Back in September, I wrote a bit about some different perspectives on the purpose of lawyer regulation and commented on a story that discussed a proposal that Colorado had in the works. On April 7, 2016, The Colorado Supreme Court took action to adopt a new “Preamble” that serves as the introduction to its rules […]
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Speaking of bad facts making bad law…
I’ve seen a number of short pieces around the Internet about the 70-year old Missouri lawyer who has gotten himself suspended for at least six months over a number of acts of misconduct, including (the thing most prominently mentioned) using information that his client improperly obtained by guessing someone else”s password. There is no question […]
It’s an old adage that bad facts make bad law. In the last few weeks, a good number of pieces were written focusing heightened attention on an issue that many lawyers were already stewing about . . . technological vulnerabilities arising from how lawyers and law firms use (and don’t use) technology. Most of these […]
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A word about B**chslaps
It’s a stupid and demeaning term. In both contexts, whether you replace the asterisks with the original two letters, it, or the other two letters, en. It is unfortunate that the second term was ever coined by this guy, and it is remarkable to think that this guy has included it for many years as […]
So, yesterday, I started writing about the potential ramifications for lawyers of the adoption by the Department of Labor of its final “persuader” rule which will become effective on April 25, 2016, but will only be applicable to agreements entered into on and after July 1, 2016. You can catch up on part 1 here. […]
The scope of confidentiality lawyers owe to their clients has long been a subject that I find fascinating. Over the last few years, I’ve mulled how its broad scope will continue to play out with current and future generations of both lawyers and clients who routinely, almost even instinctively, share seemingly every detail of their […]
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Lawyering vicariously.
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 […]
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Stress, drinks, and folderol
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 […]