Categories
. Legal ethics

You would have thought it would have been with Houston, but still…

Some interesting news today in the intersection of legal ethics and sports.  (And technically this makes two straight posts dabbling in that space.)  You might recall seemingly forever ago that I posted about a very short lived partnership between the ABA and a company called Rocket Lawyer.  If you don’t remember anything about that, you […]

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

“In representing a client” … again

We’ve trod this path before, but the issuance of the most recent ABA Formal Ethics Opinion justifies renewed discussion of the topic. Particularly when the opinion in question is of the rare variety where there is a dissent included in the opinion. The path (our topic): Does Model Rule 4.2 apply to a lawyer when […]

Categories
Judicial Ethics

A brief personal announcement

It’s a new month and, for me, a new professional era. I have been privileged to work over the last 23 years for three excellent law firms ranging in size from 50+ lawyers to more than 300 or so. From my early years with Armstrong Allen all the way through the last 8 years at […]

Categories
Legal ethics

Examples #2,145 and 2,146 of the scope of the problem.

Having just scratched long unscratched itches of topics over which dust has gathered last week, let’s resume talking about more recent topics. Specifically, a topic that is going to need to continue to be bellowed about until we can get it fixed: the flaws in RPC 5.5. Thankfully, we have two further recent situations — […]

Categories
Judicial Ethics

Blasts from the past.

First, just a heads up that there will be some design changes taking place here at Faughnan on Ethics around the beginning of October 2022 so keep an eye out for that. Second, I know I haven’t written about anything recently but today is a day to knock out bunch of updates on things that […]

Categories
Legal ethics

Louisiana remains a legal embarrassment.

There are a lot of dumpster fire situations going on these days that have direct or indirect relationships to legal ethics. Frankly, there are too many to make it easy to decide which ones to think it makes sense to spend time writing about here. There is the seemingly evergreen issue of Donald Trump continually […]

Categories
Legal ethics

Ohio offers advice for lawyers representing Matt Damon

And other crypto bros too, I guess. You may recall in the halcyon days before any of us ever spent any time thinking about pandemics and public health on a daily basis that I wrote about how Nebraska became the first U.S. jurisdiction to issue ethics guidance on whether lawyers could accept payment of fees […]

Categories
Judicial Ethics

Speaking of public censures …

Today we get the chance to write about something that truly is a rare event — the imposition of public discipline against a sitting federal judge. And it is a story that when you reach the end of it leaves you feeling like the punishment was not really harsh enough but also very aware of […]

Categories
Legal ethics

You get a censure, you get a censure, everybody gets a censure!?

This is a post that will largely only speak to other lawyers who handled the defense of disciplinary matters. It is also a post that admittedly will — based on limited available information both broadly and narrowly — lack appropriate insight at a granular level. What it is intended to do, however, is point out […]