For my last post of 2015, some thoughts on a frequent source of trouble for lawyers in certain practice areas where efforts are often made to charge nonrefundable fees. In Tennessee, back in 2011, our rules were revised to specifically acknowledge the legitimacy of the concept of a nonrefundable fee but also to impose certain […]
Tag: Meta
Many moons ago at this point, I wrote a post here with some criticism about ABA Formal Ethics Opinion 471 and the various questions important to client file issues on which it punted. Back then I also wrote about how our effort in Tennessee to get an ethics rule adopted (it would have RPC 1.19 in […]
I have made reference in the past on this blog about the problems that can come from the fact that Tennessee is one of a very few states that still use the “preponderance of the evidence” standard in disciplinary proceedings against lawyers. Fewer than a dozen jurisdictions including Tennessee still use that standard. Around forty U.S. […]
A while back I wrote a piece about a relatively deep conversation I had about right and wrong and why lawyers do some really bad things with a SuperShuttle driver in Phoenix. If you missed it, you can read it here. But one of the things I didn’t say during that conversation was that there […]
So, in honor of this my 100th post to the blog, you’ll see that the site has been spruced up a bit with a new logo and look. While the blog may now be more aesthetically-pleasing, the quality of the content isn’t likely to change (for better or worse). You may recall a few months […]
Unfortunately, it does not appear to be up and online as of yet at The Memphis Bar‘s website, but the latest issue of The Memphis Lawyer is out, and I have a column in it. The column — The Revised RPC 7.3(b)(3): The Road to Constitutional Infirmity is Paved With Good Intentions — talks about a revision […]
I remain surprised that RPC 2.1 is so rarely discussed when it comes to ethics rules. It’s not really a scientific or fair way of justifying my point, but if you were to go search the website of the Tennessee Board of Professional Responsibility for “2.1,” it will inform you “There were no results found. […]
Conflicts are a big issue for lawyers, and a significant issue in the world of legal ethics. (If you are a lawyer and do not already have his site bookmarked, you really need to add Bill Freivogel’s website to your list of bookmarks.) Relatively speaking, however, conflicts of interest (other than ones involving inappropriate sexual […]
By way of any update on a recent post you can read here, and in something that should come as no surprise at all, the Florida Bar’s Board of Governors rejected the proposed change to its rules that would have created a mechanism for comity admission. Everything about the way the matter was handled in Florida […]
I’ve previously written about a pending rule revision in Tennessee that the BPR initiated and to which the TBA responded here. Last week the Tennessee Supreme Court entered this order and adopted essentially the language that the BPR was seeking and did not incorporate the suggestions the TBA made that would have actually provided the […]