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Legal Ethics and Professional Responsibility Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Law and Society

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Journal

2014

Ineffective assistance of counsel

Articles 1 - 2 of 2

Full-Text Articles in Legal Ethics and Professional Responsibility

Why Lawyers Do What They Do (When Behaving Ethically), James Moliterno, John Keyser Jan 2014

Why Lawyers Do What They Do (When Behaving Ethically), James Moliterno, John Keyser

St. Mary's Journal on Legal Malpractice & Ethics

Since the early 1990s, when David Wilkins published his influential paper “Who Should Govern Lawyers” in the Harvard Law Review, legal ethics scholars and professors have paid attention to the range of processes and devices that govern lawyer behavior. This Article will report on the results of a study currently underway that seeks to provide empirical evidence to answer the question posed in this Article’s title: Do lawyers train staff in confidentiality preservation because they fear bar discipline? Because they fear malpractice liability? Because they must comply with malpractice liability carrier demands? Because they honor client confidences for their own …


Disqualifying Defense Counsel: The Curse Of The Sixth Amendment, Keith Swisher Jan 2014

Disqualifying Defense Counsel: The Curse Of The Sixth Amendment, Keith Swisher

St. Mary's Journal on Legal Malpractice & Ethics

Lawyer disqualification—the process of ejecting a conflicted lawyer, firm, or agency from a case—is fairly routine and well-mapped in civil litigation. In criminal cases, however, there is an added ingredient: the Sixth Amendment. Gideon, which is celebrating its fiftieth anniversary, effectively added this ingredient to disqualification analysis involving indigent state defendants although it already existed in essence for both federal defendants and defendants with the wherewithal to retain counsel. Once a defendant is entitled to counsel, the many questions that follow include whether and to what extent conflicts of interest—or other misconduct—render that counsel constitutionally ineffective. Most cases and commentary …