Categories
. Legal ethics

Fine lines and not so fine lines

About six weeks ago, The Law For Lawyers Today published a good post about a problem for lawyers that sometimes lurks around efforts to make demands in order to settle legal disputes for clients — the risk of being accused of extortionate conduct. You can read that post here. That post was prompted by what […]

Categories
. Legal ethics

Not breaking: Dentons didn’t have to say “aloha” to Hawai’i

Well, at least not the goodbye, “aloha.” They can still say the other one as much as they want. So, you probably have seen a headline somewhere in your online surfing about this wacky issue litigated before the Hawai’i Supreme Court. But, just in case you didn’t, here’s all that I think you need to […]

Categories
. Legal ethics

You take the good, you take the bad…

You take them both and there you have … the news about Tenn. Formal Ethics Opinion 2019-F-167 (draft). First, the good. I cannot give sincere and strong enough kudos to the Tennessee BPR for implementing a new policy to release draft Formal Ethics Opinions to the public for comment before deciding to actually adopt and […]

Categories
. Legal ethics

A teachable moment to make your eyes water.

When you spend a lot of time consulting with and advising lawyers, finding teachable moments from examples of things that happen in real life are extremely helpful. The world can be filled with teachable moments. On a non-ethics front, here is one: If you don’t pay attention to when a credit card has a new […]

Categories
. Legal ethics

Discipline for entities? Not the answer to any relevant future questions.

It appears somehow that life and practice left me with nothing to post for more than a week now. If I have any readers left, today’s post will be a relatively quick one. I managed to write a couple ofposts now about one topic that was covered at the APRL mid-year meeting in Las Vegas […]

Categories
. Legal ethics

Lying about everything is an awful way to go about life.

So, I am rapidly approach the 4th anniversary of this blog and this is the very first time I have had a post sharing exactly the same title as an earlier post. Interestingly (at least to me), that earlier post with that title was written on Groundhog’s Day 2 years ago. The title for this […]

Categories
. Legal ethics

Crowdfunding for attorney fees? Yes, but no.

So, since about early December of last year I’ve been trying to find a way to write about a really good, quite practical (albeit practical about a very niche situation) D.C. ethics from November 2018. The D.C. Opinion, Ethics Opinion 375, addresses the idea of using crowdfunding platforms as an ethical way for a client […]

Categories
. Legal ethics

New Lunar Year, New Lunar Rule?

Okay, the title is something of a stretch to acknowledge that today marks the beginning of a new lunar year, the Year of the Pig. Nothing about what I have to say relates to the moon or anything Lunar. But I did want to continue one part of the discussion begun in Las Vegas last […]

Categories
. Legal ethics

Inflation is likely more widespread than you’d like to believe.

Time inflation that is. I’m certainly not an economist. In the past, I have written about issues associated with overbilling by lawyers in a number of different respects. Today’s post involves a rare public situation involving the admission of overbilling by a lawyer – one that comes out of Illinois and involves a lawyer who […]

Categories
. Legal ethics

More UPL Madness From Ohio

You may recall some past discussion here of the prolonged saga of the Dinsmore lawyer who moved from one of its offices in Kentucky to its Cincinnati, Ohio office and nearly was denied comity admission in Ohio over accusations of the unauthorized practice of law. While that story ended happily — she was ultimately determined […]