Legal Ethics and Professional Responsibility Commons^™

Solving Your Ethical Conundrums: Researching The Rules Of Professional Conduct, Joyce Manna Janto

Law Faculty Publications

Ms. Janto provides a practical guide to researching issues of attorney professional responsibilities using both print and online resources, emphasizing Virginia rules and decisions.

In Search Of Core Values, W. Bradley Wendel

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

A consensus appears to have emerged among American lawyers that globalization and information technology are transforming the practice of law in fundamental ways. In particular, non-lawyers are increasingly involved in what has traditionally been defined as the practice of law. Scholars such as Richard Susskind, in the United Kingdom, and Thomas Morgan, in the United States, have hypothesized that lawyers may be going the way of wheelwrights, cordwainers or mercers (traders in fine cloths and silks), and that one day in the not-so-distant future we will consider the profession of lawyer as something to be studied historically, wonder why lawyers …

The Ethics Of Lobbying Under The District Of Columbia Rules Of Professional Conduct, Michael S. Frisch

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The District of Columbia is the epicenter of lobbying in the United States. With the presence of the Congress, the Executive Branch and its various Departments and independent agencies, few industries, trade associations or large businesses lack a Washington-based government relations arm. Law firms and lawyers fill in the gaps for those entities that lack a Washington presence or supplement in-house staffing with additional expertise and contacts.

Under these circumstances, it should come as no surprise that the bar authorities in the District of Columbia have examined the issue of lawyers and lobbying and implemented rules that differ from the …

Something Bad In Your Briefs, Richard H. Underwood

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

In a profession heavily driven by writing, plagiarism is an ethical issue that plagues the legal community. The legal profession generally views plagiarism as unethical, but often sends mixed messages by condemning it in some settings, but not others. In this short Commentary, Professor Underwood discusses the ethical implications of plagiarism in legal writing.

Systematically Thinking About Law Firm Ethics: Conference On The Ethical Infrastructure And Culture Of Law Firms, Susan Saab Fortney

Faculty Scholarship

To advance the discourse related to law firm ethics and the impact of formal controls and informal influences on lawyer conduct, we convened on April 5, 2013 the Conference on the Ethical Infrastructure and Culture of Law Firms ("Conference" or "Symposium"). The Conference, conducted under the auspices of the Hofstra Law Review and the Maurice A. Deane School of Law at Hofstra University's Institute for the Study of Legal Ethics, was funded in part by the Abraham J. Gross '78 Conference and Lecture Fund at the Maurice A. Deane School of Law at Hofstra University. Experts who have studied issues …

From Citizen Suits To Conservation Easements: The Increasing Private Role In Public Permit Enforcement, Jessica Owley

Articles

The past 40 years have seen an increase in the involvement of private actors in environmental law. One of the best-known (and arguably best-loved) methods for public involvement is the citizen suit. This popular method of public enforcement of environmental permits (among other things) has been joined by the use of conservation easements. Conservation easements are increasingly used to meet permit mitigation requirements. When private nonprofits hold these exacted conservation easements, they assume the role of permit enforcers. It is their job to ensure that conservation easement terms are complied with, giving them oversight and control over one of the …

Legal Ethics Versus Political Practices: The Application Of The Rules Of Professional Conduct To Lawyer-Politicians, Andrew Martin

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Canadian legal ethics has paid little attention to how the rules of professional conduct for lawyers apply to lawyer-politicians – that is, politicians who happen to be lawyers. This article addresses this issue with reference to what Canadian case law and commentary do exist, supplemented by more plentiful American materials. It proposes a distinction between conduct that is politically expedient and conduct in which lawyer-politicians’ duties as lawyers come into apparent conflict with their duties of office. Canadian case law reveals three conflicting approaches to this latter category: that the duties of a lawyer prevail, that the duties of a …

The Federal Judicial Conduct And Disability System: Unfinished Business For Congress And For The Judiciary, Arthur D. Hellman

Testimony

For most of the nation’s history, the only formal mechanism for dealing with misconduct by federal judges was the cumbersome process of impeachment. That era ended with the enactment of the Judicial Councils Reform and Judicial Conduct and Disability Act of 1980 (1980 Act or Act). In 2002, Congress made modest amendments to the Act and codified the provisions in Chapter 16 of Title 28. In 2008, the Judicial Conference of the United States – the administrative policy-making body of the federal judiciary – approved the first set of nationally binding rules for misconduct proceedings.

