Lawyers in private practice work in a variety of settings ranging from solo practice to law firms with thousands of lawyers in scores of offices. Lawyers also practice in a variety of business structures ranging from d/b/a arrangements on one end to Swiss Verein models. My rough guess would be that the majority of United […]
Over the last several months there have been various iterations of stories and reports making the rounds about the susceptibility of our profession to depression and substance abuse, reports of 1 in 5 lawyers being problem drinkers, etc. There are also always folks out there writing variations of pieces about the problems that are created […]
Late in 2015, the Tennessee Board of Professional Responsibility issued Formal Ethics Opinion 2015-F-160 addressing issues regarding retention of client files. I wrote here about a significant problem with the part of the opinion that indicated that our RPC 1.15(b) required retention of all client files for a five-year period. The problem, to me, was […]
Three recent cases involving lawyers alleged to have been sleeping during trial (actually only two about sleeping lawyers, one about a lawyer pretending to sleep) leave me feeling like there has to be the germ of a worthwhile point to be made in there somewhere, but after drafting and redrafting this post in spare moments […]
So, at this point, my refreshing and relaxing time with family and friends in tropical destinations is starting to wind down. Lovely Internet provides the ability for me to write wistfully in advance about the end of a vacation that hasn’t even yet happened. So much progress. As a salve to my soul for this […]
There probably has been news this week about a set of departures of lawyers from one prominent firm to another or efforts that firms are taking to disincentivize their lawyers from taking their clients and moving on to a new destinaton. As I indicated on Monday, I’m not actually around at the moment so this […]
So, today is the one-year anniversary of my first post. Today’s entry is the 130th blogpost at Faughnan On Ethics.com, which looking back at the original concept I had in my head — having my blogposts be more concise takes on issues of interest to me, rather than the longer-form pieces I had previously done […]
Last week the Chattanooga Estate Planning Council was kind enough to have me come to speak to them about ethical issues arising from the uncertain world of the law regarding digital assets. They were gracious hosts and, to the extent there were important ethics issues to really discuss, we managed to cover that most, if […]
It has been a while since I last wrote about this topic. And, getting around to finally writing this piece has been so frustrating and depressing for reasons that ought to be clear by the end of this post, that I am confident that I have no plans to return to it. When I last […]
A few months ago, I wrote a post about a frustrating Tennessee Ethics Opinion that offered guidance on lawyers’ obligations when responding to a subpoena for client information by, in part, treating a subpoena as if it were a court order. Last week, the ABA issued Formal Opinion 473, Obligations Upon Receiving a Subpoena or Other Compulsory […]