In my first post on the heels of the filing of the pending BLE petition earlier this month, I made reference to Tennessee’s attorney licensing system being broken. The primary problem is that language in Rule 7 makes obtaining licensing by comity (i.e. waiving in without having to take TN’s bar examination) a practical impossibility. Currently, […]
It’s also in the mail to subscribers, but you can access the new issue here (my column is at pp. 28-29). My piece discusses the plot of a favorite book of mine as well as relatively recent changes made to the ethics rules about conflicts rooted in lawyers’ family relationships. I’d also encourage you to […]
UPDATED TO ADD LINK The Tennessee Supreme Court has put out an order today soliciting public comments on that BLE petition proposing changes to Rule 7 and a few other rules. Deadline for submission of public comments is July 31, 2015. I’ve already written about some aspects of the petition on a number of occasions […]
It is not every day that a contempt case against a Tennessee lawyer gets some national coverage, but it also is not every day that a celebrity former television judge and former candidate for District Attorney has a criminal contempt ruling and sentence of 5 days in jail against him affirmed on appeal. The appellate […]
I tend to think my credentials as a fan of the First Amendment are pretty solid. But I feel like I’m standing on pretty solid ground in saying that a lawyer’s effort to pursue a ballot initiative that calls for the murder of people, if it were going on in Tennessee, would justify discipline against […]
Pretty quick on the heels of this prior post, we now have a further development from the West Coast on the potential utility of limited license legal technicians, i.e. “nurse practitioners for the legal profession,” in providing better access to justice. The California State Bar has now put out for public comment a number of proposals […]
No, not in any of the ways that would be fodder for jokes or insults directed at lawyers. This is actually another follow-up post of thoughts on an aspect of the BLE’s petition for changes to Rule 7 that I first discussed here. And despite the “click-bait” nature of the title of the post, there […]
I had the opportunity recently to make a legal ethics presentation to a group of regular people, i.e., people who were not lawyers. (It takes effort not to call them “nonlawyers.” I admitted that to them at the outset while acknowledging how egocentric the term sounds when lawyers use it to mean anyone else. Even physicians […]
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Washington and Its LLLTs
One likely future facing the practice of law in the U.S. is now on display in the State of Washington and getting some high-profile publicity this week. This article in The Washington Post tells you almost all you need to know about the introduction of Limited License Legal Technicians (or “nurse practitioners of the legal world” […]
This will be the first of several more in-depth entries focused on the Board of Law Examiners’ petition seeking some changes to Tenn. Sup. Ct. R. 7, which deals with a collection of licensing issues in Tennessee. (This will also be one of those less frequent posts where I may not adhere strictly to my […]