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. Legal ethics

Friday follow up: DC Bar counsel’s weird priorities

So (finally) I’ve made myself read a bit more into the DC situation — that for many people is now ancient history but was news to me — about what seems like something that definitely got some play in the news but ought to be a more nationally discussed scandal.  The weird penchant that DC […]

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. Legal ethics

Last post of 2016 – Why lawyers need lawyers.

2016 was a year marked with quite a number of unexpected (at least to me) developments.  2017 likely will have its share of unexpected events as well. To wrap up the year, I wanted to use what little platform I have to pursue something that is both driven by blatant self-interest and is in the […]

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. Legal ethics

Pre-holidays Friday installment of “I beg to differ.”

So, it seems like I am begging to differ all over the place during the last week or so, but here comes another instance. About a month ago, the Tennessee Supreme Court granted permission to appeal in a legal malpractice case, Story v. Bunstein, in which the plaintiff(s) suit against their lawyer was dismissed based on […]

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. Legal ethics

DC Ethics Opinion 370 – Y’all knew I wouldn’t be able to resist

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 […]

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. Legal ethics

“Troubling and counterproductive” – yep

One of the more archaic aspects of lawyer regulation is the heavy-handed approach to UPL.  And, I’m not referring to UPL in the sense of something done that involves the practice of law by a person who isn’t a lawyer anywhere.  I’m referring to regulatory efforts involving UPL that are brandished against someone who is […]

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. Legal ethics

Thoughts only partly relevant to California’s roll out for public comment of rules revisions.

One mistake.  What should be the price of one mistake?  To some extent, the answer to those questions for lawyers and lawyer discipline matters ought to be foreordained in two consecutive paragraphs of the Scope portion of the ABA Model Rules: [19] ….the rules presuppose that whether or not discipline should be imposed for a […]

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. Legal ethics

If it ever will come to pass, the states will have to serve as the laboratories.

Two weeks ago, I offered some thoughts on the latest flare-up in the long-running off-and-on ABA exploration of the third-rail of the practice of law: potential non-lawyer ownership/investment in law firms.  This time around, before I could even manage to finish reading all of the comments and try to write some thoughts about the comments, […]

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. Legal ethics

Algorithms, Artificial Intelligence, and Seeing If I Can Put a Dent In Figuring Out What Is Next for Law.

When you allow yourself to ponder just how quickly technological advances have changed the daily life of a lawyer, it becomes pretty easy to speculate about just how foreign the daily life of a lawyer 10 years from now will be when compared to what it is today.  When I stop to think about the […]

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. Legal ethics

Independence of professional judgment, and other thoughts spurred by the ABA Commission on the Future of Legal Services

April 2016 has brought another iteration of a seemingly, endless, (yet kind of potentially pointless unless you think the politics of the situation will somehow play out differently from the past) debate: whether some entity within the ABA is attempting to usher into reality a world in which people other than lawyers will be allowed […]

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. Legal ethics

The Department of Labor’s Final “Persuader” Rule – Part 2 of 2

So, yesterday, I started writing about the potential ramifications for lawyers of the adoption by the Department of Labor of its final “persuader” rule which will become effective on April 25, 2016, but will only be applicable to agreements entered into on and after July 1, 2016.  You can catch up on part 1 here. […]