Ethics & Professional Responsibility

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Court of Justice and Law Trial: Female Public Defender Presenting Case, Making Passionate Speech to Judge, Jury. Multiethnic Attorney Lawyer Protecting Client's Innocents with Supporting Argument.
Court of Justice and Law Trial: Female Public Defender Presenting Case, Making Passionate Speech to Judge, Jury. Multiethnic Attorney Lawyer Protecting Client's Innocents with Supporting Argument.

I get this question a lot, and for good reason. On one hand: Every bit of information related to representation is presumptively confidential per Rule 1.6 and its state equivalents. (Different states interpret the rule differently; Wisconsin takes a particularly restrictive view.) On the other hand, if you need to move a court to withdraw, they usually want a reason (see Rule 1.16), and most of those reasons are going to contain, well, information related to representation.
This…
Continue Reading "I need to bail. What can I tell the court about why I’m withdrawing?"

The November issue of Wisconsin Lawyer features a practical guide I wrote on using generative AI effectively in legal practice. “AI Prompting for Legal Professionals: The Art of Asking the Right Question” offers a framework for attorneys looking to improve their interactions with AI tools while maintaining professional standards.
The central premise is straightforward: the same critical thinking skills lawyers use when interviewing clients or examining witnesses apply equally when working with AI. Vague information from a client…
Continue Reading A Practical Guide on AI Prompting for Legal Professionals

Greetings, folks, and I know, I know, I have been absent long enough that readers may wonder if “she blogs frequently at ethicking.com” (which is in various forms of my biography) is an 8.4(c) issue. (If I had readers who noticed, anyway.) As before, actual work plus the state of affairs has made blogging a bit spotty.
 Some short takes tonight:

  • The DC Bar Association has issued a banger of an opinion directed at attorneys and law firms who

…
Continue Reading DC Bar to Capitulating Law Firms: FAFO (plus: Ethicking is Six! And other news)

Last week, a referee appointed by the Supreme Court of Wisconsin recommended that former Justice Michael Gableman’s license to practice law be suspended for three years, in accordance with a stipulation between the parties.  This recommendation stems from Gableman’s actions in connection with an “audit” of the 2020 election.
(I’ve previously blogged about this only minimally, but talked to TV about this back in April.* You can read about the complaint and its history here,…
Continue Reading Stacie’s Explainer for What the Heck Happened with Gableman Last Week

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(*Some exceptions apply and are discussed below.)
This is something I shouldn’t have to write about at all, but I guess this is where we are. I’ve gotten some reports of lawyers being threatened with disciplinary complaints for posting about the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk on social media. I will not link to or screen-shot the posts here; we’ve all seen them, and the content isn’t really what’s driving the threatened complaints (it’s the politics of the…
Continue Reading So It’s Come To This: No, It Is Not Misconduct For A Lawyer To Say Mean Things On The Internet

***but I do them regardless
Last week, I traveled to Toronto, and attended the 2025 Association of Professional  Responsibility Lawyers annual meeting. As always, I enjoyed hanging with my nerd friends and learning a lot. I completed my Board service after two terms.
Because international travel is a little ~interesting~ these days, I traveled with an inexpensive pay-as-you-go cell phone and an iPad instead of my usual phone and laptop. The goal here was to cross the border with…
Continue Reading Information Security Best Practices Are Stupid And I Hate Them

Making the social media rounds today is the Matter of Yu, a disciplinary decision out of New York, that is a case study in how not to be My Cousin Vinny.
To quickly summarize:

  • The respondent attorney is not licensed in Virginia.
  • Nonetheless, he appeared on behalf of a friend in a traffic matter in Virginia court. He claimed that he didn’t intend to actually appear, but just couldn’t help jumping in.
  • He was not properly dressed.

…
Continue Reading What’s a little UPL between friends?

Shy woman and man sitting on sofa. First date.

