For the second straight year, I’m ending the year with an homage to a concept (ripping off an idea) pursued by Nate DiMeo the writer and performer of The Memory Palace podcast. I’m going to re-post what was my favorite post from the past year. Deciding what to put out there again this year was fairly […]
I had originally promised myself that the articulation of this thought would debut here at my blog. I almost managed it but I raised this notion in the real world lately among some very bright lawyers. So, before I do it again somewhere other than the Internet, I’m following through to put this idea out […]
I’d long thought that the ethical issues associated with representing clients held in Guantanamo would be the most flagrant example in my lifetime of our government purposefully making it impossible for lawyers to fulfill obligations to their clients. Sad to say that I may just have been wrong about that. (P.S. I only started this […]
I’ve written a couple of times in the past about the status of the Tennessee Bar Association’s petition seeking to have the Tennessee Supreme Court adopt essentially all of the ABA Ethics 20/20 changes. Yesterday, the Tennessee Supreme Court entered an order doing just that – effective immediately — which now adds Tennessee to the […]
Here I am, because it is hard not to write something about the news last week that Brendan Dassey’s conviction was overturned. Dassey, for those of who you did not watch Netflix documentary Making a Murderer and are willing to take me at my word as to what you would have concluded if you did watch […]
Almost a year ago, I wrote a little bit about what was a first-of-its-kind rule adopted by South Carolina to address the obligations of lawyers in a law firm when a lawyer within their midst was becoming impaired as a result of aging. South Carolina’s adoption of a new RPC 5.1(d) aimed at that specific […]
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 […]
Throwback Thursday is definitely a thing all over the World Wide Web it seems, but maybe Tech Tuesday ought to be a thing? Though, I guess, for lawyers focusing on technology has to be an every day affair. Like multitudes of others, I wrote a little bit recently about the Panama Papers and the Mossack […]
Three recent cases involving lawyers alleged to have been sleeping during trial (actually only two about sleeping lawyers, one about a lawyer pretending to sleep) leave me feeling like there has to be the germ of a worthwhile point to be made in there somewhere, but after drafting and redrafting this post in spare moments […]
Last week the Chattanooga Estate Planning Council was kind enough to have me come to speak to them about ethical issues arising from the uncertain world of the law regarding digital assets. They were gracious hosts and, to the extent there were important ethics issues to really discuss, we managed to cover that most, if […]