Law Commons^™

Decisions To Prosecute Battered Women's Homicide Cases: An Exploratory Study, Sarah N. Welling, Diane Follingstad, M. Jill Rogers, Frances Jillian Priesmeyer

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

Discretionary decisions to prosecute cases in which a battered woman kills her partner were investigated using several research strategies and targeting a range of case elements. Law students presented with case elements reported they would consider legal elements over nonlegal (or ‘supplemental’) elements when making a decision to prosecute. In contrast, law students assessed through an open-ended format as to important case factors for deciding to prosecute spontaneously generated high proportions of supplemental case elements compared with legal factors. Vignette comparisons of 42 case elements on participants’ likelihood to prosecute identified salient factors including legal and supplemental variables. Themes from …

Technology And Client Communications: Preparing Law Students And New Lawyers To Make Choices That Comply With The Ethical Duties Of Confidentiality, Competence, And Communication, Kristin J. Hazelwood

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

That the use of technology has radically changed the legal profession is beyond dispute. Through technology, lawyers can now represent clients in faraway states and countries, and they can represent even local clients through a “virtual law office.” Gone are the times in which the lawyer’s choices for communicating with clients primarily involve preparing formal business letters to convey advice, holding in-person client meetings in the office, or conducting telephone calls with clients on landlines from the confines of the lawyer’s office. Not only do lawyers have choices about how to communicate with their clients, but they also frequently choose …

What I Think That I Have Learned About Legal Ethics, Richard H. Underwood

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

In this short piece I want to say a few things that other academics teaching legal ethics may find disturbing. I say this because I believe that I may be swimming against the current academic fashion. Of course, it is possible that I do not have a very good handle on the current academic fashion. I hope I am not setting up a straw person to knock down, but I may be. If I am, I am sure someone will call me to task. What I am going to say is this: contrary to popular belief (among practitioners, at least) …

Administrative Adjudication In Kentucky: Ethics And Unauthorized Practice Considerations, Richard H. Underwood

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

This article is an extended version of a presentation I made at a training course for hearing officers sponsored by the Office of the Attorney General, Division of Administrative Hearings. In my original presentation, I was asked to focus on the ethics of the administrative adjudicator. I was asked to answer some specific questions, which I will include here for the reader's benefit. In this more complete treatment, I would also like to discuss the ethics of lawyers and other representatives appearing before administrative agencies.

The Kentucky Courts had begun to "judicialize" the administrative hearing process in the early 1970's, …

The Professional And The Liar, Richard H. Underwood

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

Many individuals in society think that all lawyers are liars. Some think lawyers are allowed to lie. Regrettably, some American lawyers apparently think so too. In the United States there has been, and continues to be, a troubling lack of professional consensus when it comes to litigating a case. Indeed, lawyers who are neither corrupt nor insensitive have been accused of arguing that the elicitation of false testimony, and the use of it, is a professional responsibility. Fairness also calls for some acknowledgment that even the most cunning, zealous, and successful of trial lawyers have agonized over such moral choices. …

Renewed Introspection And The Legal Profession, Eugene R. Gaetke

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

As the twentieth century draws to a close, the legal profession again immersed in a process of self-assessment, reflection, and reform. Operating on several fronts, various constituent elements of the bar have recently completed or have underway significant projects relating to the law of lawyering.

Two efforts stand out in particular. For more than a decade, the American Law Institute has labored in the production of a new Restatement of the Law Governing Lawyers, and the organization stands now on the brink of that monumental work's publication. Equally significant, the American Bar Association has again undertaken a comprehensive review of …

Kentucky Law Survey: Professional Responsibility, William H. Fortune

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

This article is a survey of recent Kentucky ethics cases and Kentucky Bar Association ethics opinions. The cases and opinions selected are those of general application but special interest.

The Role Of Ethics And Unauthorized Practice Opinions In Regulating The Practice Of Law In Kentucky, William H. Fortune

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

The purpose of this article is to discuss the role of ethics and unauthorized practice opinions in regulating the practice of law, with suggestions for clarification and improvement.

The Kentucky Bench and Bar, the quarterly journal of the Kentucky Bar Association ("KBA"), prints "Advisory Ethics Opinions" and "Unauthorized Practice Opinions" over the signatures of the respective chairs of the Ethics and Unauthorized Practice of Law ("UPL") Committees. This article describes: 1) how ethics and unauthorized practice opinions are generated; 2) the legal effect of the opinions; 3) the relationship of ethics opinions to attorney discipline; 4) the Board of Bar …

Perjury: An Anthology, Richard H. Underwood

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

Professor Underwood takes an in-depth look at the occurrence of perjury from ancient Rome to the O.J. Simpson trial. This journey through time provides insight into the motives of perjurers, the difficulties involved in catching them; and the alarming frequency with which they succeed, unchastised.

