Inspiration, like corn, comes from Iowa today. It’s time again for a little game called, is this a bad ethics opinion or the worst ethics opinion? The Iowa State Bar Association Committee on Ethics and Practice Guidelines self-nominated by issuing Op. 15-03. Before I make enemies of a few Iowa lawyers that I have no doubt […]
Author: Brian Faughnan
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Some days you just don’t feel it.
I am not telling anyone who has any experience with this medium anything they do not already know when I say that blogging is a very time-consuming activity. Blogging demands content, but some days you just aren’t feeling it. This is particularly problematic when you are only attempting to do 2 to 3 posts a […]
When people talk about the future of legal ethics in the United States, it is always helpful to engage them in a dialogue about what purpose they think the regulation of lawyers is meant to serve. If you and the other person do not agree on what the purposes to be served are supposed to […]
So sorry for the title if you are not a fan of a syntactically-challenged play on words. But this news item out of Kentucky sounds like the kind of plot that would make for good fodder for a future season of the TV show Fargo. (Which, yes if you are unfamiliar with it, is spun […]
In many jurisdictions, disciplinary proceedings against lawyers are referred to as being “quasi-criminal” in nature. If you ask lawyers who defend lawyers in disciplinary proceedings, you will often hear them agree that the nature of the work can feel a good bit like criminal defense work, but with two pretty universal exceptions that make the […]
In Tennessee, we have a version of RPC 1.6(b)(4) patterned after the ABA Model Rule that permits a lawyer to disclose confidential client information for the purpose of getting advice about how to comply with his/her ethical obligations. The last sentence of Comment [9] to that rule stresses that this disclosure can only be made, however, if […]
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“Does this require a response?”
“Does this require a response?” Print those words out and tape them to the top of your monitor or laptop screen. They are words to live by. Practicing law is stressful and always has been. Lawyers have always known that they can make mistakes that destroy their client’s life or financial situation and potentially their […]
Last week I was confronted with another example of how valuable excellent IT professionals can be for practicing lawyers. As routinely happens, our firm’s spam filter trapped a significant number of emails last Wednesday. Because legitimate email sometimes gets wrongly blocked or filtered, our IT folks also review what gets caught in the filters. Last […]
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Two updates and a (hidden) microphone.
A few items for your consideration over this coming long, Labor Day weekend. The first is an update on a proposed ethics opinion made the subject of an earlier post. The Florida Bar’s Board of Governors has now ultimately decided to reject the approach that had been recommended by its advertising subcommittee, which proposed that […]
Today, we spend a few more minutes addressing a topic that will likely be a rich vein of discussion for years to come or for at least for as long as lawyers continue to be human beings whichever is shorter. (Even with this news, you figure we have a few years left before we have […]