Categories
. Legal ethics

Three for Thursday?

Can that be a thing? I’ve fallen down on the job of being a reliable blogger and I’m not sure I’m getting up any time soon. I think I’ve continued to manage to be a decent lawyer, pretty good expert witness, okay husband, mediocre father, and generally non-evil human being. But I’m failing as a […]

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Judicial Ethics

“Let’s put our heads together and start a new country up.”

Serial, perhaps the best known podcast of all podcasts, has recently launched its third season and like one of the REM songs off of Life’s Rich Pageant it focuses on Cuyahoga – but not the river but the County in Ohio – more particularly, it focuses on what goes on inside the Justice Center in Cuyahoga County.  […]

Categories
. Legal ethics

Information overload; summer struggles.

Mid-August often feels like summer doldrums.  Yet, there has been so much recent information of interest in the world of legal ethics that it is hard to keep up.  Thus, one can manage to feel simultaneously adrift and overloaded. In that spirit (and because I am that “one”), here are a handful (plus 2) of […]

Categories
. Legal ethics

When the job requires you to do the impossible.

I’d long thought that the ethical issues associated with representing clients held in Guantanamo would be the most flagrant example in my lifetime of our government purposefully making it impossible for lawyers to fulfill obligations to their clients.  Sad to say that I may just have been wrong about that.  (P.S.  I only started this […]

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. Legal ethics

Client Number Three – Seven lessons learned

I can’t believe I’m doing this as neither of these people deserve any benefit of the doubt or serious treatment afforded for their contentions.  But, based on spending time on the web reading comments (despite the always-spot-on advice “don’t read the comments”), there are so incredibly many people who do not understand these concepts and, […]

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. Legal ethics

Safeguarding confidential information, border searches, and your devices

In February, I will have the opportunity to be part of a panel discussion in Vancouver, Canada at the mid-year meeting of the Association of Professional Responsibility Lawyers focused on privacy and client confidentiality issues. We will discuss quite a few interesting topics, including something that likely isn’t on the radar of as many U.S. […]

Categories
. Legal ethics

Practicing law like it’s espionage. NYC Bar Formal Op. 2017-5

This week the New York City Bar has put out a very important, and I think very helpful, ethics opinion to address a real, practical concern for lawyers: what, if anything, can be done to protect confidential client information when traveling and crossing the border into the U.S.? NY City Bar Formal Op. 2017-5 lays […]

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. Legal ethics

Traps for the Unwary – Employer email systems

I like to think I am “warier” than the average attorney.  But a recent attorney-client privilege opinion out of New York was a good reminder that being “wary” can be much like being “woke.”  Even if you think you are, you probably aren’t as much as you think you are, and you can always be […]

Categories
. Legal ethics

North Carolina – Good intentions leading to a pretty seemingly bad rule.

So North Carolina has got quite a bit going on these days.  Last night UNC won the NCAA Men’s Basketball championship.  A few days ago, its general assembly kind of, sort of, repealed the bathroom bill that brought it much negative publicity and cost it some sporting events.  And, in March 2017, it adopted a […]

Categories
. Legal ethics

Whistling about where you work.

We appear to be living now in an era in which whistle blowers are going to be in the news (and perhaps be the news) more than ever. Many who know me, know that I hold a pretty controversial opinion — Arrested Development is potentially the greatest television show in history.  For many years when I […]