Back in September, I wrote a bit about some different perspectives on the purpose of lawyer regulation and commented on a story that discussed a proposal that Colorado had in the works. On April 7, 2016, The Colorado Supreme Court took action to adopt a new “Preamble” that serves as the introduction to its rules governing admission of lawyers to the bar, its attorney ethics rules, and its disciplinary procedural rules. You can read the language of what was adopted by the Colorado Supreme Court here. It should come as no surprise that the list of objectives does not including anything that could be construed as obviously anti-competitive, but it also creates a framework for interesting conversation about whether there are particular ethics rules in Colorado that can actually be viewed as unnecessarily standing in the way of furtherance of one or more of the Colorado objectives.
A second shoe has now fallen with respect to the Dentons’ disqualification situation in the proceedings before the U.S. International Trade Commission that prompted my two part piece on Swiss Vereins back in July 2015 (here and here). RevoLaze – the client from which Denton was disqualified from continuing by the ALJ’s ruling, has filed a legal malpractice suit against Dentons earlier this month over that conflict and the damages it says it has suffered as a result of its law firm getting disqualified. The suit seeks in excess of $50 million from Dentons. After Dentons was disqualified, The Gap, another client of Dentons but that was being represented by other lawyers in the ITC matter, ended up settling its patent suit back in August 2015. RevoLaze is claiming that it ended up having to settle for far less than the case was worth after Dentons was disqualified and it had to get new counsel involved. If you are a Law360 subscriber you can read a bit about the suit (and actually get access to a copy of the complaint) here.
Last, and saddest, Johnny Manziel is back in the news in a big way mostly because he has been fired by another agent. Back when Manziel’s prior agent issued a press release about firing Manziel in February, I wrote this piece about how baffled I get when athletes opt not to hire agents who are also lawyers. Because Manziel still doesn’t have an agent who is a lawyer, his latest agent issued a public statement about how he’d dropped Manziel but given him 5 days to take action and enter a treatment facility:
“I have informed him that if he takes the immediate steps I have outlined for him that I will rescind the termination and continue to represent him,” Rosenhaus said. “Otherwise the termination will become permanent. There is a five-day window for me to rescind the termination. I’m hoping he takes the necessary steps to get his life back on track.”
Had Manziel secured a lawyer-agent, there is no way the lawyer-agent would have been able to make that kind of public ultimatum without violating client confidentiality under RPC 1.6. And, it seems like the Rosenhaus ultimatum news managed to also break the news that LA police were investigating Manziel’s involvement as a passenger in a hit and run, which is now serving a further platform of negative publicity for a guy that sure doesn’t seem to need any help generating negative publicity on his own.