Ethics & Professional Responsibility

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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

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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

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This blog was launched in October, 2019, during Trump I, and soon thereafter I wrote an entry called, “This Blog Isn’t About Politics, and Other Lies We Tell.” I started blogging, intending to focus on disciplinary decisions, new rules, bar opinions, and so forth, with a healthy dose of snark. (To be fair, in October 2019 I also needed to get the buy-in of my employer, and they didn’t want this blog to be about politics either.)
Then-current events…
Continue Reading You Get A Conflict! And You Get A Conflict! Everybody Gets a Conflict!

I’m one of those people who, if I have a 1 pm and it is 12:40, typically cannot do anything productive with those 20 minutes. Today, that meant I spent some quality time on social media.
The algorithm served me an ad for some conference on “family law acquisition.” I guess the ad did a little bit of its job, in that it caught my attention, and, my 1 pm call ended up getting pushed to 1:20 so I…
Continue Reading Are They Buying What You’re Selling?

If any of you are in need of 2.5-3 on-demand ethics CLE hours (depending on how your state counts time), or are curious about what happens when people who are not me* try to make ethics CLE fun, Cleveland-based Squire Patton Boggs has created a free long-form ethics CLE musical. (Hey, I run a legal ethics snark blog, and wrote a State Bar ethics article based on an REM earworm, I’m not judging.)
The program can be viewed…
Continue Reading Daddy Sang Bass, Mama Sang Ethics

I’m working on some longer pieces and on my actual job, so for now, a few quick hits:

  • Federal courts: Something troubling, which I would like to address in a longer form when I have some time, is this judicial disciplinary order against Senior Judge Michael A. Ponsor of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts. Back in May, he wrote an opinion piece (paywalled) in the New York Times that criticized the flying of upside-down American

…
Continue Reading Quick Hits from Elsewhere

Some interesting (if you are me) news came out of Arizona this week:  Its Supreme Court approved a rule change limiting the ability of people not directly involved in, or who do not have first-hand knowledge of, a particular matter to pursue ethics complaints.
Under the revision to Arizona Supreme Court Rule 53, clients of the lawyer, judges who learned of the conduct through their judicial role, and others with “direct and specific first-hand knowledge of the conduct…
Continue Reading Should strangers get to file grievances? Arizona says ‘maybe, but’

So the thing about having an elections practice in a swing state is that one day you’re writing about bad news that can’t wait and the next day it’s November and everything has waited. I’m still not quite up for air, but I am getting there.
I hope to get back to posting more regularly now that we’re in an “off year” (whatever that means), but in the meantime, this blog turned five on October 24. I hope it…
Continue Reading This Thing Is On, I Promise

On July 29, 2024, the American Bar Association (ABA) issued Formal Opinion 512 regarding the use of generative artificial intelligence tools.

The 15-page opinion addressed the use of generative artificial intelligence in the practice of law, focusing on the specific rules pertaining to confidentiality, communications, legal fees, competence, and other related rules.
What Is GAI?
First, it is important to know what generative artificial intelligence is, to understand the context of the ABA opinion.

Generative artificial intelligence (GAI) has…
Continue Reading ABA Issues Formal Opinion on Use of Generative AI

As reported by Above the Law and the Legal Profession Blog, a Colorado lawyer received a 60-day suspension, stayed if he successfully completes a two-year probationary period, for posing as a judge and a former deputy district attorney in blog comments submitted to a moderator.
The stipulated decision (and I suppose I should include a warning that there is uncensored profanity in the decision) was brief, and notes a violation of Colorado Rule 8.4(c), which, like its…
Continue Reading If My Blog Actually Got Comments, This Would Be A Cautionary Tale

It’s a Sunday Night. Dinner is done and you’re winding down and getting ready for another week ahead.
You decide to scroll social media when you see a post from a distraught mother of two young children asking some legal questions on a public forum. You scroll through the comments from a wide array of people and notice a plethora of information being provided to the young, frantic woman – none of which is correct.

As a family law…
Continue Reading Should You Respond to Bad Legal Advice on Social Media?

Nerd with glasses is shocked after reading a sms

I’ve spent the last day-plus at another engaging Association of Professional Responsibility Lawyers (APRL) conference, and just like last year at this same conference, and just like when I was on vacation last year, I got some big news from the courts.
Some of this exciting and completely ill-timed news has been good. And some of it, well, not so much. I was on a Washington, DC metro bus last year and decided to use the downtime…
Continue Reading When Bad News Can’t Wait

This week, the ABA released its first formal opinion covering the growing use of generative AI in the practice of law. To ensure clients are protected, the opinion mandates that lawyers using gen AI must “fully consider their applicable ethical obligations” including duties to provide competent legal representation, protect client information, communicate with clients, and charge reasonable fees.

Here are some excerpts from the opinion:

  • “To competently use a GAI tool in a client representation, lawyers need not become

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Continue Reading Read It or Weep: ABA Issues Opinion on the Growing use of Generative AI in the Practice of Law

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Hon. Jeh Charles Johnson, former U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security and ABA Task Force for American Democracy co-chair, speaks on “The Threat to Democracy.”

July 11, 2024 – A dozen speakers recently gave sobering presentations on the threat to democracy during a nonpartisan event from the American Bar Association’s Task Force for American Democracy, in partnership with the State Bar of Wisconsin.

The program, called
Wisconsin: Elections in the 21st Century (watch now) was held in-person July…
Continue Reading American Bar Association Brings Democracy Listening Tour to Wisconsin