Categories
Legal ethics

Can you name all the ABA Model Rules that can never be violated?

Instinctively, if you know your way around the attorney ethics rules, I don’t think the question posed by the title of this post is a particularly hard question. But two incidents I’ve experienced within the last few weeks have caused me to question how well understood it is among the legal community that there are […]

Categories
. Legal ethics

Two ethics opinions: one good, one bad, but both reveal systemic problems.

So, New York and Florida. Interestingly, those states have been bookends of our nation’s problems with COVID-19 and with fighting it. New York got hit very badly early, given the concentrated nature of its population centers, but then engaged in a very serious effort of taking the virus very seriously and managed to significantly flatten […]

Categories
. Legal ethics

Frustrations with Formal Ethics Opinion 2017-F-164

Recently (and one of the frustrations I have with this opinion I am now writing about is, that “recently” is about as specific as I can pin things down in terms of the date of issuance), the Board of Professional Responsibility in Tennessee issued a Formal Ethics Opinion giving some guidance on the ability of […]