Categories
. Legal ethics

Time to choose: are you Illinois or New Jersey?

Blackhawks or Devils? Bulls or Nets? Barack Obama or Chris Christie? Northwestern or Rutgers? Kanye or Wu-Tang Clan? Wilco or Bruce Springsteen? Some of those are easy calls; some are harder decisions to make.  What they all have in common though is that one comes out of Illinois and the other comes out of New […]

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. Legal ethics

A tale of two ethics opinions.

So, I’ve made something of a habit of writing about ethics opinions.  Bad ones and good ones.  Mostly bad ones though. As the trite – almost hackish – title of this post telegraphs, today I want to compare and contrast two recently released ethics opinions that manage to demonstrate the good that can come from […]

Categories
. Legal ethics

TIKD off my list.

Some day I’m going to get tired of having pun with TIKD titles, and you’ve probably already gotten tired of me doing it, but today is not that day for me.  I was looking to find something to be able to easily write about today before scrambling out of town for some speaking engagements and […]

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. Legal ethics

Change is hard. Even where it appears to be wanted.

I have been meaning to do this and am long overdue in getting to it, but you might recall back in the summer of 2017 when I wrote pretty extensively about the contents of the Oregon Futures Task Force Report, and its positive proposed changes to the ethics rules.  If you don’t, you can read […]

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. Legal ethics

So what does 2018 hold in store for us?

It’s a new year and, of course, for many that means a time of reflection and goal-setting and much talk of how the new year will be different from the prior year. I will spare you much of that because you can find that all over the Internet.  I am prompted to post today (in […]

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. Legal ethics

Something TIKD this way comes.

So, about a week ago, the Florida Bar and The Ticket Clinic (a Florida law firm that somehow can manage to keep the lights on by specializing in representing people regarding traffic tickets) were sued in federal district court by something called TIKD.  TIKD is, at heart, an app for your smart phone. The lawsuit […]

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. Legal ethics

An open letter to Avvo

Dear Mark or Josh or Dan (or others at Avvo): I am a lawyer of little relative influence but I know you are likely familiar with me because I have, time and time again here on my small platform written about the travails your business model is enduring as state after state issues ethics opinions warning […]

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. Legal ethics

Perfect timing.

(Edited – Dec. 8, 2017 to fix very embarrassing mistakes as to the company name of Atrium.) On the heels of my posting earlier this week about my failure to understand how the Atrium law firm backed by the Atrium tech company is something that complies with California’s ethics rules (much less ethics rules in […]

Categories
. Legal ethics

Things I don’t understand… Atrium LLP

You may, by now, have read an article or two about the launch of a “technology-focused law firm” by the name of Atrium LLP.  Its headquarters are in California.  Having now read several articles about it – and how it has come to be and how it will operate – I simply don’t understand it. […]

Categories
. Legal ethics

On second thought, “this” is the least discussed ethics rule.

Many moons ago (look at me and my topical thinly-veiled 8/21/17 Eclipse reference), I wrote a post about Model Rule 2.1 being perhaps the least discussed ethics rule and why maybe it shouldn’t be.  But, a recent news item about a relatively humdrum topic, a relatively large multi-state law firm (Husch Blackwell) announcing that it […]