Practicing in the part of the world that I do, I gape with both amazement and jealousy at the hourly rates lawyers are able to charge in much larger metropolitan areas. I try not to think about the difference in a way that is demeaning; instead, I try (perhaps just for more own sanity) to […]
There is no question that there continue to be rapid developments arising in the law resulting from the steady trend among states toward reevaluating the legality of marijuana use under their state’s law. Several states have made it outright legal for recreational use under their state law, while others have legalized only medicinal uses, and […]
During my 2013 Ethics Roadshow, I had a rare opportunity to highlight three instances of former government prosecutors receiving public discipline over past misconduct. Such events are so rare that for three high-profile ones to happen in the same year seemed quite remarkable. One of those three involved a Texas prosecutor who was disbarred for […]
This month the New York City Bar Association has issued an interesting formal ethics opinion on what is, in some respects, a surprisingly little discussed ethical situation: What it can mean for a lawyer’s ethical obligations to simply be serving in a matter as “local counsel.” When I first saw some of the media coverage […]
One interesting difference among jurisdictions in the U.S. as to the regulation of lawyers involves whether a particular state has an unified bar association structure or not. A state like North Carolina operates under such a structure. Every lawyer that obtains a license to practice in North Carolina is a member of the state bar […]
This week a former in-house counsel whose travails were discussed at last years Ethics Roadshow finds himself back in the news this week as he is testifying at his boss’s trial. At the Roadshow we discussed that the former GC for PetroTiger Ltd. had been disbarred in late November of last year as a result […]
During my teleseminar presentation for the Clear Law Institute, I talked at some length about a situation dating back to January 2014 when a Chicago lawyer ended up agreeing to discipline over how she responded to a former client’s negative review of her on the Avvo service. You can read a bit about that story here, but […]
Another post keeping up with the ongoing effort in the State of Washington to try to close the access-to-justice gap through an outside-the-mainstream effort of authorizing certain types of legal services to be provided to the public by those not licensed to practice law. I’ve previously written about this here and here. Now the news, reported first […]
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Disputes with clients …
I find it interesting that very few of my posts over the last few months have involved situations where lawyers acted poorly in connection with disputes with their clients. In fact, it appears that really only one has involved such a situation, this one. I don’t quite know what to make of that fact given […]
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When is a phone not a phone?
In a world where people use their smart phones for seemingly everything, including actually talking to other people on the phone from time-to-time, an interesting ethics issue has been percolating in the world of attorney advertising. Namely, for purposes of the ethics rules that exist to restrict how lawyers can go out about actively soliciting […]