Ethics & Professional Responsibility

RSS Link
http-static1-squarespace-com-static-5d93821f16ea12193a39cbf7-5d938a0d4653e30f9308ca56-641a0c4adc0d77361ac78065-1679429079069-unsplash-image-87mif4vqhwg-jpgformat1500w

“After completing his time on the Supreme Court, Daniel Kelly provided legal counsel to several clients, amongst which were the RNC and RPW,” [Kelly’s spokesman Jim] Dick said (paywalled, sorry). “It is a maxim in the legal profession that the views of clients are not attributable to their attorneys.”This is Wisconsin, so that means there’s yet another election coming up, this time for Supreme Court Justice (among others). This Blog Is Not About Politics but I will remind everyone…
Continue Reading Is there really that much daylight between a lawyer and client?

https-i-ytimg-com-vi-nbd2ovnbyhs-hqdefault-jpg

If you’ve talked to me often or long enough, or sat through any recent presentation of mine involving social media, you’ve heard me complain about the state of the attorney advertising and solicitation rules. I’ve been critical rules for some time (though, perhaps, not as vocal on this blog as I have been in the real world).
Part of my frustration is that the Rules are just that outdated. Sure, they’re post-Bates at least; they recognize that attorneys…
Continue Reading When You Solicit An Ethics Nerd, You Best Not Miss

Saturday night, I was returning home from another informative and interesting nerd friend conference. I am sure I will have more to say about that, but for now I am just excited to report there were no travel hiccups whatsoever (my laptop—now with a sticker!—stayed within sight the whole time this time).
My flights were, happily, uneventful. But, because my ethics brain was still buzzing, I couldn’t help but notice the passenger one row up and across…
Continue Reading To The Passenger In Seat 26C

http-static1-squarespace-com-static-5d93821f16ea12193a39cbf7-5d938a0d4653e30f9308ca56-63d1639b15cbf00cbff3800a-1674667763477-unsplash-image-t1paibmtjim-jpgformat1500w

Just a few days ago, I wrote about DoNotPay’s offer to allow its robot lawyer take over a Supreme Court argument. A few things have happened in the meantime.
Since then, DoNotPay announced it had signed its first [client? Guinea pig? rube?] and was going to be making a surreptitious courtroom debut next month.
In light of that announcement, a Twitterer named Kathryn Tewson (who does not make her background clear in her bio) decided to do a little…
Continue Reading An Update So Predictable, an AI Could Have Predicted It

I confess that I enjoy some online things that Internet privacy and safety experts say I shouldn’t, like those AI-generated portraits and social media quizzes (I mean, how else am I going to know what kind of a potato I am if not through disclosing my mother’s maiden name and my high school mascot?).
I am also a master procrastinator. So, of course, when ChatGPT, an artificial intelligence chatbot under the OpenAI umbrella, went viral last month, I…
Continue Reading This Blog Title Was Not Written By AI

Hello, readers, once again it has been awhile.
I’d like to kick off the new year of blogging with an update. Remember Alex Jones’s lawyers? The one who belatedly turned over a bunch of his client’s text messages, but with it dumped some confidential records (including medical records) of some of the the Sandy Hook families?
In what seems like lightning speed, one of the lawyers, last week Norman Pattis, was suspended for six months from the practice of…
Continue Reading Happy New Year, Have A Suspension

http-static1-squarespace-com-static-5d93821f16ea12193a39cbf7-5d938a0d4653e30f9308ca56-63a49e2c6a92812378864875-1671733244879-unsplash-image-7voyz0-io0o-jpgformat1500w

I hope everyone is planning a restful and warm holiday. I may or may not be blogging more this year (that’s always a spur-of-the-moment decision), so in the meantime, I’ll leave you with a few little stocking stuffers/nuggets of coal (depending on your perspective).(1) The 10th Circuit Court of Appeals has declined to provide relief to a lawyer who missed a jurisdictional deadline because he had difficulty with the federal electronic filing system (CM/ECF). He attempted, at 11:40 pm,…
Continue Reading Three Pre-Holiday Short-ish Takes

http-static1-squarespace-com-static-5d93821f16ea12193a39cbf7-5d938a0d4653e30f9308ca56-63a2191f26412a6718ac9768-1671568067535-unsplash-image-p8rgdtefn7s-jpgformat1500w

