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 […]

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. 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 […]

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. 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 […]

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. 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 […]

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. 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 […]

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Judicial Ethics

NFT = No From Tennessee

I am about to write a series of statements that are each fairly described as, if you will allow me to use the technical, legal term, “bananas.” People with way too much money on their hands are spending actual money on things called Non-Fungible Tokens (“NFTs”). NFTs are – in laymen’s terms – unique electronic-only […]

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. Legal ethics

Main(e)ly an excuse for book promotion.

So, before offering up the actual ethics content, if like me you know you’re not quite hitting on all cylinders but you are functional and you haven’t already read that New York Times article that made the rounds about “languishing.” I’d recommend it. You can still get to the article at this link. You might […]

Categories
. Legal ethics

California proposes an ethics opinion that needs further workshopping.

Let’s talk for a bit today about a proposed California ethics opinion for which public comment is being accepted until June 8, 2021. The general topic when you hear about the proposed opinion is immediately of interest — can a lawyer help a client obtain a contractual agreement including a provision that is against the […]

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. Legal ethics

Brooding about ethics.

So, it’s been a minute or so since my last content. You’ve probably moved on and found a new favorite ethics blog. It’s probably Michael Kennedy’s actually, he’s been relentless with content in March 2021. You might be wondering what has happened to keep me from writing over these last 20 or so days. First, […]

Categories
. Legal ethics

“Here’s a new post.” (cleaned up)

I have tried for the better part of a week to convince myself that I needed to write something about the most recent ABA Formal Ethics Opinion which was released in February 2021 and which attempts to explain what “materially adverse” means in the context of ABA Model Rule 1.9 (and Model Rule 1.18). I […]