This is a topic I’ve spoken about on a number of times over the years as it can make for a pretty decent CLE presentation. Any such presentation almost always involves use of a hypothetical to explore issues that seem (or at least can sound) academic to a large extent. The usual jumping off point […]
Back in June 2015, I dedicated a post here to praising APRL’s proposal to streamline ethics rules imposing outdated restrictions on lawyer advertising. A proposal that recognizes that lots of states currently have advertising restrictions on the books that could not survive a constitutional challenge and that aren’t really even being sought to be enforced and […]
Two weeks ago, I offered some thoughts on the latest flare-up in the long-running off-and-on ABA exploration of the third-rail of the practice of law: potential non-lawyer ownership/investment in law firms. This time around, before I could even manage to finish reading all of the comments and try to write some thoughts about the comments, […]
There are lots of sources and stories about the escalation of dollars poured into, and spent in, judicial elections in various states. Here’s an April 2016 article about Wisconsin; and here’s an October 2015 press release from a special-interest group made of folks including The Brennan Center. But that isn’t the only thing that makes […]
When you allow yourself to ponder just how quickly technological advances have changed the daily life of a lawyer, it becomes pretty easy to speculate about just how foreign the daily life of a lawyer 10 years from now will be when compared to what it is today. When I stop to think about the […]
April 2016 has brought another iteration of a seemingly, endless, (yet kind of potentially pointless unless you think the politics of the situation will somehow play out differently from the past) debate: whether some entity within the ABA is attempting to usher into reality a world in which people other than lawyers will be allowed […]
I’ve written (quite a long time ago now it seems, but it was only just last Spring) about the unfortunate nature of lawyers calling people who aren’t lawyers “nonlawyers” – rather than referring to them in a less condescending fashion such as “regular people,” for example. But, I still do it all the time, so […]
I’m fortunate enough this week to be in Austin, Texas in order to share a stage with the wonderfully-talented Lynda Shely on Friday to talk for an hour on ethics at the DRI Employment and Labor Law seminar. Working off of a hypothetical that has a “cribbed” from the headlines if not a “ripped” from […]
Last week, the ABA Standing Committee on Ethics and Professional Responsibility issued its latest formal opinion – Opinion No. 16-474 addressing the topic of “referral” fees under the ABA Model Rules and, specifically, the intersection of Model Rule 1.5(e) and conflicts requirements under Model Rule 1.7. Along the way, the opinion also stakes out […]
Lawyers who frequently represent other lawyers in disciplinary proceedings are well aware that the ethics rules in their state offer up an inherent 2-for-1 construction for bar prosecutors because states with versions of RPC 8.4(a) patterned on the Model Rules establish that a lawyer also violates RPC 8.4(a) by violating any other ethics rule. That […]