False Witness: A Lawyer's History Of The Law Of Perjury, Richard H. Underwood

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

From Cain to Potiphar's Wife to the pig and chicken laws of the Lex Salica of Clovis I, Professor Underwood examines the role of the false witness throughout history. Take a voyage extraordinaire and encounter some of history's most notorious perjurers.

Part-Time Prosecutors And Conflicts Of Interest: A Survey And Some Proposals, Richard H. Underwood

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

For many jurisdictions, the need for part-time prosecutors is a reality that will continue into the foreseeable future. The daunting task of balancing a private practice with prosecutorial duties is made all the more difficult by the lack of a coherent set of guidelines for minimizing the impact of conflicts of interest. What is needed is a set of guidelines flexible enough to permit attorneys to balance the part-time prosecutor's dual practice yet concrete enough to protect the system and its participants from conflicts of interest. Of prime importance in establishing any such system is the need for a clear …

Kentucky's New Rules Of Professional Conduct For Lawyers, Eugene R. Gaetke

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

On July 12, 1989, the Kentucky Supreme Court adopted its own version of the American Bar Association's 1983 Model Rules of Professional Conduct as the body of disciplinary law applicable to lawyers practicing in the state. These new rules constitute a major improvement in the state's law of legal ethics. Their adoption should be considered a victory for Kentucky lawyers and, more importantly, a victory for the people of the state, the ultimate beneficiaries of the regulation of the legal profession.

As with most victories, the adoption of the new rules was not unequivocally positive. Kentucky's version of the Model …

Lawyers As Officers Of The Court, Eugene R. Gaetke

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

Lawyers like to refer to themselves as officers of the court. Careful analysis of the role of the lawyer within the adversarial legal system reveals the characterization to be vacuous and unduly self-laudatory. It confuses lawyers and misleads the public. The profession, therefore, should either stop using the officer of the court characterization or give meaning to it. This Article proposes certain modifications of the existing rules of professional responsibility that would bring lawyers' actual obligations more in line with those suggested by the label of officer of the court.

Why Kentucky Should Adopt The Aba's Model Rules Of Professional Conduct, Eugene R. Gaetke

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

In 1983, after six years of drafting and lively debate, the American Bar Association adopted the Model Rules of Professional Conduct as its most recent statement of the ethical norms of the legal profession. Shortly thereafter the ABA forwarded the rules to the states for consideration and possible adoption as binding ethical principles. As of this writing, a number of states have adopted the Model Rules, in full or in substantial form, and several more have proposals for such adoption pending before their supreme courts

The Kentucky Supreme Court presently awaits the state bar association's recommendation regarding the Model Rules' …

Legal Ethics And Class Actions: Problems, Tactics And Judicial Responses, Richard H. Underwood

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

Perhaps no procedural innovation has generated more controversy than the class action. As Professor Arthur Miller has observed, debate over “class action problem[s]” has raged at several different levels. For example, opponents and proponents of class actions disagree on whether such actions produce socially desirable results in an economical fashion and whether an already overburdened judiciary can handle the additional supervisory demands of the class action. Recently, a somewhat more ideological dialogue has addressed the merit of publicly funded class actions. Such questions arise only indirectly in the context of class action litigation. However, a certain hostility toward class actions …

Kentucky Law Survey: Professional Responsibility, Eugene R. Gaetke, Rebecca G. Casey

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

In the face of persistent criticism of the legal profession, from within as well as without, the Kentucky Supreme Court exhibits a certain degree of ambivalence toward issues of professional responsibility. This ambivalence manifests itself in two ways.

First, the Court's treatment of different categories of professional misconduct seems at times unjustifiably inconsistent. The Court reacts to certain misconduct in an almost uniformly harsh manner, evincing the attitude of a strict disciplinarian for the practicing bar. Occasionally, however, the Court responds to various other kinds of equally gross misconduct with apparently undue leniency. In such cases the Court seems to …

Presuming Lawyers Competent To Protect Fundamental Rights: Is It An Affordable Fiction?, Robert G. Lawson

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

This article explores the ramifications of Wainwright v. Sykes, a case decided before the Supreme Court of the United States in 1977. The broad question before the Court in Sykes concerned the extent to which state prisoners should have access to federal court by use of the writ of habeas corpus. The narrow issue before the Court concerned the impact on a prisoner's claim for habeas relief of procedural defaults (such as a failure to object to evidence, a failure to perfect an appeal, etc.) that occur in the state proceeding under attack. In considering these important issues Justice …

Lawyer Supply And Demand In Kentucky Over The Next Decade, Alvin L. Goldman

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

Projecting future needs is a painstaking and hazardous affair. Avoiding such pain, however, is even more hazardous. There is good reason to attempt to project the next decade's need for, and potential supply of, new lawyers in Kentucky. Adequate legal services are an important ingredient in orderly economic growth and an essential element in preserving a free society. On the other hand, an over-abundance of lawyers can depress the economics of the profession to the point at which its ability to sustain desired standards of ethical conduct and to attract a high caliber of new talent are both threatened. Moreover, …