Categories
. Legal ethics

Lawyer ethics rules are public policy statements. Of course they are.

There is a lot of activity that can take place at the intersection of the lawyer ethics rules and public policy.  There can be issues that aren’t addressed by lawyer ethics rules (or at least not fully addressed) but that are addressed as a matter of state public policy.  What there really can’t be though […]

Categories
. Legal ethics

Stacked decks, standards of review, and the RPC 8.1 duty to cooperate

In many jurisdictions, disciplinary proceedings against lawyers are referred to as being “quasi-criminal” in nature.  If you ask lawyers who defend lawyers in disciplinary proceedings, you will often hear them agree that the nature of the work can feel a good bit like criminal defense work, but with two pretty universal exceptions that make the […]

Categories
. 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 […]

Categories
. Legal ethics

A rose may be a rose but UPL does not always mean the same thing as UPL.

So, you likely have read about or stumbled into something on the web about the remarks offered by the founder of Avvo at the ABA Meeting.  If you somehow missed having that hit your radar screen at all, you can read about it (and snippets of the remarks of the other folks who gave similar […]

Categories
. Legal ethics

Problems of UPL are nothing new, but UPC?

I’ve written a good bit over the last few months about a variety of issues related to problems involving unauthorized practice of law issues for lawyers licensed in at least one jurisdiction.  Tennessee still has the pending petition filed by the Board of Law Examiners that should result in some form of practice pending admission rule that will […]

Categories
. Legal ethics

One way the “practice of law” might just be like pornography.

No, not in any of the ways that would be fodder for jokes or insults directed at lawyers.  This is actually another follow-up post of thoughts on an aspect of the BLE’s petition for changes to Rule 7 that I first discussed here.  And despite the “click-bait” nature of the title of the post, there […]