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Judicial Ethics Legal ethics

Secret recordings can be good. Electing judges kind of can’t.

So, the reasons secret recordings will always happen in “one-party” recording states is that they get to the truth. Lots of people do not like them though. And judges absolutely loathe the notion of being secretly recorded. They do not like them so much that sometimes no matter what the secret recording reveals they will […]

Categories
Legal ethics

New York Disbarment Speedrun

Now to get the obvious first question out of the way: “speedrun” is a term that gamers use to refer to tackling a video game in a manner where the goal is to try to just complete the whole thing as quickly as possible rather than worrying about high scores. If you want to do […]

Categories
Legal ethics

When the MSG doesn’t agree with you.

I’ve had loads of opportunities over the years to write about interpretations of ethics rules with which I disagreed. But the discussion is much less frequently prompted by a party taking a private position outside of litigation (or even a public position in litigation) about what a rule means because … well … that usually […]

Categories
Legal ethics

Should racists be permitted to practice law?

This is a question I’ve asked in the past. It is not instinctively an easy question to wrestle with. It can easily boil over into various slippery-slope arguments and accusations regarding risk of inviting concepts of the “thought police” and the like. But another news item invites the question back into the arena for further discussion. This ABA […]

Categories
Legal ethics

“In representing a client …”

I’ve written in this space in the past before about how there are many ethics rules that limit their application to lawyers such that they do not kick in unless a lawyer is representing a client. Perhaps, most prominently, this point has been dwelt upon when talking about the efforts to convince jurisdictions to enact […]

Categories
. Legal ethics

Bad judgment leads to bad judgment.

A Tennessee disciplinary matter has made some national news this past week, so what I am writing about might be something you’ve heard about already. It involves a Tennessee lawyer who has been given a 4-year suspension from practice, with one-year of active suspension for providing advice over Facebook to a woman about how she […]

Categories
. Legal ethics

Lawyers out there losing their goddamn minds.

Apologies in advance for the fact that today’s content is going to be something of a mishmash or stream-of-consciousness type of presentation, but it’s where the brain is at based on the events of the last 48-72 hours. (Loyal readers will likely wonder why I think a mishmash is any different than the normal presentation.) […]

Categories
. Legal ethics

Abuse of “Iowa nice” leads to rare Dubuque rebuke.

Readers of this space know that a large part of my practice involves representing lawyers in disciplinary proceedings. Disciplinary proceedings are difficult for all that are involved, but rarely can anyone involved question that they don’t know the stakes. They are what they are and they have their own rules and procedures. Today’s post involves […]

Categories
. Legal ethics

What happens when it Gaetz worse?

So, I’m doing everything I can to only write about this stuff occasionally, but the latest stunt in connection with the ongoing investigations into the current administration requires at least some discussion – not just because of the brazen hypocrisy (after all the ethics rules do not prohibit lawyers from being hypocrites) but because the […]

Categories
. Legal ethics

The ethics of putting together an unenforceable contract.

It is still astounding (as well as deeply dispiriting) that the context of the discussion I’m about to launch is the work of White House Counsel but this is the world we currently occupy.  You may very well have read this fascinating The Washington Post article by now released in connection with the ongoing news story […]