Under the 1980 Act and …

“Harmonizing Current Threats: Using The Outcry For Legal Education Reforms To Take Another Look At Civil Gideon And What It Means To Be An American Lawyer”, Cathryn A. Miller-Wilson

Working Paper Series

Drawing from the broad and varied literature on legal ethics, the paper demonstrates that legal education and access to justice concerns can and should be addressed simultaneously in our current political and economic climate. Current threats to legal education, and to lawyering in general, present an opportunity for legal education transformation. Applying legal ethics theory to an analysis of these threats provides support for the creation of teaching law firms, similar in size and scope to teaching hospitals, that will employ clinical teaching methodology, substantially enhance ethics teaching and significantly address the issue of access to justice.

How Lawyers' Intuitions Prolong Litigation, Andrew J. Wistrich, Jeffrey J. Rachlinski

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Most lawsuits settle, but some settle later than they should. Too many compromises occur only after protracted discovery and expensive motion practice. Sometimes the delay precludes settlement altogether. Why does this happen? Several possibilities—such as the alleged greed of lawyers paid on an hourly basis—have been suggested, but they are insufficient to explain why so many cases do not settle until the eve of trial. We offer a novel account of the phenomenon of settling on the courthouse steps that is based upon empirical research concerning judgment and choice. Several cognitive illusions—the framing effect, the confirmation bias, nonconsequentialist reasoning, and …

Client Science: Advice For Lawyers On Initial Client Interviews, Marjorie Corman Aaron

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

My intent is to offer an informed, wise, practical, and concise guide for initial lawyer-client meetings – meetings that are mostly an interview process for the client and the lawyer. It is written for the Client Science Course website to supplement my book, Client Science: Advice for Lawyers on Counseling Clients Through Bad News and Other Legal Realities (Oxford University Press, 2012), referred to here as Client Science. That book was intentionally focused on particular challenges of client counseling

Why Punctuation Matters: Part Three, David Spratt

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.

Waiving Goodbye To A Fundamental Right: Allocation Of Authority Between Attorneys And Clients And The Right To A Public Trial, 38 J. Legal Prof. 1 (2013), Alberto Bernabe

UIC Law Open Access Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Survey Of Illinois Law: Waiver Of The Attorney-Client Privilege And Work Product Protection, 37 S. Ill. U. L.J. 825 (2013), Ralph Ruebner, Katarina Durcova

UIC Law Open Access Faculty Scholarship

Effective January 1, 2013, two new Illinois Supreme Court rules clarify and limit the waiver of the attorney-client privilege and work product protection rule. Illinois Rule of Evidence 502 ("IRE 502"), which spells out the limitations on waiver, is accompanied by a "clawback provision" in Illinois Supreme Court Rule 201(p) ("Rule 201(p)") that details the procedural steps a disclosing party should take to successfully assert the privilege following an inadvertent discovery disclosure. Additionally, these changes clarify the mandatory duty of the receiving party. IRE 502 was modeled on Federal Rule of Evidence 502 ("FRE 502") and Rule 201(p) was modeled …

Just Because You Can Doesn’T Mean You Should: Reconciling Attorney Conduct In The Context Of Defamation With The New Professionalism, Heather M. Kolinsky

Scholarly Articles

The Florida Bar has recently proposed enforceable professionalism standards. While many states have professionalism codes they remain aspirational and unenforceable. Florida’s move toward enforceable professionalism standards is laudable, but raises concerns about how moving a “step above” the floor of the rules of professional conduct will affect advocacy and practice.

