This is a topic I’ve spoken about on a number of times over the years as it can make for a pretty decent CLE presentation. Any such presentation almost always involves use of a hypothetical to explore issues that seem (or at least can sound) academic to a large extent. The usual jumping off point […]
It’s a stupid and demeaning term. In both contexts, whether you replace the asterisks with the original two letters, it, or the other two letters, en. It is unfortunate that the second term was ever coined by this guy, and it is remarkable to think that this guy has included it for many years as […]
Thanks to ESPN I’ve long known more about Johnny Manziel than I care to. But, this past week, I learned something I really should never know — why his agent decided to fire Manziel as his client. Up until this past week, Erik Burkhardt was Manziel’s agent. Burkhardt is a law school graduate, but from […]
Ok, let’s talk about the 60 Minutes piece that aired this past Sunday. If you haven’t watched it, by all means you should — it is worth the 20-30 minutes of your time. You can watch it here. As always, I’ll wait until you get done and come back. Now, it seems beyond dispute that the […]
Two recent events have brought me back around to wanting to talk about ethics issues raised by this fascinating documentary. One event is public and absurd. The other event was semi-private and surprising (at least to me). As neither of the recent events are actually the thing I wanted to talk about a couple of […]
I have written in the past on this blog, and in other publications, about instances of lawyers getting into disciplinary trouble over their treatment of judges presiding over their clients’ cases. To the extent bullying and insulting a judge is a purposeful approach to advocacy for a client, it’s a flawed approach. This behavior isn’t unique […]
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 […]
A couple of weeks ago, I read a little about two instances of lawyers, both involving murder cases, getting in a bit of a pinch based on what was portrayed as bad behavior in the courtroom. One lawyer ended up being escorted from the courtroom for attempting to make a citizen’s arrest of someone. I think […]
“Does this require a response?” Print those words out and tape them to the top of your monitor or laptop screen. They are words to live by. Practicing law is stressful and always has been. Lawyers have always known that they can make mistakes that destroy their client’s life or financial situation and potentially their […]
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 […]