Today has been a very weird sort of day.
My morning was consumed by handling a reinstatement proceeding where my client was someone who is inarguably a better human being, spouse, parent, and member of the community than I am. This person’s contributions to the community while they have been suspended from the practice of law far exceed mine to the point where my contributions cannot even see his contributions they are so far apart.
My afternoon has involved succeeding someone as President of the Association of Professional Responsibility Lawyers who is pretty clearly also a better human being, spouse, and parent than I am.
I do steadfastly believe though that I am a pretty decent lawyer. So, I hope for the best outcome for my client who I truly believe is incredibly deserving of a second chance to expand the playing field of his contributions to include contributions to our profession. Based on that steadfast belief of being a pretty decent lawyer, I also hope that I will make APRL proud in the year I get to serve as its 32nd President.
If you are dead set on getting some ethics content out of today’s post, I would point you in the direction of reading up on just how perilous it can be for a lawyer to give a second chance to a nonlawyer staff member with access to trust funds and who has already once intentionally transgressed.
If you are willing to be more flexible in terms of content let me point you to two external resources that have nothing in common other than that they are labors of love.
First, if you are a frequent reader of this space and you are not already a member of APRL. Please give some real thought to joining. No organization is perfect but APRL is a very good organization. It is made up of about 400 or so people who, like me, are ethics nerds. We are a collection of lawyers all over the United States who represent other lawyers in disciplinary proceedings, legal malpractice cases, or related matters or who are academics focusing on legal ethics or work on bar admission matters or who serve a risk management function for their law firm. Annual membership is only $175. If you are inclined to check us out, our website is here. If you are already convinced and just want to join, you can go directly to registration here.
Second, if you aren’t interested in APRL or you are back to this page after just joining, and you are a huge fan of good television and movies as well as the implementation of awesome ideas, well please, please, please go check out Nestflix. I don’t think I’ve ever put as much time and thought into anything as the person who came up with and implemented that idea.
You will lose your entire weekend navigating that website, but you won’t regret a moment of the time.