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Academic

Legal Profession Blog

Cover legal ethics, bar discipline, business practice, the tension between the bar and the academy, ethical theory, and comparative legal professions.
By Alan Childress, Mike Frisch, and Jeff Lipshaw

Post Frequency: 40.8/day

Last Entry: April 01, 2011 at 14:56:26

Randomness and the Law

Posted on January 22, 2009
Posted by Jeff Lipshaw There seems to be an industry right now in popularizing (for the New York Times crowd at least) the Tversky and Kahneman insights on human judgment under conditions of uncertainty. Nassim Nicholas Taleb goes at it...

Illinois Bar Charges

Posted on January 22, 2009
The Illinois ARDC has filed bar charges against an attorney as a result of his conviction in Missouri for multiple counts of sexual misconduct with minors and witness tampering. The attorney was convicted of statutory sodomy in the first and...

Regular And Timely Billing Merits Summary Judgment In Fee Action

Posted on January 22, 2009
The New York Appellate Division for the First Judicial Department held today that summary judgment had improperly been denied to a law firm suing a former client for unpaid fees in a domestic relations matter: Evidence in the form of...

Change Of Venue Appropriate When The Plaintiff Is A Judge

Posted on January 22, 2009
A decision today from the New York Appellate Division for the First Judicial Department: Plaintiff was injured in Orange County allegedly because of a defective custom-made bicycle he had purchased from defendants. Plaintiff, an active Justice of the Supreme Court,...

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Kudos To North Dakota

Posted on January 22, 2009
Since this is the day for Oscar nominations, my nomination for the best state high court web page must go to the North Dakota Supreme Court. Informative, entertaining (not limited to court information but providing links to news articles and...

We Pay These Every Year

Posted on January 22, 2009
An attorney who had engaged in unauthorized practice from October 2003 to July 2008 was publicly reprimanded by the Minnesota Supreme Court. The attorney and the Office of Lawyers Professional Responsibility had stipulated that the failure to pay "was inadvertant...

A Period Of Unusual Stress

Posted on January 22, 2009
The Louisiana Supreme Court publicly censured a Baton Rouge parish judge in part for conduct committed while presiding over a specially created drug court. The investigation began with a report from the district attorney of a pattern of ordering defendants...

Progress Is Our Most Important Product

Posted on January 22, 2009
On display today are three orders (linked here, here and here) of the District of Columbia Court of Appeals in reciprocal discipline matters where the court concluded the proceedings in a bit more than two months. Prior to recent amendments...

Consecutive Suspension

Posted on January 21, 2009
An attorney admitted in 1965 had racked up a series of reprimands and short suspensions over the years was suspended for one year (consecutive to an ongoing suspension) for client-related misconduct and income tax violations. The court had called for...

Ex-Detroit Mayor Rebuffed

Posted on January 21, 2009
The Michigan Attorney Discipline Board yesterday denied the petition of former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick to set aside an order of bar license revocation issued on October 31, 2008. He had argued that his criminal plea agreement indicated he would...

Judge Suspended For Three Days

Posted on January 21, 2009
An Indiana Superior Court Judge was suspended without pay for three business days by order of the Indiana Supreme Court. The judge's son had died accidently and his drug use was a contributing factor. The judge attended the sentencing on...

Judge Not

Posted on January 21, 2009
A Louisiana hearing committee considered bar charges filed against a judge who had been removed from office for, among other campaign improprieties, using his office staff to perform campaign activities on threat of losing their jobs if they refused and...

Disbarment But Not Permanent

Posted on January 21, 2009
A Louisiana hearing committee has recommended the disbarment of an attorney convicted of theft of more than $500 from Kiko Foods. This was not shoplifting; rather, he was Kiko's chief financial officer with "direct access to and control over the...

No Need To Suspend

Posted on January 20, 2009
An attorney who was convicted of failure to file state tax returns in 2003 and 2004 was censured by the New York Appellate Division for the First Judicial Department. A non-suspensory sanction was deemed appropriate: Respondent presented substantial mitigating evidence...

When Do the Obamas Get to Relax for a Little Bit?

Posted on January 20, 2009
Posted by Jeff Lipshaw Sorry, ABA Journal, but I'm going off topic for a minute. I've been transfixed all day watching the inaugural (the Obamas are now walking on Pennsylvania Avenue, and I'm worried about security!), but my bigger question...

