Law Commons^™

Ethics, Loyalty And Harm To Third Parties: A Debate Based On Spaulding V. Zimmerman, Lloyd B. Snyder, Scott Rawlings

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

This discussion poses the question: should an attorney ever provide information to an opposing party to prevent that party from suffering great harm if the information will have an adverse effect on the attorney's own client? The case that sets the stage for this discussion is Spaulding v. Zimmerman, 243 Minn. 346 (1962).

Princes Of Darkness And Angels Of Light: The Soul Of The American Lawyer, David R. Barnhizer

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

The increasing belief among many lawyers that life is comprised of "fear and greed and money" has altered the legal profession and helped make lawyers into one of the most feared and powerful groups in American society - and one of the most scorned. In the midst of the widespread contempt American society is showing lawyers, this article seeks to explain the special role the legal profession serves in our complex democracy. At the same time it condemns attitudes such as those reflected in Fritts' statement. The belief that life is driven by fear, greed, and money has created a …

Comment, Traitors In Our Midst: Attorneys Who Inform On Their Own Clients, Aviva Abramovsky

Journal Articles

No abstract provided.

Who Shall We Admit To Our Club?, Lawrence Raful

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Municipal Ethics Remain A Hot Topic In Litigation: A 1999 Survey Of Issues In Ethics For Municipal Lawyers, Patricia E. Salkin

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

In Hell There Will Be Lawyers Without Clients Or Law, Susan P. Koniak, George M. Cohen

Faculty Scholarship

Class action abuse is a particularly interesting area in which to explore both when and why law might fail to affect lawyer conduct and the complexity of the lawyer-entity relationship. By class action abuse, we have in mind three related problems: collusive settlements, inadequate representation of class interests, and payoffs to objectors and their counsel. The law condemns collusive settlements and the lawyers who make them.²⁰ It demands that class counsel adequately represent the class.²¹ Paying objectors and their counsel to drop their challenges to class settlements is, at best, legally questionable behavior and, at worst, evidence of …

Dressed For Excess: How Hollywood Affects The Professional Behavior Of Lawyers, Nancy B. Rapoport

Scholarly Works

This article discusses two related points: first, that the way in which movies portray lawyers shapes how clients view effective/ineffective lawyer behavior, and second, that the portrayal also helps lawyers to forget appropriate professional behavior.

Equality And Affiliation As Bases Of Ethical Responsibility, Geoffrey C. Hazard Jr.

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Chicago Conspiracy Trial: Character And Judicial Discretion, Pnina Lahav

Faculty Scholarship

On October 29, 1969, sometime after two o'clock in the afternoon, following yet another heated exchange with defendant Bobby Seale in a courtroom full of spectators, reporters, and armed guards, Judge Julius Jennings Hoffman turned to a marshal and ordered: "Take that defendant into the room in there and deal with him as he should be dealt with in this circumstance."' Judge Hoffman described the aftermath:

In an attempt to maintain order in the courtroom, the Court thereupon ordered the defendant Seale removed from the courtroom at which time he was forcibly restrained by binding and gagging. The defendant Seale …

Why Formalism?, James E. Moliterno

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Book Review: The Problematics Of Moral And Legal Theory, Matthew D. Adler

Faculty Scholarship

Reviewing, Richard A. Posner, The Problematics of Moral and Legal Theory (1999)

Third Party Payments To Criminal Defense Lawyers: Revisiting United States V. Hodge And Zweig, David Orentlicher

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

What Do You Do When You Meet A "Walking Violation Of The Sixth Amendment" If You're Trying To Put That Lawyer's Client In Jail?, Vanessa Merton

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

For the purpose of this article, the relevance of my experience as a criminal defense attorney is this: if ever one might expect to find a prosecutor inclined to err on the side of fairness of process and protecting the rights of defendants, it ought to be me. Also, for more than twenty years, I have been something of a professional ethicist--as research fellow, teacher, staff member of an ethics center, chair and/or member of several institutional review boards, pro bono trial counsel to a disciplinary committee, ethics consultant, and expert witness--and, therefore, one might think, especially susceptible to the …

Dueling Class Actions, Rhonda Wasserman

Articles

When multiple class action suits are filed on behalf of the same class members, numerous problems ensue. Dueling class actions are confusing to class members, wasteful of judicial resources, conducive to unfair settlements, and laden with complex preclusion problems. The article creates a typology of different kinds of dueling class actions; explores the problems that plague each type; considers the effect the Supreme Court's decision in Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. v. Epstein, 516 U.S. 367 (1996), has had on these problems; evaluates the efficacy of existing judicial tools to curb them; and proposes an array of possible solutions. The more …

Changing Structure In The Practice Of Law, Geoffrey C. Hazard Jr.

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Costs Of Confidentiality And The Purpose Of Privilege, Melanie B. Leslie

Articles

No abstract provided.

Law, Ethics, And Religion In The Public Square: Principles Of Restraint And Withdrawal, Samuel J. Levine

Scholarly Works

In recent years, scholars have begun to recognize and discuss the profound questions that arise in attempting to determine the place of religion in the law and the legal profession. This discussion has emerged on at least two separate yet related levels. On one level, scholars have debated the place of religion in various segments of the public sphere, including law and politics. On a second level, lawyers have expressed the aim to place their professional values and obligations in the context of their overriding religious obligations. This article explores, from both an ethical and jurisprudential perspective, the question of …

Should An Attorney Be Required To Advise Client Of Adr Options?, Marshall J. Breger

Scholarly Articles

In recent years alternative dispute resolution (ADR) has moved from the margins of legal practice into the mainstream. It is no longer the exception for attorneys to employ or clients to request ADR services in almost every aspect of legal representation. This shift to the legal mainstream raises the question whether attorneys, as part of their general obligation to keep clients informed of their legal alternatives, should be required to advise their clients regarding ADR options. This paper will consider this question. In doing so, it will consider, at least inferentially, the character and purpose of ethics "rules."

