Things are moving so fast, the new administration has made it to one of the worst moments of the Nixon Administration in fewer than 11 days. Now, in addition to being a constitutional crisis, America’s political drama involves an honest-to-goodness legal ethics issue so… To recap, yesterday Sally Yates, a career federal prosecutor who was […]
The Tennessee Supreme Court issued an order last week implementing a helpful change to our rules on pro hac vice admission so that lawyers who are taking advantage of recent rule changes in Tennessee to permit practice pending admission can also be admitted pro hac vice in a lawsuit on behalf of a client. You […]
We appear to be living now in an era in which whistle blowers are going to be in the news (and perhaps be the news) more than ever. Many who know me, know that I hold a pretty controversial opinion — Arrested Development is potentially the greatest television show in history. For many years when I […]
Even the largest and the most prominent of law firms can get themselves crosswise with clients over conflicts. In fact, at some level, it is the largest and most prominent law firms that are most at risk of the negative ramifications that can come from conflicts of interest. Last week, the world’s largest law firm […]
No, the title is not a veiled attempt to publicly-shame Maine’s Governor for his latest act of public ridiculousness… or is it? This is instead a short post discussing conduct that I posit is a lot more common than you might think and that resulted recently in a very low-level of discipline against a Maine […]
Not too long ago, I weighed in on an Alaska Ethics Opinion about the ethics of lawyers using email “bugs” that surreptitiously track what happens to an email after it has been sent. There is a new, interesting read on the “legal or not” aspect of this technology in the ABA/BNA Lawyers Manual on Professional […]
I had every intention of posting twice this week, but events, including being under the weather with general ick much of the week, undermined my intent. So, this mediocre post will briefly hit two items. And, with any luck, tie the two together in a way that makes this seem, in hindsight, the correct way […]
2016 was a year marked with quite a number of unexpected (at least to me) developments. 2017 likely will have its share of unexpected events as well. To wrap up the year, I wanted to use what little platform I have to pursue something that is both driven by blatant self-interest and is in the […]
So, it seems like I am begging to differ all over the place during the last week or so, but here comes another instance. About a month ago, the Tennessee Supreme Court granted permission to appeal in a legal malpractice case, Story v. Bunstein, in which the plaintiff(s) suit against their lawyer was dismissed based on […]
So, this week the ABA Standing Committee on Ethics and Professional Responsibility issued Formal Op. 476 addressing the need to protect client confidentiality when a lawyer seeks to withdraw for reasons involving the client’s failure to pay. As explained below, it is a solid, practical opinion touching on a subject often overlooked by lawyers who […]