Ethics & Malpractice Issues

By now, you may have heard via Simple Justice or  Legal Ethics Forum about the news accounts  of the public defender who lost her job after posting a photo of her client’s leopard-print briefs on her Facebook page along with a caption suggesting that the underwear was the client’s family’s idea of proper court attire.  …

Granted, I’m not a legal ethics professor or scholar, a marketing guru or an affiliate of a vendor or insurance company that sponsors the ABA.  Still, I expected that because I am practicing lawyer  (albeit not a virtual one) who takes ethics seriously and bears the brunt of any newfangled initiatives, that the ABA Ethics…

I’m fast learning that lawyers’ can’t just act as advocates in defending rights or effecting change in the law; sometimes, we’ve got to play the role of litigant. As I’ve posted previously, I’m defending the First Amendment not as an attorney but as a defendant and client. And now, I’m an amicus along with a…

Ever since Australia, and now the UK have opened the gates to non-lawyer membership of law firms, the question has been percolating here in the US about whether, and when it can happen here. Currently, the DC Bar, where I practice permits a limited degree of non-lawyer ownership, most likely to accommodate partnerships between law…

Eric Turkewitz said it first, years ago, and still, no one’s listening. Most recently, a fairly new South Carolina attorney disobeyed the legal profession’s equivalent of the law of gravity, outsourcing marketing = outsourcing ethics. And just as ignoring the gravity or pretending that it doesn’t exist will send anyone but a fantasy character tumbling,…

Lawyers are obligated to abide by ethics rules at all times – and thanks to the New York State Bar Association , fulfilling that obligation is easier than it’s ever been with a new mobile app that’s available for the iPhone, Android and Blackberry. As a New York licensed lawyer myself, I’ve already downloaded the…

Below is my final set of comments on the ABA Commission on Ethics 20/20’s proposals.  My comments address the Commission’s proposal to subject lawyers to the same level of supervisory oversight for passive cloud services as for human, non-legal service providers. For reasons discussed in this post, I strongly oppose any additional requirements which pose…

As lawyers, we’re bound to abide by applicable statutes and precedent — yet most lawyers refuse to heed the law of unintended consequences. That’s the error committed by the ABA Commission on Ethics 20/20 with its most recent changes lto ABA Model Rule 5.3, Responsibilities Regarding Non Lawyer Assistance.  In its zeal to frustrate lawyers’…