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Legal ethics

Obviously, there really is such a thing as bad publicity.

So, earlier this week I was fortunate enough to be able to participate in a seminar put together by Bloomberg Law that focused on the risks and benefits for lawyers in speaking to the press. I think it was a pretty good panel presentation, it was free of charge to attendees, and I believe you […]

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. Legal ethics

Lawyers and publicity. Two related but unrelated stories.

This space has focused on a number of occasions on the difficulties for lawyers in dealing with certain forms of negative publicity. I won’t link to all of those past stories for a variety of reasons. (If you are stuck at home both because of the pandemic and winter weather and are looking for things […]

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. Legal ethics

Three short burst updates

In case you haven’t yet “checked out” for the week to have what I hope is a makeshift, stay-at-home Thanksgiving banquet to kick-off your holiday weekend, here are four very short but, mostly timely, updates on topics of prior posts. First, the Tennessee Supreme Court has put the TBA advertising rule revisions proposal out for […]

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. Legal ethics

Lawyers continue to struggle with tackling online negative reviews.

Today’s topic come up again for two different reasons. First, because the North Carolina State Bar has put out a new proposed ethics opinion seeking public comment about the topic. Second, because it was also discussed at one of the presentations made at the APRL mid-year meeting a week or so ago. As the title […]

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. Legal ethics

A lawsuit about a lawsuit that touches on everything about 2019?

If time capsules were still a thing (are they still a thing?), and someone wanted to capture issues facing the legal profession in 2019 for a time capsule to be buried… what sort of topics would you choose to include? Outside of the legal dynamics at play in the political landscape of the nation (which […]

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. Legal ethics

Friday follow up: undo the good and just leave the bad.

So, not quite six weeks ago, I wrote about a development from Tennessee that was something of a mixed bag. Our Board of Professional Responsibility put out a proposed Formal Ethics Opinion for public comment that, in my opinion, was not a good opinion fraught with quite a number of significant flaws. (If you missed […]

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Judicial Ethics

One thing that lawyers and judges have in common.

People often think of lawyers and judges differently.  And, to a large extent, they should.  In almost every situation, someone cannot become a judge without having been a lawyer first.  But once a lawyer transforms into a judge, their role in the judicial system becomes radically different and they now have a new set of […]

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. Legal ethics

Client Number Three – Seven lessons learned

I can’t believe I’m doing this as neither of these people deserve any benefit of the doubt or serious treatment afforded for their contentions.  But, based on spending time on the web reading comments (despite the always-spot-on advice “don’t read the comments”), there are so incredibly many people who do not understand these concepts and, […]

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. Legal ethics

“No. No you’re not.”

So, you may recall back in October 2017 I had an itch and intended to write about a lawsuit in Pennsylvania that would fit in with the recent (seemingly) increased willingness of lawyers to sue other lawyers over their ads, but since I was beaten to the punch, instead I gave you a pointer to […]

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. Legal ethics

Where are we when even ABA Ethics Opinions are marketed with a “clickbait” approach?

So, as promised (and even though there have been even further developments down in Florida), today I am writing about the latest ABA Ethics Opinion and whether it might provide any solace and protection for a lawyer who is being dragged by a former client online and wanting to defend herself by responding online to […]