I really like that title. Having been mentioned in one of the legal profession's first viral emails, I'm aware that the current generation of law students has quite different norms about the use of information. When the viral information exposes...

Legal Ethics Items (September 9, 2010)

Posted on September 09, 2010
South Carolina Criminal Defense Blog: Non-lawyers may no longer act as prosecutors on behalf of businesses in misdemeanor (magistrate) court. Hey, I had no idea that lawyers could do that. Mazzochi v. Goldstein Law Office: in this Minnesota case, the...

. . . and a few more items (September 9, 2010)

Posted on September 09, 2010
Rich Cassidy, at On Lawyering, pushes for a broad implementation of Civil Gideon. An item I missed about a week ago: from Above the Law, a lawsuit against the Avvo site. This one's admittedly a bit tangential, but in, Telling...

More scholarship on lawyers and judges not knowing what's really motivating them (Cassandra Robertson; Moses Shayo & Asaf Zussman)

Posted on September 08, 2010
We've seen a lot of interesting scholarship on this theme, including from Andy Perlman and this article I posted about last week. Here are two more in that vein. Cassandra Robertson (Case Western), "Judgment, Identity, and Independence." Abstract: Whenever a...

Important new California case on non-clients suing transactional lawyers for fraud (and much, much more): Favila v. Katten Muchin

Posted on September 08, 2010
Attached is a new case, Favila v. Katten Muchin, published by the Second District Court of Appeal. Although the facts are dense, it addresses a number of issues critical to professional liabilities of corporate lawyers, so it?s worth reading. A...

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