Teaching Professional Responsibility In Legal Clinics Around The World, Leah Wortham

Scholarly Articles

At a March 1999 Colloquium on Clinical Legal Education,1 a group of about 20 people, including a number of law faculty already teaching or planning to teach legal clinics in Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union , were asked, "What are the goals that you think are most important for a legal clinic?" The most common answers were teaching about ethics and improving the ethical standards of law practice in participants' respective countries through this focus in legal education.

Lawyer Role, Agency Law, And The Characterization Officer Of The Court , James A. Cohen

Faculty Scholarship

The law of agency has governed American lawyers since before the Revolution, but recent scholarship about legal ethics and professional role almost entirely ignores it. Most commentators would concede that attorneys are agents, but would quickly add that the lawyer is also an "officer of the court" who has obligations to seek justice. However, analysis of the phrase "officer of the court" reveals that it has surprisingly little content; it is mostly rhetoric, caused by self-love and self-promotion. What little content it has points to a role of the attorney as agent whose obligations to the court are almost identical …

Public Declarations Of Professionalism Professionalism Symposium, Bruce A. Green

Faculty Scholarship

When it comes to the subject of "professionalism," there is a gap between the leaders of the organized bar and its members. Bar leaders are eager to discuss the subject. For example, this year's annual meeting of the American Bar Association ("ABA") afforded bar leaders, as well as legal academics, a host of opportunities to share strategies to promote "professionalism" and "professional values." The Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar sponsored a program on "Professionalism in Law Schools and the Profession." Organizations representing bar executives, bar presidents, and bar foundations jointly presented a program called "Tough Talk, …

Informal Aggregation: Procedural And Ethical Implications Of Coordination Among Counsel In Related Lawsuits, Howard M. Erichson

Faculty Scholarship

Even when related claims are not aggregated by any formal procedural mechanism, the lawyers involved in the separate lawsuits often coordinate their efforts. Such "informal aggregation" raises important questions about the boundaries of a dispute and the boundaries of the lawyer-client relationship. As an ethical matter, the central question is whether a lawyer owes ethical duties to a coordinating lawyer's client. Looking at confidentiality, loyalty, conflicts of interest, and malpractice, Professor Erichson suggests that ethical safeguards for clients of coordinating lawyers are neither strong enough nor explicit enough to provide adequate protection, and the problem inheres in the nature of …

Telling Stories In School: Using Case Studies And Stories To Teach Legal Ethics, Carrie Menkel-Meadow

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In this Foreword I will explore why we use stories and case studies (and whether stories and case studies are equal to the task) to examine ethical and moral issues in the practice of law and provide an introduction to the interesting tales which will enfold in this Symposium issue. I conclude with some thoughts about how stories and cases should be used to teach legal ethics.

Is The Rule Of Law Cosmopolitan?, Robin West

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

What I will argue in the bulk of the paper is that whether or not the rule of law implies ethical cosmopolitanism depends: it depends on how we understand or interpret the legalistic sense of justice that law and the rule of law seemingly require. The virtue that we sometimes call legal justice, and the correlative meaning of the rule of law to which it is yoked, can plausibly be subjected to a range of different interpretations, each resting on quite different understandings of the point of law and of what the individual law is meant to protect. Some of …

Ensuring Able Representation For Publicly-Funded Criminal Defendants: Lessons From England, Peter W. Tague

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

While there are skilled private defense lawyers who enthusiastically represent indigent criminal defendants, too often defense lawyers whose income depends upon appointments provide deplorable representation. The problem is well known and pervasive. In addition to the blizzard of claims on appeal of ineffective representation, defenders' efforts have been savaged by judges and by fellow lawyers. These nagging problems persist: to induce private lawyers to represent their clients effectively by eliciting the defendant's story and managing their relationship in a way that at least does not displease the defendant; investigating his and the prosecution's positions; pressing the prosecution for discovery, for …

William H. Simon: Thinking Like A Lawyer – About Ethics, William H. Simon, Robert D. Taylor, Bruce S. Ledewitz, Margaret K. Krasik, Sean P. Kealy

Faculty Scholarship

This is the edited text of a panel discussion held as part of the legal ethics curriculum at Duquesne University Law School on October 24, 1999. The speakers have had the opportunity to update and correct this text; therefore, this printed version may deviate slightly from what was presented.

Clients Don't Take Sabbaticals: The Indispensable In-House Clinic And The Teaching Of Empathy, Philip Genty

Faculty Scholarship

After almost 12 years in law teaching, I approached my first sabbatical with a single goal: to free myself from cases. At that time my clinic clients were primarily parents who were involved in family court proceedings in which they were trying to preserve their parental rights and get their children out of the foster care system. Such cases are emotionally draining for both the client and the lawyer. Thus, while I welcomed the chance to have a semester off from teaching and attending faculty and committee meetings, I felt that I needed a break from the demands of lawyering …

Mission Impossible?: Ethical Community Lawyering, Shauna Marshall

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.