This paper examines how a shift to enforceable professionalism standards may impact absolute immunity. The paper suggests that as other states consider similar standards or simply how to better policy professionalism, perhaps it is time to also consider how discipline is imposed with respect to defamatory statements that are otherwise …

Minding The Court: Enhancing The Decision-Making Process, Pamela Casey, Kevin Burke, Steve Leben

Faculty Works

A compelling and growing body of research from the fields of cognitive psychology and neuroscience provides important insights about how we process information and make decisions. This research has great potential significance for judges, who spend much of their time making decisions of great importance to others. For most judges, this research literature is not part of their judicial education. This article reviews cutting edge research about decision making and discusses its implications for helping judges and those who work with them produce fair processes and just outcomes. It builds on a 2007 American Judges Association paper that encouraged judges …

Trends In Global And Canadian Lawyer Education, Laurel S. Terry

Faculty Scholarly Works

Globalization and technology have changed the practice of law in dramatic ways. This is true not only in the U.S. and Canada, but around the world. Global regulatory trends have begun to emerge as lawyer regulators have had to respond to new developments. In 2012, Australian regulators Steve Mark and Tahlia Gordon and the author, who is a U.S. academic, documented some of these global trends in lawyer regulation. See Laurel S. Terry, Steve Mark, & Tahlia Gordon, Trends and Challenges in Lawyer Regulation: The Impact of Globalization and Technology, 80 Fordham L. Rev. 2661 (2012), https://works.bepress.com/laurel_terry/95/. Their article concluded …

Transnational Legal Practice (International), Laurel S. Terry

Faculty Scholarly Works

This article covers three years of Transnational Legal Practice developments outside of the US. (It is the companion piece to 47 Int'l Law. 499 (2013) which discusses US developments.) This article discusses the approval of an Alternative Business Structure licensing system by the UK Solicitors Regulation Authority and its subsequent issuance of ABS licenses. The second section reviews the emergence of the “Troika” as a new regulatory influence in Europe, citing as an example the joint ABA-CCBE letter to the IMF. (The Troika refers to the International Monetary Fund, the European Central Bank, and the European Commission.) The third section …

Behavioral Legal Ethics, Jean R. Sternlight, Jennifer K. Robbennolt

Scholarly Works

Complaints about lawyers’ ethics are commonplace. While it is surely the case that some attorneys deliberately choose to engage in misconduct, psychological research suggests a more complex story. It is not only “bad apples” who are unethical. Instead, ethical lapses can occur more easily and less intentionally than we might imagine. In this paper, we examine the ethical “blind spots,” slippery slopes, and “ethical fading” that may lead good people to behave badly. We then explore specific aspects of legal practice that can present particularly difficult challenges for lawyers given the nature of behavioral ethics - complex and ambiguous ethical …

What Do Clients Want From Their Lawyers?, Clark D. Cunningham

Faculty Publications By Year

This working paper assembles empirical data from England, Australia and the United States indicating that individual clients do not evaluate their lawyers - as attorneys frequently assume - primarily in terms of the outcomes achieved. Rather, clients place greater weight on the quality of communication with their lawyers and are often disappointed by failure to listen carefully and explain clearly. The paper concludes with suggestive survey data that organizational clients may have similar views about the large firm lawyers that represent them. The author is the director of the Effective Lawyer-Client Communication Project and the National Institute for Teaching Ethics …

Reassessing The Citizens Protection Act: A Good Thing It Passed, And A Good Thing It Failed, Rima Sirota

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The Citizens Protection Act (CPA) of 1998 has always been a lightening rod for criticism, and it remains so today. This article reassesses the CPA’s perceived inadequacies in light of how it has actually affected (or, not affected) federal prosecutors’ involvement in criminal investigations. The article takes issue with the critics and demonstrates that the CPA succeeded where it should have, failed where it should have, and left us—however inadvertently—with a remarkably coherent and consistent approach to regulating federal prosecutors’ involvement in criminal investigations regardless of whether a suspect retains counsel early in the proceedings.

