I have beaten the drum for many, many years now about lawyers not understanding the true scope of their obligation of confidentiality under rules patterned after ABA Model Rule 1.6. The ability to quickly share information far and wide online has not been helpful to lawyers who lack that understanding. I remain astounded at how […]
Tag: Technology
You’ve probably heard this news by now. But, it’s Friday and I wrote about this before, so … I feel a sense of obligation to follow-up. The Florida Supreme Court ruled yesterday that the fact that a judge is Facebook friends with a lawyer appearing before her in a litigated matter is not alone sufficient to […]
People often think of lawyers and judges differently. And, to a large extent, they should. In almost every situation, someone cannot become a judge without having been a lawyer first. But once a lawyer transforms into a judge, their role in the judicial system becomes radically different and they now have a new set of […]
Although today is Halloween in my part of the world, I am not offering any spooky content. I thought about trying to replace all mentions of Maryland in this post with Scaryland, but that just seemed like I was trying too hard. In fact, I’m a bit torn about even writing about this particular topic […]
So, I am certain you have heard by now that a little under a week ago the ABA issued a new Formal Ethics Opinion to address the ethical obligations of lawyers in the aftermath of a cyber-attack or an electronic data breach. ABA Opinion 483 makes for a good read and provides good guidance about […]
So there are things that can really make you feel small. And there are things that can really lead to despair and a feeling of helplessness. Fortunately, there are few things that do both at once. The report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change can do both of those things pretty simply. If you […]
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Neither a stalker nor a burglar be.
Matters of the heart have caused people lots of problems throughout the course of human history. Matters of the heart, when the heart is located inside the chest of a lawyer, work pretty much the same way. Of course, sometimes stories that, on the surface, seem like matters of the heart might be more fairly […]
There has been something of a trend of late in terms of ethics opinions focusing on variations on the breadth of the duty of client confidentiality and the inconvenience it creates for lawyers who have bought in to the modern trend of sharing and oversharing when online. There was this opinion from the ABA and […]
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Information overload; summer struggles.
Mid-August often feels like summer doldrums. Yet, there has been so much recent information of interest in the world of legal ethics that it is hard to keep up. Thus, one can manage to feel simultaneously adrift and overloaded. In that spirit (and because I am that “one”), here are a handful (plus 2) of […]
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 […]