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. Legal ethics

RPC 5.6 and settlement agreements: The TN BPR messes up another ethics opinion.

This is not truly a development that merits the “Bad Ethics Opinion or the Worst Ethics Opinion” treatment, but it is a development that deserves commentary. Last week while my wife and I were getting some short R&R, the Tennessee Board of Professional Responsibility issued Formal Ethics Opinion 2018-F-166.  If all you read of it […]

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. Legal ethics

Far too often anger begets violence both by, and against, lawyers.

I failed again as a blogger last week and do not have anything resembling a good excuse.  There is a lot going on in the world that is troubling and last week was simply a week where it felt like writing anything that was not about how our country has become okay with putting children […]

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. Legal ethics

Time to choose: are you Illinois or New Jersey?

Blackhawks or Devils? Bulls or Nets? Barack Obama or Chris Christie? Northwestern or Rutgers? Kanye or Wu-Tang Clan? Wilco or Bruce Springsteen? Some of those are easy calls; some are harder decisions to make.  What they all have in common though is that one comes out of Illinois and the other comes out of New […]

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. Legal ethics

Things former judges can and can’t do.

(Edited on June 4 to fix very embarrassing mistaken reference to the wrong RPC.  Twice.  Thanks to Roy Simon for pointing out the mistake.) There are some pieces of the attorney ethics rules that it almost seems like there is never an organic opportunity to write about them.  RPC 1.12(a) regarding restrictions imposed on someone […]

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. Legal ethics

A tale of two ethics opinions.

So, I’ve made something of a habit of writing about ethics opinions.  Bad ones and good ones.  Mostly bad ones though. As the trite – almost hackish – title of this post telegraphs, today I want to compare and contrast two recently released ethics opinions that manage to demonstrate the good that can come from […]

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. Legal ethics

On wellness: An indirect explanation of last week’s lack of content

Content is a hungry beast.  I starved it last week.  Apologies. It was really a bit of a rough week to let things get away from me and not be able to write anything because there were actually quite a few things worth delving into that happened.  Perhaps the biggest piece of news actually came […]

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. Legal ethics

Throwback Thursday on Cinco de Cuatro Eve

Usually the concept of Throwback Thursday should reach back farther than merely months ago, but I can’t resist given yesterday’s news. So, I throw you back to this February 15, 2018 post.  And I do so to point out something about which I was right and something about which I was quite wrong  but with […]

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. Legal ethics

TN BPR releases two more “stealth” ethics opinions

Earlier this month, and again in a fashion that seems a bit more in keeping with NOT wanting people to know they’ve been released rather than to give advice and guidance intended to be disseminated far and wide, the Board of Professional Responsibility here in Tennessee issued two new Formal Ethics Opinions. The only way […]

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. Legal ethics

A short post-mortem for Tennessee’s proposed RPC 8.4(g)

With the flood of comments in opposition, and particularly the fact that the Attorney General of our state felt the need to file not just one but two comments in opposition, the unsuccessful end of the effort to convince the Tennessee Supreme Court to adopt a version of RPC 8.4(g) has felt inevitable for the […]

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. Legal ethics

Client Number Three – Seven lessons learned

I can’t believe I’m doing this as neither of these people deserve any benefit of the doubt or serious treatment afforded for their contentions.  But, based on spending time on the web reading comments (despite the always-spot-on advice “don’t read the comments”), there are so incredibly many people who do not understand these concepts and, […]