Three updates for you on things that all managed to catch my eye at the same time and all fall into the “I’ve written about this before” category. First, there has now been a ruling in that MSG case where the lawyers for MSG were badly misusing RPC 4.2 to justify barring certain attorneys from […]
Ok. The American Bar Association has now weighed in. So, let’s do this. But given how thoroughly I am already on the record on the topic, let’s do it quickly and hopefully efficiently. And, after we’re done, I’ll do some shameless self-promotion. This week the ABA issued Formal Ethics Opinion 503 which tackles a topic […]
I’ve had loads of opportunities over the years to write about interpretations of ethics rules with which I disagreed. But the discussion is much less frequently prompted by a party taking a private position outside of litigation (or even a public position in litigation) about what a rule means because … well … that usually […]
We’ve trod this path before, but the issuance of the most recent ABA Formal Ethics Opinion justifies renewed discussion of the topic. Particularly when the opinion in question is of the rare variety where there is a dissent included in the opinion. The path (our topic): Does Model Rule 4.2 apply to a lawyer when […]
There has been A LOT of stuff going on this week in the world of legal ethics. I will refrain from dedicating an entire post to try to tie this plea I made in a post back in December 2020 to these two developments, here and here. Instead, I want to talk a little bit […]
I’ve written in this space in the past before about how there are many ethics rules that limit their application to lawyers such that they do not kick in unless a lawyer is representing a client. Perhaps, most prominently, this point has been dwelt upon when talking about the efforts to convince jurisdictions to enact […]
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 […]
I’ve been known in the past when writing or speaking about Model Rule 4.2 and the restrictions it imposes to make the point that our ethics rule treats grown up adults as incapable of making decisions for themselves. Mostly jokingly I make that point. When elaborating it is merely to focus on the idea that […]
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 […]
So far this month, the Professional Ethics Committee for the State Bar of Texas has put out two ethics opinions worthy of some discussion given the issues tackled and the outcomes of each opinion. The more recent of the two, Opinion No. 653, evaluates whether a lawyer acting pro se in a matter has to […]