Halling & Cayo. S.C.

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Ethicking

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William Goren
Stacie Rosenzweig

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All eyes are on the Middle District of Pennsylvania, which is set to hear arguments in one of the Trump Campaign’s voting lawsuits today. Enter Rudy Giuliani, who has applied for pro hac vice admission despite his last federal court appearance being before some lawyers were born. However, it looks like Rudy may have some problems right out of the gate, in addition to all of his other problems. On page 2 of his application, he represents that he is in good standing in several bars, including the District of Columbia. However, as of 10:45 a.m. Central time…
Just a quick update as I deal with election aftermath*, but I did want to announce that I have been admitted to practice law in Illinois. Apparently it takes a bit for the ARDC web site to catch up, but I can hold myself out as an Illinois lawyer and call administrative agencies there on clients’ behalf without running afoul of UPL rules. But no, friends from high school, I can’t handle your divorce or draft your will. I mean, I guess legally I can, but it would be a bad idea. *Yes, I do election law too. In…
That’s right, if you can believe it, Ethicking.com launched one year ago, on October 24, 2019. …so, what a year, huh? Like anything that was launched a year ago with certain (any) expectations, this did not go as I’d planned. Sure, I did manage to keep up with the blog generally, updating every couple of weeks or so (and sometimes more often, though not quite at the weekly frequency I’d hoped). I thought I’d be writing about ABA opinions, nerd friends, and best practices, and I did that. And, sadly, I knew at this time last…
(Note to self: I really need to find better free clip art.) Years ago, in law school, I wrote this in my “ethics journal” (which I found tedious at the time and here I am, ethics journaling for the world to see): This does make me wonder: Are attorneys bound under the Model Rules or their state equivalents if they’re not actively engaged in the practice of law but in a position where their legal knowledge and training influences their work? I would assume that if I worked as a lawyer during the day and decorated cakes by night, I…
My kid is 10 and is attending fifth graded 100% virtually. His gym teacher has assigned his class to keep a log of their daily real-life physical activity. (As an aside, a good way to sap a kid’s enjoyment of anything is to make them log it. See—reading log, writing log, gym log. Good thing my kid rides his scooter to procrastinate on schoolwork.) Anyhow, today he discovered something familiar to most lawyers—the joys of recreating his week, after the fact. Truth is, he couldn’t remember exactly what he did when, so he made some educated guesses. “Wednesday—I think I…
Almost a year ago (wow), I wrote a bit about the State Bar Car Crash Symposium Heckler, who spent some quality time during my presentation lecturing us about the fact that sometimes plaintiff’s counsel and defense counsel are friendly with one another. (He also cornered me after my presentation, which dealt broadly with dealing with emotional situations, and complained that I didn’t consult with religious authorities about breaking bad news to a client. Oh well.) And it does happen—sometimes I do see my existing friends on the other side of the caption, and sometimes I become friends with people…
Every now and again, I’ll be blogging some answers to questions I get frequently. (I’ll be sorting these under the category, “FAQ,” and will leave the debate as to whether that should be pronounced “fack” or “eff-A-cue” to a later date.) One question I get frequently enough that I have the State Bar Ethics Committee opinion number* memorized, so we’ll tackle it first: “My former client has a big outstanding balance and now wants a copy of their file. Can I hold their file until they pay up?” Some states do permit so-called retention liens, so long as withholding the…
We all procrastinate. Even you—yes you, with your wall calendar and your daily planner in your briefcase and your Outlook calendar synched to your phone and Siri shouting reminders at you weeks, days, hours, and minutes before each important deadline. It’s part of the human condition, and not dependent on time management skills. Most of us know how to manage our time; we just don’t follow through. Lawyers do it for more than an hour a day. Many of us claim we work best under pressure, and what better pressure is there than a big deadline, maybe even a jurisdictional…
Typically, courts redo their Web sites and it’s not for the best. They don’t display right on a mobile device and I end up not being able to find anything regardless of where I am. But credit where it’s due. The Wisconsin Courts redesign works pretty well. Things seem to be in logical order and can be viewed on mobile and desktop pretty decently. I don’t agree with some of the font choices but we can’t have everything. Relevant to our subject matter, the Office of Lawyer Regulation site revamp looks good. Something that seems to be new (and if…
I have been derelict in updating this blog most of this summer, despite the promise to myself that I’d have fresh and exciting new content every 10-14 days and quick hits in between. Of course, when I made that promise to myself it was October 2019. And I do have a bunch of half-written entries and prompts floating around, ranging from a February piece-in progress on the illusion of work-life balance (which, to be fair is still an illusion now, except I’m not writing about those weird feet-on-the-beach pictures or Bar events anymore) to three lines in an entry titled:…
Under normal circumstances I’d be in Chicago right now, checked into the Hotel Palomar, hanging out with my nerd friends from the Association of Professional Responsibility Lawyers at the Annual Meeting. This blog would be quiet but I’d be annoying everyone on Facebook with out-of-context giddy snippets from the conference. Instead, it’s Yet Another Zoom. I’ve signed up, because of course I did–the program is still valuable even if the best things about it have fallen victim to the Shenanigans. Still, it was good to see some of my nerd friends at the virtual reception and I look forward to…
First, many sympathies to my friends at Holland & Knight. For those of you not in my little nerd world, H&K has one of the biggest and most robust legal ethics and risk management practices in the country. Unfortunately, it is now facing a lawsuit alleging that it was hacked and a fraudster posed as a stock seller, leading to a diversion of a $3.1 million wire transfer. I know nothing about the merits of this suit so I won’t try to guess to comment, but still. Ouch. When I talk to lawyers about scams, any kind of scams, most…
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Todd Banks’ valiant attempt to invalidate Al Johnson’s Restaurant’s Goats on the Roof trade dress as “demeaning to goats” (chronicled here in December) has ended not with a bang, or a whimper, or even with a fish fry, but with a denial of a cert petition. (Photo is a blurry picture of my son, last year on his 9th birthday, rocking in the Al Johnson’s waiting area, patient for his meatball platter, with mad respect for the goats.)…
I am not an IP attorney and my knowledge of fair use is minimal. So I won’t comment on the merits of Craig v. Pop Matters Media Inc. in the Southern District of New York which involves publication of a photograph. But I don’t think you need to be an ethics attorney or an attorney at all to know you generally need your client to be a client and to know that they’re a client before filing a lawsuit on their behalf and then litigating it for two years and then having it dismissed with a petition for attorney’s fees …
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I graduated from Marquette University Law School and aside from a couple of federal court admissions, I practice exclusively in Wisconsin. (I’ve applied to Illinois, but that’s still pending; I guess I’ll need to update my blog tagline eventually..) Wisconsin is the only state in the country to offer diploma privilege to graduates of its law schools (though New Hampshire has a limited honors-style program)—that means, by virtue of graduating here, we get to practice here without a bar exam. We did have to undergo character and fitness, but once we were certified and graduated, we were sworn in and…
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Facebook has been available to the general public for more than a decade; before that it was MySpace and after that it was Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram, and a bunch of apps my 9-year-old who doesn’t even have a phone seems to know about but I don’t. Lawyers have been using these platforms to varying degrees since their inception, both personally and professionally. Judges, too—here in Wisconsin judges are elected and use social media for campaigning and networking, as well as for keeping track of family and posting pictures of their dinner, like everyone else. (I note that due to a…