Not quite 5 months ago, I wrote a bit of a shorter post about my view as to why ABA Formal Ethics Opinion 480 counted as a good ethics opinion. For those that may not be remembering the opinion off the top of the head, it was the one that reminded lawyers – primarily in […]
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Within the last week, there was an interesting Law.com article (subscription required) on a topic that has been something of a pet . . . well not really “peeve” of mine, and not really a pet project of mine, but a topic that I feel like is somewhat uniquely overlooked by the people to whom […]
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Ridiculous from up close and far away.
I have some real-world experience in trying to help lawyers already admitted in at least one jurisdiction obtain admission to practice here in Tennessee. My state’s system now is still less than ideal but not necessarily in a way that makes it strikingly more problematic than is the case in many other states. (In the […]
A lot of the time, saying something seemed “inevitable,” only makes sense to say when you’ve had the benefit of hindsight. At some level, every outcome can be justified as having been inevitable when you are doing the justifying after the event has already happened. I say that to make clear that I understand the […]
I’d long thought that the ethical issues associated with representing clients held in Guantanamo would be the most flagrant example in my lifetime of our government purposefully making it impossible for lawyers to fulfill obligations to their clients. Sad to say that I may just have been wrong about that. (P.S. I only started this […]
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 […]
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 […]
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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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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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 […]