Categories
. Legal ethics

They knew he wasn’t covered. That was the original problem.

Some lighter fare for today but you are stuck with the cringeworthy title. I have a stack of important potential topics to write about, but the ABA Journal online today reeled me in with their headline on this story (“Litigants claiming GEICO auto policy covers STD from car sex can’t proceed anonymously, judge rules.”) and […]

Categories
. Legal ethics

The Greening of New York

As promised, though just under the wire, I am following up to write more about one of the stories I didn’t write about in July, the issuance of N.Y. State Bar Ass’n Committee on Prof’l Ethics Op. 1225. One of the downsides of publicly announcing you will write about something in the future is the […]

Categories
. Legal ethics

California proposes an ethics opinion that needs further workshopping.

Let’s talk for a bit today about a proposed California ethics opinion for which public comment is being accepted until June 8, 2021. The general topic when you hear about the proposed opinion is immediately of interest — can a lawyer help a client obtain a contractual agreement including a provision that is against the […]

Categories
. Legal ethics

Bad judgment leads to bad judgment.

A Tennessee disciplinary matter has made some national news this past week, so what I am writing about might be something you’ve heard about already. It involves a Tennessee lawyer who has been given a 4-year suspension from practice, with one-year of active suspension for providing advice over Facebook to a woman about how she […]

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. Legal ethics

Nebraska brings us … this.

It’s been something of a big month for Nebraska. First, thanks to its divided approach to providing electoral votes, it is contributing one of the electors totaling up to President-Elect Joe Biden’s 306 electoral votes. Second, like everywhere else in the United States (my state is doing just as bad if not worse) unfortunately, it […]

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. Legal ethics

Lawyers engaging in criminal conduct. Big love for immunity in Texas.

Let me offer a word or two or probably 1,000 about two recent items of interest having the issue of lawyers involved in crimes as their common thread. One comes from the Fifth Circuit and the other comes from an ABA Journal article about a situation in Utah. First, the Fifth Circuit’s ruling in Troice […]

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. Legal ethics

The ethics of putting together an unenforceable contract.

It is still astounding (as well as deeply dispiriting) that the context of the discussion I’m about to launch is the work of White House Counsel but this is the world we currently occupy.  You may very well have read this fascinating The Washington Post article by now released in connection with the ongoing news story […]

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. Legal ethics

Texas Ethics Opinion Offers Stellar Example of Why You Ought to Have a Rule About This.

I’ve mentioned in the past the fact that Tennessee has a version of RPC 4.4(b) that directly addresses, and provides what I happen to think is the correct outcome, for what a lawyer is supposed to do about the receipt of someone else’s confidential information either inadvertently or via someone who isn’t authorized to have […]

Categories
. Legal ethics

Following up on that follow up

I probably should have taken the opportunity to say so in my last post – by way of contrast if not context — but one very obvious reason that the Ohio Supreme Court was able to move so quickly to adopt a revision to its RPC 1.2(d) to address its medical marijuana situation for lawyers […]

Categories
. Legal ethics

Friday follow-up: Puff, puff, PA’s overreach

Couple of quick hits (pun wasn’t really intended but just sort of happened) for this Friday. A little more than a month ago, I wrote about an ethics opinion out of Ohio that created a real dilemma for lawyers looking to advise businesses related to the medical marijuana industry that was going to become legal […]