Mitch Rubenstein on the Lawyer's Worst Nightmare

Posted on January 20, 2009
Mitch Rubenstein, editor of our sister blog, Adjunct Law Prof Blog, has posted on SSRN an article published in the Northwestern U. L. Rev. Colloquy, Lawyer's Worst Nightmare: The Story of a Lawyer and His Nurse Clients Who Were Both...

Malpractice Suit Dismissed

Posted on January 20, 2009
The Washington State Supreme Court affirmed the summary dismissal of a legal malpractice case brought against a lawyer who represented the plaintiff in a divorce. Claims were also dismissed against the lawyer's former firm notwithstanding the fact that the retainer...

Sixth Circuit Throws Out Fieger Suit

Posted on January 20, 2009
In a 2-1 opinion issued today, the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit remanded with instructions to dismiss a lawsuit brought by Geoffrey Fieger and Richard Steinberg under the First and Fourteenth Amendments challenging as vague and...

Chief Justice Roberts Joins "One Really Big Flub" Pantheon; Rowan Atkinson Considered for 2012 Oath

Posted on January 20, 2009
Posted by Jeff Lipshaw You don't get into this club by being a loser. Oh no. You have to have a life of great accomplishment. But you also have to be remembered primarily for one great flub. The charter member...

Quality Of Investigation Questioned

Posted on January 18, 2009
An attorney who was retained to defend a criminal case in which the client was charged with second degree murder. He secured a hung jury at the first trial and a lesser conviction for manslaughter at the second trial. The...

A Dose of Legal Realism - Early Stage Company Version

Posted on January 17, 2009
Posted by Jeff Lipshaw The New York Times has a story today about a start-up company called Boxee, whose software product permits the user to access multiple Internet video and music sites over a television, creating an alternative to cable...

Homage to John Mortimer

Posted on January 17, 2009
Posted by Jeff Lipshaw I was saddened to see today that John Mortimer, barrister, author, and creator of Horace Rumpole, the quintessential Old Bailey hack, an aging "junior barrister," passed away. The Rumpole stories got a little thin (or strained)...

County Attorney Suspended

Posted on January 16, 2009
The Kansas Supreme Court suspended a county attorney for six months based on the following facts: In early May 2007, certain minors attended a Greeley-area party at which beer was consumed. One minor girl, C.H., who had drunk approximately six...

Failure To Report Felony Results In Disbarment

Posted on January 16, 2009
The Nebraska Supreme Court disbarred an attorney who had been convicted on his plea of guilty of failure to report the felonious activities of his client. The lawyer handled land use matters and also practiced (and was disbarred) in Florida....

Suspension For False Testimony

Posted on January 16, 2009
The full Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court yesterday remanded a bar discipline matter to a single justice with direction to impose a six-month suspension of an assistant district attorney found to have testified falsely under oath at a trial in Tennessee...

Presumptive Sanction Imposed

Posted on January 16, 2009
The full Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court affirmed the conclusion of a single justice that an attorney should be suspended indefinitely for intentional misuse of client funds. The court rejected a claim of discrimination based on national origin: We turn now...

The Fact Versus Intuition Pendulum and Whether Empirical Legal Studies Has "Legs"

Posted on January 16, 2009
Posted by Jeff Lipshaw There's some navel-gazing out there about whether "empirical legal studies" as a discipline has, as they say in showbiz, "legs." Jonathan Simon started this at PrawfsBlawg with a speculation whether there's a relationship between bull market,...

Criminal Probation Revocation Leads To Proposed Suspension

Posted on January 16, 2009
Prior to her 2006 admission to the Louisiana Bar, an attorney had been convicted of being on the grounds of a public elementary or secondary school without authorization amd resisting arrest. She was on probation for those offenses at the...

Censure Of Brothers Proposed

Posted on January 15, 2009
An Illinois hearing board has recommended that two brothers who practice together as a firm be censured for the negligent conversion of client funds but rejected charges of dishonest conduct: Regarding all counts, we find that Respondents committed technical conversions...

Yagman Disbarred In New York

Posted on January 15, 2009
Controversial lawyer Stephen Yagman (Wikipedia profile linked here) was disbarred by the New York Appellate Division for the First Judicial Department. The disbarment was imposed automatically as a result of federal felony convictions for attempted income tax evasion, money laundering...

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