About two weeks ago, I had the opportunity to speak to the Tennessee Defense Lawyers Association for an hour on ethics issues, using a “hot topic” format. One of the topics I covered was the many things there are beyond just being parties on opposite sides of the “v” in litigation that present conflicts to […]
Tag: Traps for the Unwary
Though news to me much more recently, the LA County Bar Ass’n Prof’l Responsibility and Ethics Committee issued an interesting ethics opinion back in April on a wrinkle that can arise in the tripartite relationship created in insurance defense situations. You can read the whole thing here, but its summary is pretty to-the-point: When an […]
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A kind note from a satisfied client
Since I’m seeing quite a few of these notes from satisfied clients on LinkedIn, Facebook, and other places in various formats, it seems like a good time to share a touching one I received recently. Brian, Thank you very much for the really great work and the successful outcome. I really appreciate you and all […]
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It’s been a while.
Today I’m going to splice together two short discussions about topics that I haven’t mentioned in a while. (And, for any fans of the podcast U Talking U2 to Me that are out there, you do have to read the title of this post to sound like the first words of this remake right here.) […]
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What’s in a name?
For example, the folks behind the popular Radiolab podcast also launched a spin-off podcast last year about the U.S. Supreme Court called “More Perfect.” The reason for naming it that, of course, is that it almost assuredly a reference to the famous line in the Preamble to the U.S. Constitution But today it seems a […]
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Two short updates for a Tuesday
Late last month, I focused a post on a West Virginia lawyer who ended up staring down a 2-year suspension over chronic over-billing. If you missed that post, you can read it here. If you read it, you will recall that one of the items discussed was that the Executive Director of the West Virginia […]
I like to think I am “warier” than the average attorney. But a recent attorney-client privilege opinion out of New York was a good reminder that being “wary” can be much like being “woke.” Even if you think you are, you probably aren’t as much as you think you are, and you can always be […]
On the heels of my criticism of an ethics opinion out of New York as weird-ish, let me turn my attention closer to home to discuss a Court of Appeals opinion this week here in Tennessee that is fortunate for the law firm involved but unfortunate for lawyers in Tennessee in general. In Guo v. Woods […]
About a week or so ago, I learned something new about South Carolina’s ethics rules – thanks to the law-student-powered blog of the University of Miami (FL) School of Law, Legal Ethics in Motion. They wrote about a South Carolina federal court case in which a motion to disqualify premised on South Carolina Rule 1.18 was […]
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Crossing the Line in Maine
No, the title is not a veiled attempt to publicly-shame Maine’s Governor for his latest act of public ridiculousness… or is it? This is instead a short post discussing conduct that I posit is a lot more common than you might think and that resulted recently in a very low-level of discipline against a Maine […]