I have perused a lot of ethics opinions over the years. Whether a kind of scenario presents a conflict is a frequent subject of ethics opinions. I don’t think I’ve read many that address whether a particular conflict of interest is fairly treated as a consentable conflict, however. Having now read Rhode Island Ethics Advisory […]
Tag: Ethics Opinions
An opinion worthy of discussion was issued in Ohio back in February 2017 but I didn’t stumble across it until this past week. (A tweet by ALAS got it onto my radar screen.) Advisory Opinion 2017-1 from the Ohio Board of Professional Conduct addresses advertisement of contingent fee arrangements and, in particular, it addresses the […]
I have written a few times about the ABA’s adoption of a new Model Rule 8.4(g). One point that was brought up in the run-up to that rule actually finally being adopted was that some more than 20 jurisdictions already had an anti-discrimination rule in place in the black letter of their rules in one […]
In 2017, a lawyer moving from one law firm to another is a pretty common place occurrence. Anyone who has been through the process knows how personally difficult and stressful the ordeal can be no matter how excited you are about your next destination. The emotional and personal components alone can be trying, but the […]
Again, not fair actually. This NY ethics opinion isn’t in the running for being the worst ethics opinion and isn’t even truly bad and actually, I guess, not even wrong. But it does point out a really bad flaw with respect to the language of the particular NY rule it applies. What seems like an […]
The need for clarity with respect to what makes up the “client file” has been an issue I have tried to stay up to date on dating back to our unsuccessful efforts back in 2009 to convince the Tennessee Supreme Court to adopt a rule – what would have been RPC 1.19 — to address […]
Not too long ago, I weighed in on an Alaska Ethics Opinion about the ethics of lawyers using email “bugs” that surreptitiously track what happens to an email after it has been sent. There is a new, interesting read on the “legal or not” aspect of this technology in the ABA/BNA Lawyers Manual on Professional […]
So, this week the ABA Standing Committee on Ethics and Professional Responsibility issued Formal Op. 476 addressing the need to protect client confidentiality when a lawyer seeks to withdraw for reasons involving the client’s failure to pay. As explained below, it is a solid, practical opinion touching on a subject often overlooked by lawyers who […]
So, the D.C. Bar has come out with a far-reaching, sort of two-part ethics opinion addressing lawyers and social media usage. Opinion 370 (Part 1) can be grabbed here. Opinion 371 (Part 2) from here. Opinion 370 has lots of really good parts, but much of the publicity it has received to date revolves around […]
Sorry, bad and lazy pun for a title. As loyal readers of the site know, I like to write from time-to-time about formal ethics opinions issued by state regulatory bodies. A recent one caught my attention at first for its — “I cannot believe someone even had to ask feel.” But, ultimately after I read […]