Categories
Legal ethics

“In representing a client” … again

We’ve trod this path before, but the issuance of the most recent ABA Formal Ethics Opinion justifies renewed discussion of the topic. Particularly when the opinion in question is of the rare variety where there is a dissent included in the opinion. The path (our topic): Does Model Rule 4.2 apply to a lawyer when […]

Categories
Legal ethics

Examples #2,145 and 2,146 of the scope of the problem.

Having just scratched long unscratched itches of topics over which dust has gathered last week, let’s resume talking about more recent topics. Specifically, a topic that is going to need to continue to be bellowed about until we can get it fixed: the flaws in RPC 5.5. Thankfully, we have two further recent situations — […]

Categories
Legal ethics

Ohio offers advice for lawyers representing Matt Damon

And other crypto bros too, I guess. You may recall in the halcyon days before any of us ever spent any time thinking about pandemics and public health on a daily basis that I wrote about how Nebraska became the first U.S. jurisdiction to issue ethics guidance on whether lawyers could accept payment of fees […]

Categories
Legal ethics

One good item and one bad item for your Friday

Some days the inspiration kicks in and other days it most certainly does not. If this were Instagram, I’d likely try to spout some sort of perspiration to inspiration platitude. But this isn’t, so I won’t. I will though write about two items that somehow caught my attention this week and even though I can’t […]

Categories
Legal ethics

Another ethics opinion that wouldn’t be required if all lawyers were good (or at least chaotic-neutral) lawyers.

There has been A LOT of stuff going on this week in the world of legal ethics. I will refrain from dedicating an entire post to try to tie this plea I made in a post back in December 2020 to these two developments, here and here. Instead, I want to talk a little bit […]

Categories
Legal ethics

An ethics opinion for Valentine’s Day?

Roses are red. Violets are blue. California has a new ethics opinion about what to do when your client no longer remembers you. I’m no Langston Hughes or Emily Dickinson. I’m not even at the level of say … Spike Milligan. And since it isn’t dated from what I can tell, I cannot be certain […]

Categories
. Legal ethics

ABA Formal Op. 499: A consumer review

So, are you a lawyer in the market for an ethics opinion that largely gets to the right answer but has to do so in such a convoluted fashion that it makes you question just how badly your profession has lost the plot on what we should be doing when it comes to regulation and […]

Categories
. Legal ethics

Foundations of a … misunderstanding about what an ethics opinion is supposed to be?

So, I will admit from the jump that I am seriously torn about this post. I am a strident believer that the best ethics opinions are practical in a number of respects and that they have to be to be realistic in terms of helpfulness. An ethics opinion that does little more than offer a […]

Categories
. Legal ethics

The Greening of New York

As promised, though just under the wire, I am following up to write more about one of the stories I didn’t write about in July, the issuance of N.Y. State Bar Ass’n Committee on Prof’l Ethics Op. 1225. One of the downsides of publicly announcing you will write about something in the future is the […]

Categories
. Legal ethics

An ode (of sorts) to RPC 1.18 (but only as an example)

Today’s entry is something of a dodge in a way (I sort of wanted to pile on about this and make the point that it is a much sounder development than this was) and something of knocking down a hastily-created strawman in another respect. But what it mostly amounts to is pursuing a not-yet-fully-formed thesis […]