Categories
. Legal ethics

Bad ethics opinion or worst ethics opinion? Tennessee 2014-F-158 edition

Actually, unlike some other posts in this category, this title’s not even close to reflecting a serious question being asked.  Slapping that tile on this post is more of a crutch.  The ethics opinion I want to discuss here is miles away from even being in the conversation among the worst ethics opinions.  It really isn’t […]

Categories
. Legal ethics

Coming to praise rather than to bury (Part 1 of 2)

For a change of pace, I write today about a very well constructed ethics opinion out of New York.  (To keep this positivity train chugging along for at least one more day, my plan for tomorrow is to discuss a federal court decision out of Florida impacting attorney ethics that is also praiseworthy and that […]

Categories
. Legal ethics

Bad ethics opinion or the worst ethics opinion? Iowa 15-03 edition

Inspiration, like corn, comes from Iowa today.  It’s time again for a little game called, is this a bad ethics opinion or the worst ethics opinion?  The Iowa State Bar Association Committee on Ethics and Practice Guidelines self-nominated by issuing Op. 15-03. Before I make enemies of a few Iowa lawyers that I have no doubt […]

Categories
. Legal ethics

Protecting client confidentiality – how Fargo?

So sorry for the title if you are not a fan of a syntactically-challenged play on words.  But this news item out of Kentucky sounds like the kind of plot that would make for good fodder for a future season of the TV show Fargo.  (Which, yes if you are unfamiliar with it, is spun […]

Categories
. Legal ethics

You Don’t Always Get What You Pay For, But Free Advice Can Be Costly.

In Tennessee, we have a version of RPC 1.6(b)(4) patterned after the ABA Model Rule that permits a lawyer to disclose confidential client information for the purpose of getting advice about how to comply with his/her ethical obligations.  The last sentence of Comment [9] to that rule stresses that this disclosure can only be made, however, if […]

Categories
. Legal ethics

When online: cat and dog shaming pictures = funny. Client shaming efforts = foolish

Today, we spend a few more minutes addressing a topic that will likely be a rich vein of discussion for years to come or for at least for as long as lawyers continue to be human beings whichever is shorter.  (Even with this news, you figure we have a few years left before we have […]

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Judicial Ethics

TACDL’s judicial disciplinary complaint and what really makes it unusual

The Tennessean has an article today about a disciplinary complaint filed by the Tennessee Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers against a General Sessions judge in Nashville.  (General Sessions court in Tennessee is our small claims court, on the civil side, and on the criminal side of things tends to be a misdemeanor court.)  TACDL says […]

Categories
. Legal ethics

More attorney adventures with Avvo and a reminder about The Streisand Effect

During my teleseminar presentation for the Clear Law Institute, I talked at some length about a situation dating back to January 2014 when a Chicago lawyer ended up agreeing to discipline over how she responded to a former client’s negative review of her on the Avvo service.  You can read a bit about that story here, but […]

Categories
. Legal ethics

Baby steps, but still a positive development

From time to time, I have been asked questions about whether lawyers needed to be doing anything (or even could do anything) to try to better guarantee protections of client communications and maintain privilege and confidentiality in the world after the news started to come out about just how broad the NSA’s surveillance operations appeared […]

Categories
. Legal ethics

A lawyer’s public interview that should never have happened…

This is not a political blog, nor even a civil rights law blog.  So, there would be no reason for me to write a word here that has anything to do with the Walter Scott incident.  But this is a blog about legal ethics and lawyering issues, and the former lawyer for the police officer […]