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. Legal ethics

New “Brick and Mortar” column out this week (+ 2 other things you should read)

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 […]

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. Legal ethics

This probably is (but maybe shouldn’t be) the least discussed ethics rule.

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. […]

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. Legal ethics

Some lawyers fail to see conflicts of interest, but they aren’t the only ones.

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 […]

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. Legal ethics

Florida chooses protectionism, and I choose to share a Friedmanesque public transportation anecdote

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 […]

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. Legal ethics

Update – Caveat requestor is where we will stay in TN.

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 […]

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. Legal ethics

Some days you just don’t feel it.

I am not telling anyone who has any experience with this medium anything they do not already know when I say that blogging is a very time-consuming activity.  Blogging demands content, but some days you just aren’t feeling it.  This is particularly problematic when you are only attempting to do 2 to 3 posts a […]

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. Legal ethics

The purpose of lawyer regulation? Events in Colorado and Florida present starkly contrasting perspectives

When people talk about the future of legal ethics in the United States, it is always helpful to engage them in a dialogue about what purpose they think the regulation of lawyers is meant to serve.  If you and the other person do not agree on what the purposes to be served are supposed to […]

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. Legal ethics

Two updates and a (hidden) microphone.

A few items for your consideration over this coming long, Labor Day weekend. The first is an update on a proposed ethics opinion made the subject of an earlier post.  The Florida Bar’s Board of Governors has now ultimately decided to reject the approach that had been recommended by its advertising subcommittee, which proposed that […]

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. Legal ethics

A reminder (for you) about the importance of coverage issues and (for me) that there is a second side to most stories.

This is an update on the California lawyer who successfully compelled arbitration of a client’s salacious claims that he treated her as essentially a “sex slave” that I wrote about here. While I talked about that case as an example of the growing power of arbitration provisions in the arena of attorney-client contracts, I did […]

Categories
. Legal ethics

“Damn near never…”

I mentioned back near the end of July 2015 that I would be participating on a panel at the Association of Professional Responsibility Lawyers’ Annual Meeting in Chicago.  It is always an honor to get to speak at an APRL meeting, and it was particularly an honor to share the stage with Eliza Rodrigues of […]