Categories
. Legal ethics

When the job requires you to do the impossible.

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 […]

Categories
. 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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Judicial Ethics

Lawyers (but really judges) in a #meToo world.

I was fortunate enough to be invited to speak last week at a half-day seminar that was called a “#meToo CLE” and was focused on legal and ethical issues for lawyers in the environment that now exists after #meToo went viral. I was the only male speaker at the seminar and fully recognize that still […]

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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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Judicial Ethics

The good and bad of social media on display

Today’s title refers to two developments worth writing about that caught my attention in the last little bit that only have the issue of social media in common.  I will try to let the reader decided which is which (or if both are both) in due course. The first development is an example of a lawyer […]

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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 […]