So, anyone I might have hooked into caring about this site in May and June 2021 likely stopped checking for July content 1 or 2 weeks ago. Longer-term, repeatedly neglected, readers are likely still hanging in there (and forever earning my esteem).
There have been a bunch of times that I thought I was going to bust something out on here this month, but life, and work, and doom-scrolling, and an honest-to-goodness vacation have gotten in the way. On the doom-scrolling front, we’re back to having to do a bunch of that because the people out there with access to the vaccine but who are refusing to take it are really doing all they can to ruin this for everyone else. In states like Tennessee, the problematic Republicans that run things are actively trying to stop young teenagers from getting this vaccine by going so far as to try to stop the dissemination of information to teenagers about any vaccines of any sort. Sigh.
So, this won’t quite make up for the dry spell, but here are quick entries on the 10 things I thought I would write about this July, but didn’t.
(1) The Florida Supreme Court earlier this year did some rule-making that has resulted in Florida lawyers being unable to get CLE credit for any CLE sponsored by the ABA. Sounds absurd, right? It is. I am very proud to say that, among the many public comments filed by lawyers and groups of lawyers attempting to explain to the Florida Supreme Court why it should rescind its new rule, is one from the Association of Professional Responsibility Lawyers. . You can read that comment here. If you are interested in reading all of the comments – which are overwhelmingly opposed to the Court’s actions, you can get access to them here.
(2) Speaking of Florida, backwards as it can be in a number of respects (looking mostly at you Governor DeSantis), it has dipped its toe in the water of joining the ranks of Utah and Arizona in potentially bringing about drastic change in the legal landscape by allowing for nonlawyer ownership of providers of legal services to operate through a “sandbox” approach. You can read more here.
(3) Speaking of Utah and Arizona, we have statistics about the kinds of entities that have been approved in those states for performing legal services either through Utah’s sandbox or just generally in Arizona. A very good article providing an overview of the happenings in those two states can be found here.
(4) Staying out West, but angling a bit northward, the Oregon Supreme Court has issued a good new opinion on whether a lawyer can rely upon RPC 1.6 to attempt to disclose client confidential information to respond to online criticism. Spoiler alert: still a no-no.
(5) One of the things that we’ve discussed here before that a lawyer can do in response to unfair online criticism is to file a lawsuit about it. I’ve pretty steadfastly made the point that doing so likely will only make things worse. Speaking of making things worse by filing a lawsuit because you are mad about how you are being treated online, the twice-impeached former President of the United States filed a class action lawsuit against each of Facebook and Twitter claiming that their decision to ban him from their platforms was unconstitutional. Remarkably, Trump found even more lawyers to be willing to debase themselves and threaten any reputation that might have otherwise established to make highly frivolous arguments in a lawsuit – this time trying to argue that Facebook and Twitter are essentially the government and should have to comply with the First Amendment.
(6) Speaking of lawyers debasing themselves for Donald Trump of all people (and that’s still at many times the most staggering part of all of this, him? This is the guy that so many people are so willing to burn it all down for?), a raft full of lawyers involved in the “Kraken” lawsuits in Michigan had their sanctions evidentiary hearing and, based on all the reports you can go read, it went about as well for them as everything else has gone in the Kraken lawsuit. Then, of all things, one of the most prominent of the lawyers in the cross-hairs went and posted a portion of the video pf the proceedings in violation of the court’s explicit order not to do so. This has led to a follow-up show cause order regarding contempt. Most recently, the judge issued an order declining to find contempt but asking for an explanation for why discipline should not be imposed. I’ve written in the past about why we shouldn’t just be okay with the notion that courts are saying these public proceedings cannot be taped and re-broadcast but there’s a time and a place for most things. When you are already staring down the barrel of the kind of sanctions these lawyers might get, that certainly wasn’t the time.
(7) Sticking to stories with a political twist, President Biden has signed an omnibus Executive Order that attempts to do an awful lot of things.. One of the things it does is impose some prohibitions on requiring employees to sign non-compete agreements. I was among several lawyers quoted in a Law360 Pulse story about how that portion of the EO could impact the legal profession. Here is a link to the article itself, but you have to be a subscriber to see it. For the rest of you, I’ll just say that, for my part, I said the following:
The direct and immediate impact seems to be minimal because, as you already know, lawyers are ethically restricted from agreeing to noncompetes, and even prohibited from trying to ask a lawyer-hire to agree to them.
When President Biden says something like “the era of it being difficult for someone licensed to do something in one state to get a license in another state needs to come to an end,” why shouldn’t that apply to lawyers too? There are significant discussions going on in the profession about how to better connect willing lawyers and interested potential clients when consumers are going unrepresented and lawyers are out there who don’t have enough work.
(8) A month or two ago, I wrote a bit on how New York and D.C. were putting out some proposed revised approaches to a rule that would help address harassment and discrimination by lawyers, but that are trying to be designed to avoid the “alleged” problems of ABA Model Rule 8.4(g). I neglected at the time to say anything about the fact that Connecticut was working on something in that regard as well. In June 2021, the Connecticut Supreme Court has adopted the proposed revision, and a new Rule 8.4(7) will go into effect in the Nutmeg State on January 1, 2022. You can check out the full language of the rule here.
(9) Big news was made recently in Texas with a decision from the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals finding that mandatory bar membership in Texas was unconstitutional, in the current form of the Texas Bar, because of how the Texas Bar uses some of the dues of members to undertake political activity. I’ve written a few times over the years about the important distinctions that exist between states with unified bars, where membership is mandatory, and states where the bar association is just a voluntary membership organization. More recently, the Sixth Circuit wasn’t as friendly to an Ohio lawyer’s attempt to challenge mandatory membership in the Ohio bar. An ultimate ruling on the issue from the U.S. Supreme Court seems inevitable at this point. Given the current make-up of the Court, the era of mandatory bar associations is likely coming to an end.
(10) Remember three paragraphs ago when I said there was a time and a place for most things? When it comes to lawyers and using marijuana, the New York State Bar Association has released a new opinion that says the time is now and the place is New York.
So, those were 10 things I thought I was going to write about in July but I didn’t. Or did I?
(N.B. I will return before the month ends, and I will write a little bit more about that last item.)