Yesterday, the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol held its last hearing and released the introductory report to its findings. The full report will not be released until tomorrow, but the summary material (which is 154 pages in itself) provides a robust roadmap.I watched some of yesterday’s hearing, and, I’m sure, like any other member of the ethics bar who may have been listening, my ears perked up when Rep. Lofgren outlined …
Continue Reading Selected Thoughts From the Select Committee Summary

Hello readers! It has been awhile, hasn’t it? I hit three years and then promptly disappeared.
Hopefully I’ll be blogging more frequently now that the midterms are over and were not nearly as eventful as 2020 (for which we all should be grateful), but to tide you over in the meantime, some quick hits:

  • Michael Avenatti, of Stormy Daniels, celebrity swagger, and, well, crime fame, was sentenced to an additional 14 years in prison for stealing millions from

…
Continue Reading Short Takes After a Long Absence

The ABA Journal has reported the curious case of a solo practitioner, Donald Brown, who was suspended for misrepresenting his attendance at Internet-based CLE (and, also, reprimanded him for representing a client in a divorce case after they had been in an intimate relationship, giving rise to a material limitation conflict under its version of Rule 1.7 that was not consented to in writing by the client).
This caught my eye for both the reason for the suspension and…
Continue Reading A Disciplinary Twofer in Maine

http-static1-squarespace-com-static-5d93821f16ea12193a39cbf7-5d938a0d4653e30f9308ca56-635881bf6ffb72148d35fc3d-1666745436364-unsplash-image-isyyy1gfysw-jpgformat1500w

This blog is three years old. If it were a child it could recognize colors and would hopefully be potty trained, though it still might need an afternoon nap. It launched on October 24, 2019. Before covid. Before Giuliani had visible problems with melting hair and misdirected press conferences. Before the Kraken meant much outside of mythology and maybe crypto. Before my laptop walked away at LAX and nothing bad happened. While I hope to give…
Continue Reading Three

Pre-pandemic, I used to occasionally guest lecture in ethics classes at Marquette University Law School. Remote learning and restricted campus access put that on pause, but I’m excited to say the pause is over. Next month, I’ll be back at Marquette, but tomorrow, I’ll be chatting with Dean Emeritus and Warren P. Knowles Chair Margaret Raymond’s professional responsibility class at UW Law School.
And, I’m sure, even if I don’t mention my blog, at least a few…
Continue Reading Welcome, Law Students? I’m Sure You’ve Got Questions

First, apologies for the lengthy absence, but between Covid, recovering from Covid, and a dumpster fire of a September calendar, time has been scarce.
That’s an awkward intro to a short piece on lying about timekeeping and what you were doing, isn’t it?
Anyway, Above The Law has reported the case of a now-former Dentons associate in Illinois, who was assigned a document review project. In pop culture, document review has been portrayed as punitive, or potentially simple enough…
Continue Reading There is Padding And Then There Is Whatever this Is

http-static1-squarespace-com-static-5d93821f16ea12193a39cbf7-5d938a0d4653e30f9308ca56-6303f0e56a0bb2508d33c030-1661204244835-unsplash-image-syto3xs06fu-jpgformat1500w

First, greetings from the Covid Penalty Box. The plague finally hit my household last week, and I’m in time out for a bit. I’m feeling okay enough, but I am not 100%. The good(?) news is I was supposed to be on vacation this week so my calendar was already clear. Sigh.Anyway, I am working a little bit this week (to make up for the work I couldn’t do while actively sick last week) and I have found I…
Continue Reading Be Careful With That Group Chat, You Don't Know What Company You Keep

As I write this, I’ve spent the last two weeks preparing for and then actually in trial, with a two-day interruption for a nerd friend conference. I am finally done, and am using the one functioning brain cell I have that isn’t devoted to keeping me upright to write this, while it’s fresh.*
This post is directed at anyone who needs to deal with a lawyer after a major project is over, so I am going to write directly…
Continue Reading The Care and Feeding of a Lawyer Who’s Finally Done With Something