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 […]
It has been a long time since I have had reason to strongly disagree with the insights offered by Karen Rubin and company over at their excellent blog – The Law for Lawyers Today – but here we are again. Karen has written a thought-provoking piece about a criminal defense lawyer with a parody Twitter account and […]
I got a call a week or two ago from another Tennessee lawyer trying to noodle through a situation. The caller was curious to see if I could offer any insight about why a situation that seemed a bit broken was not. I couldn’t. Instead, I was able to sort of confirm for the lawyer […]
So, not a milestone for some, but, for me, it feels like an achievement to have made it to my 200th post. And because I’m a sucker for wordplay, I’ll use a “post” milestone to talk about an issue I’ve written about a good bit before but with a twist that also involves the word […]
Roy Simon, the Chair of the NY State Bar Association Committee on Standards on Attorney Conduct, was kind enough to include me on an email last week and, as a result, I learned that New York’s proposed adoption of certain aspects of the ABA Ethics 20/20 revisions was approved, effective January 1, 2017. Back in […]
So, many moons ago I wrote a post about the fact that California was working through the process of trying to overhaul its ethics rules. I said I’d get back to that topic, but never really did. So, today, I am. Kind of. But not really. In the news within the last 24-36 hours are […]
So, the D.C. Bar has come out with a far-reaching, sort of two-part ethics opinion addressing lawyers and social media usage. Opinion 370 (Part 1) can be grabbed here. Opinion 371 (Part 2) from here. Opinion 370 has lots of really good parts, but much of the publicity it has received to date revolves around […]