Categories
. Legal ethics

Happy Blogiversary to Me.

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 […]

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. Legal ethics

Digital assets and ethical issues – good news from the Tennessee legislature

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 […]

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. Legal ethics

Legal Ethics Issues in “Making a Murderer” – Part 3 of 3

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 […]

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. Legal ethics

ABA Formal Opinion 473 – mostly good advice all the way around

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 […]

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. Legal ethics

ABA Law Connect post-mortem. ♫ Five. Five dollar. Five dollar not long. ♫

This is going to be a short update offered on a Friday for any weekend reading needs you may be facing. A bit back (on Back to the Future day actually) I mentioned (almost as only an aside) the pilot project that the ABA was launching in cooperation with Rocket Lawyer to offer a limited-scope […]

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. Legal ethics

Who are these people that ask these questions?

I like a well written, helpful ethics opinion as much as the next guy.  Probably more so, given the statistically low likelihood that anyone standing near me at a given time is also a male lawyer who commits a significant part of their practice to legal ethics and professional responsibility matters.  I think I’ve also […]

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. Legal ethics

Three updates for you on this election-year President’s Day.

Given that there isn’t a lot going on in the news that relates to legal issues, I feel obligated to offer lawyers something to read.  (I don’t think I’ve ever gone on record here about how badly I wish someone would create and implement a sarcasm font upon which all users could agree.  Maybe it […]

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. Legal ethics

The Wisdom of Ferris Bueller. The reality of Machiavelli.

Life moves pretty fast.  If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it. – Ferris Bueller Back in December 2015, during my Ethics Roadshow I talked a little bit about one of the items that had been rolled out for public comment by the ABA Commission on the Future […]

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. Legal ethics

I’ll never understand why athletes hire non-lawyer agents.

Thanks to ESPN I’ve long known more about Johnny Manziel than I care to.  But, this past week, I learned something I really should never know — why his agent decided to fire Manziel as his client.  Up until this past week, Erik Burkhardt was Manziel’s agent.  Burkhardt is a law school graduate, but from […]

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. Legal ethics

Airing the profession’s dirty laundry

Ok, let’s talk about the 60 Minutes piece that aired this past Sunday.  If you haven’t watched it, by all means you should — it is worth the 20-30 minutes of your time.  You can watch it here.  As always, I’ll wait until you get done and come back. Now, it seems beyond dispute that the […]