Even the largest and the most prominent of law firms can get themselves crosswise with clients over conflicts. In fact, at some level, it is the largest and most prominent law firms that are most at risk of the negative ramifications that can come from conflicts of interest. Last week, the world’s largest law firm […]
Tag: RPC 1.7
Roy Simon, the Chair of the NY State Bar Association Committee on Standards on Attorney Conduct, was kind enough to include me on an email last week and, as a result, I learned that New York’s proposed adoption of certain aspects of the ABA Ethics 20/20 revisions was approved, effective January 1, 2017. Back in […]
So, many moons ago I wrote a post about the fact that California was working through the process of trying to overhaul its ethics rules. I said I’d get back to that topic, but never really did. So, today, I am. Kind of. But not really. In the news within the last 24-36 hours are […]
So, the D.C. Bar has come out with a far-reaching, sort of two-part ethics opinion addressing lawyers and social media usage. Opinion 370 (Part 1) can be grabbed here. Opinion 371 (Part 2) from here. Opinion 370 has lots of really good parts, but much of the publicity it has received to date revolves around […]
Nope. This too is not a post having anything to do with the recent election. The Washington in the title is the State of Washington, and the decision is the controversial 5-4 decision issued by the Washington Supreme Court in Newman v. Highland Sch. Dist. back on October 20, 2016. The Washington court, over a strenuous […]
I want to quickly discuss an ethics opinion out of New York state. No, not that one. I’m not going to delve into the brouhaha over the one from March 2016 that only got publicity in August 2016 that involves saying it is ethical for a firm to charge clients for work performed by unpaid […]
Back in August 2012, the ABA House of Delegates approved revisions to the ABA Model Rules proposed by the ABA Ethics 20/20 Commission. Very few of the proposed revisions included in the ABA Ethics 20/20 package are earth-shaking revisions, as many of them only involve change to language in the Comment accompanying certain rules. The […]
Last week, the ABA Standing Committee on Ethics and Professional Responsibility issued its latest formal opinion – Opinion No. 16-474 addressing the topic of “referral” fees under the ABA Model Rules and, specifically, the intersection of Model Rule 1.5(e) and conflicts requirements under Model Rule 1.7. Along the way, the opinion also stakes out […]
This is going to be a short update offered on a Friday for any weekend reading needs you may be facing. A bit back (on Back to the Future day actually) I mentioned (almost as only an aside) the pilot project that the ABA was launching in cooperation with Rocket Lawyer to offer a limited-scope […]
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 […]