Categories
. Legal ethics

Threats to the legal profession include threats by members of the profession

This post is coming late in the week because this week marked the first two stops on the Ethics Roadshow for 2018.  (If you are in or near Memphis and Nashville you can still register to come attend next week’s stops and hear about a potential recipe for ethical lawyering involving the 5 Cs of […]

Categories
Legal ethics

New Jersey takes a step in the right direction on advertising

With a strong tip of the metaphorical hat I never wear to Kim Ringler (a former President of APRL) who alerted many ethics lawyers to the news, I write today about a new ethics opinion from the New Jersey Committee on Attorney Advertising. In Opinion 45, issued less than a week ago, New Jersey has […]

Categories
Judicial Ethics

Lawyers (but really judges) in a #meToo world.

I was fortunate enough to be invited to speak last week at a half-day seminar that was called a “#meToo CLE” and was focused on legal and ethical issues for lawyers in the environment that now exists after #meToo went viral. I was the only male speaker at the seminar and fully recognize that still […]

Categories
. Legal ethics

The intersection of the First Amendment and the Ethics Rules

So, I don’t know if any of you have ever played HQ Trivia.  In any session, they have between 500,000 and almost 2 million players, so statistically speaking, I guess there is a chance you have.  While it has nothing to do with legal ethics, in order to understand the context of what follows, let […]

Categories
. Legal ethics

If racism is disqualifying for a juror, why not for an aspiring lawyer?

Nothing like the day after a holiday weekend to pose a difficult, potentially controversial, question, right?  But when the holiday weekend in question is one to celebrate the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., this particular question is certainly topical. This is a post I have had rattling around inside of my […]

Categories
. Legal ethics

A short update on Avvo ratings

You may recall, a while back, that I kvetched a bit here about my belief that Avvo’s rating system was less than a bona fide system.  The primary focus of my argument centered on Avvo’s decision to assign numerical ratings to some lawyers even though those lawyers have never claimed their profiles.  I then spent […]

Categories
. Legal ethics

Advocating for attorney advertising.

So, back in August, I mentioned that I was going to have the opportunity to debate issues of lawyer advertising before an audience of top-notch Canadian lawyers in November.  This post is something of a coda to that post as I want to, very briefly, say a word or two about that talk. It was, […]

Categories
. Legal ethics

More fuel for the advertising rule reform fire.

So, I’m getting a very wonderful opportunity to participate in a debate about lawyer advertising in November in Nashville at The Advocates’ Society annual meeting.  A throng of lovely Canadian attorneys will be traveling to our state capital for a two-day meeting. I say all of this for two reasons: Reason the first – today […]

Categories
. Legal ethics

Does Avvo provide a bona fide lawyer rating?

A number of folks have already written about how New York has dealt another setback for Avvo Legal Services in the form of NY State Bar Ethics Op. 1132 which found that New York lawyers could not participate in Avvo Legal Services because payment of Avvo’s marketing fee amounts to payment for recommendation of services […]

Categories
. Legal ethics

Something to chew on during your holiday weekend.

I am nowhere near the most plugged in when it comes to lawyers on the forefront of tracking the ways in which rapid developments in technology are changing the practice of law.  I’m a bit more aware than likely most lawyers, in part because I’m constantly looking for things worth writing about here, but also […]