Last week, I co-presented a session at the “Life Is a Highway: Handling Traffic Cases”* seminar at the State Bar of Wisconsin, with my friend Emily Bell. Our session was about dabbling—when you want to work on matters not in your normal areas of expertise, and sometimes without the preparation and training you need.
One of the topics we discussed is that “no good deed goes unpunished” thing when your friends know you’re a lawyer—they want you to…
Continue Reading That’s What Friends [May Not Be] For

I like to think I’m up on current events. Prior to today, I was aware that members of the Proud Boys, who were convicted of various offenses stemming from the January 6, 2021 insurrection but later pardoned or had their sentences commuted by the current president, had sued the United States for $100 million. The case is venued in the Middle District of Florida.
But prior to today, I was unaware that (a) there was a lawyer named Augustus…
Continue Reading Unconquered Suns and Orders to Show Cause

“Young lady, where have you been?”
I logged in to my blogging platform and realized it has been nearly two months since I’ve written anything. It has been an incredibly busy two months, and there are a lot of things I cannot blog about right now. (If you have missed my writing, I’ve got a piece on ephemeral messaging apps in this month’s Wisconsin Lawyer. I assume my editor would not let me call it “Getting Hegsethed” so I…
Continue Reading I can’t talk about a lot of things right now so here’s a post on the intersection of legal ethics and morals

I write a snark blog. Snark blogs are better suited to schadenfreude-type grimness and not existential grimness.
Things have taken an existentially grim turn, folks.
But here we are. It’s a multi-alarm fire this time.
Since I last wrote about this subject, my nerd association put out a statement condemning the current administration’s attack on lawyers, in response to executive orders purporting to revoke security clearances and restrict lawyers’ ability to practice, against Covington & Burling, but Perkins …
Continue Reading Lawyering in a Time of Lawlessness (And Also Probably Cholera)

OLR v. Osman A. Mirza, 2023AP2369-D, February 27, 2025, (per curiam attorney discipline case)

In a disciplinary case adjacent to criminal defense practice, SCOW clarifies the impact of having charges “read-in” for purposes of an OLR proceeding.

As noted previously, this blog does not usually cover disciplinary cases. However, this case contains a helpful summary of Wisconsin’s “read-in” procedure applicable in criminal cases and clarifies their role in collateral legal proceedings. Accordingly, we felt it may be helpful…
Continue Reading SCOW clarifies that read-in offenses cannot be used to independently establish ethical violations in attorney discipline case

We learned this afternoon that several Democratic members of the US Senate filed a Request for Disciplinary Investigation with the DC Office of Disciplinary Counsel against Interim US Attorney for the District of Columbia Ed Martin. They have cited a laundry list of potential violations, including the earlier-reported conflict in which Martin (as interim USA) moved to dismiss a January 6 case against Joseph Padilla, who was represented by Martin. They also cited several instances in which Martin may…
Continue Reading Play Everything-On-Fire Games, Win Everything-On-Fire Prizes

So I’ve added a tag to my blog, “Everything on Fire.” It may be partially self-explanatory, but I am adding it to blog entries that discuss the contempt for the rule of law held by the current federal administration, among others. I’ve gone back and tagged a few prior entries as well. I am not sure these entries will always have a specific legal ethics bent (they will, at least, touch on lawyers and law practice), but the rule…
Continue Reading Setting The Rule Of Law On Fire, Just To Watch It Burn

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Taking a break from everything being on fire to report this quick hit (h/t several people on BlueSky): every judge interprets the Daubert standard (or whatever standard applies in their state) a little different, but I assure you that a qualification for anyone to testify as an expert witness on any subject is that they must be alive.
Richard Gadrow, an appraiser and witness designated by the plaintiffs in a Southern District of Texas case, died in June…
Continue Reading Dead Men Neither Wear Plaid Nor Render Opinions To A Reasonable Degree of Professional Certainty

Earlier this week, and mostly along party lines, the Senate confirmed Pam Bondi to serve as the United States Attorney General.
You will note that this job is not called “Attorney General of the President,” and at least for now, the Department of Justice’s website includes this definition:
The Judiciary Act of 1789 created the Office of the Attorney General which evolved over the years into the head of the Department of Justice and chief law enforcement officer of…
Continue Reading Bondi Blues