Categories
Legal ethics

DoNotP(L)ay

Or maybe we should title this post “Do Not Accept Payment” instead. So, a long time ago I wrote about some of the very good work that was being done by the folks associated with the “chat bot” app DoNotPay. If you do not remember any of that, you can refresh through this link. The […]

Categories
Off-Topic

Not so NFTy idea

I’ve written once before in this space about the ridiculousness of NFTs. To some degree, I guess I am not surprised that I am doing so again but I kind of am … particularly in the context in which the topic arises. As well as the timing. As to the timing, if you haven’t been […]

Categories
Legal ethics

Ohio offers advice for lawyers representing Matt Damon

And other crypto bros too, I guess. You may recall in the halcyon days before any of us ever spent any time thinking about pandemics and public health on a daily basis that I wrote about how Nebraska became the first U.S. jurisdiction to issue ethics guidance on whether lawyers could accept payment of fees […]

Categories
Legal ethics

Obviously, there really is such a thing as bad publicity.

So, earlier this week I was fortunate enough to be able to participate in a seminar put together by Bloomberg Law that focused on the risks and benefits for lawyers in speaking to the press. I think it was a pretty good panel presentation, it was free of charge to attendees, and I believe you […]

Categories
Legal ethics

Another ethics opinion that wouldn’t be required if all lawyers were good (or at least chaotic-neutral) lawyers.

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 […]

Categories
Legal ethics

Should racists be permitted to practice law?

This is a question I’ve asked in the past. It is not instinctively an easy question to wrestle with. It can easily boil over into various slippery-slope arguments and accusations regarding risk of inviting concepts of the “thought police” and the like. But another news item invites the question back into the arena for further discussion. This ABA […]

Categories
Legal ethics

“It’s Groundhog Day… again.”

This past week included one of our nation’s most heralded fake holidays. Groundhog’s Day. Silly occasion, but still a really good movie, of course. But, playing off of the theme of repeating events and disappointing outcomes, we return to the oft-discussed topic of lawyers trying to respond to online criticism. We’ve covered in the past […]

Categories
Legal ethics

Just another follow-up Friday.

Yes, if you are about the same age as me, you can sing that title to The Bangles tune of “Just another Manic Monday …” So, this is a weirder follow up post as it follows up on something I posted in October 2021 but involves substantive content that came into existence in July 2021 […]

Categories
. Legal ethics

The thing about doing bad things on purpose…

Is that you have to be perfect about it pretty much all of the time. I’m not going to tell you that there are only two kinds of people in the world because I know that kind of thing is only used as the set up to really good jokes. But among the various kinds […]

Categories
. Legal ethics

It’s another fine day to abolish the bar exam.

Now is another of the various times of year throughout the nation when law school graduates finish waiting anxiously for bar results and find out whether they passed and get the opportunity to start digging their way out of the debt they amassed in law school or failed and, thus, have to wrestle with the […]