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. Legal ethics

New column in Memphis Lawyer now available

It’s also in the mail to subscribers, but you can access the new issue here (my column is at pp. 28-29).  My piece discusses the plot of a favorite book of mine as well as relatively recent changes made to the ethics rules about conflicts rooted in lawyers’ family relationships. I’d also encourage you to […]

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. Legal ethics

BLE Petition Now Has a Public Comment Deadline of July 31, 2015 – UPDATED

UPDATED TO ADD LINK The Tennessee Supreme Court has put out an order today soliciting public comments on that BLE petition proposing changes to Rule 7 and a few other rules.  Deadline for submission of public comments is July 31, 2015.  I’ve already written about some aspects of the petition on a number of occasions […]

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. Legal ethics

Speaking of prejudicial to the administration of justice …

It is not every day that a contempt case against a Tennessee lawyer gets some national coverage, but it also is not every day that a celebrity former television judge and former candidate for District Attorney has a criminal contempt ruling and sentence of 5 days in jail against him affirmed on appeal. The appellate […]

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. Legal ethics

Prejudicial to the administration of justice? I’m going to say yes.

I tend to think my credentials as a fan of the First Amendment are pretty solid.  But I feel like I’m standing on pretty solid ground in saying that a lawyer’s effort to pursue a ballot initiative that calls for the murder of people, if it were going on in Tennessee, would justify discipline against […]

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. Legal ethics

A little more insight into the issue of LLLTs – California

Pretty quick on the heels of this prior post, we now have a further development from the West Coast on the potential utility of limited license legal technicians, i.e. “nurse practitioners for the legal profession,” in providing better access to justice.  The California State Bar has now put out for public comment a number of proposals […]

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. Legal ethics

One way the “practice of law” might just be like pornography.

No, not in any of the ways that would be fodder for jokes or insults directed at lawyers.  This is actually another follow-up post of thoughts on an aspect of the BLE’s petition for changes to Rule 7 that I first discussed here.  And despite the “click-bait” nature of the title of the post, there […]

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. Legal ethics

A recent experience speaking about legal ethics to regular people

I had the opportunity recently to make a legal ethics presentation to a group of regular people, i.e., people who were not lawyers.  (It takes effort not to call them “nonlawyers.”  I admitted that to them at the outset while acknowledging how egocentric the term sounds when lawyers use it to mean anyone else.  Even physicians […]

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. Legal ethics

Washington and Its LLLTs

One likely future facing the practice of law in the U.S. is now on display in the State of Washington and getting some high-profile publicity this week.  This article in The Washington Post tells you almost all you need to know about the introduction of Limited License Legal Technicians (or “nurse practitioners of the legal world” […]

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. Legal ethics

More on the BLE’s petition for rule changes

This will be the first of several more in-depth entries focused on the Board of Law Examiners’ petition seeking some changes to Tenn. Sup. Ct. R. 7, which deals with a collection of licensing issues in Tennessee.  (This will also be one of those less frequent posts where I may not adhere strictly to my […]

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. Legal ethics

A 2014 Ethics Roadshow update

For those of you who may have watched my 2014 Ethics Roadshow in person or online, you may recall that one of the lawyers whose plight we discussed was the former General Counsel for South Carolina State University.  He had been indefinitely suspended from practice after pleading guilty to misprision of a felony arising from […]