The CPA requires federal prosecutors …

Measuring Justice, Jane H. Aiken, Stephen Wizner

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The research imperative of refining ways to measure justice is important and necessary. Our work as lawyers improves the more we know about our effectiveness and the more our choices are evidence based. Nevertheless, quantifying the work of a lawyer is not easy. How do we ensure that any measure of justice captures outcomes for both trial-based advocacy and non-trial-based advocacy on behalf of clients, including negotiated outcomes? How do we quantify the role lawyers play in listening to our clients, explaining the systems in which they operate, and supporting them through often very difficult times in their lives? How …

Nested Ethics: A Tale Of Two Cultures, Milton C. Regan

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This article suggests that a law firm that desiring to promote ethical behavior by its lawyers needs to complement efforts to establish an “ethical infrastructure” and an “ethical culture” with attention to its broader organizational culture. Specifically, research indicates that the perception that an organization treats its members fairly–their sense of organizational justice--is an important factor in prompting members’ ethical behavior.

Many law firms in the last two or three decades have devoted attention to establishing what has been called an “ethical infrastructure” that reflects appreciation of the importance of organizational policies and procedures in encouraging ethical behavior. Such measures …

Foreword To The Conference: The Law: Business Or Profession? The Continuing Relevance Of Julius Henry Cohen For The Practice Of Law In The Twenty-First Century, Samuel J. Levine

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Creative Destruction And The Legal Services & Legal Education Markets, Laurel Terry

Faculty Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Reflections On Us Policies Regarding Effective Regulation And Discipline And Foreign Lawyer Mobility: Has The Time Come To Talk About The Elephant In The Room, Laurel S. Terry

Faculty Scholarly Works

The ABA has adopted four model policies that address, in one way or another, the issue of foreign lawyer mobility. These policies are the ABA Model Foreign Legal Consultant Rule, which is commonly known as the FLC rule, the ABA Model Rule for Temporary Practice by Foreign Lawyers, which is commonly known as the FIFO rule, ABA Model Rule of Professional Conduct 5.5, which permits foreign lawyers to serve as in-house counsel, and the ABA Model Rule on Pro Hac Vice Admission. All four of the ABA’s foreign lawyer mobility recommendations include a requirement that the mobile foreign lawyer is …

Transnational Legal Practice (United States), Laurel S. Terry

Faculty Scholarly Works

This article covers three years of Transnational Legal Practice developments in the U.S. (It is the companion article to 47 Int’l Lawyer 485 (2013) which discusses transnational legal practice developments outside of the U.S.) This article begins by briefly reviewing the uncertainty about the future of U.S. legal education and legal services. The next section discusses the proposals and changes that emanated from the ABA Commission on Ethics 20/20, which was tasked with evaluating what changes were needed in light of globalization and technology developments. The third section of this article discusses the Uniform Bar Exam and its implications for …

Lawyers In The Shadows: The Transactional Lawyer In A World Of Shadow Banking, Steven L. Schwarcz

Faculty Scholarship

This article examines how the role of transactional lawyers should change in the new world of shadow banking. Although transactional lawyers should consider the potential systemic consequences of their client's actions, their actions should be tempered by their primary duties to the client and by their responsibilities to the l,egal system more broadly.

Lawyering For Groups: The Case Of American Indian Tribal Attorneys, Kristen A. Carpenter, Eli Wald

Publications

Lawyering for groups, broadly defined as the legal representation of a client who is not an individual, is a significant and booming phenomenon. Encompassing the representation of governments, corporations, institutions, peoples, classes, communities, and causes, lawyering for groups is what many, if not most, lawyers do. And yet, the dominant theory of law practice--the Standard Conception, with its principles of zealous advocacy, nonaccountability, and professional role-based morality--and the rules of professional conduct that codify it, continue to be premised on the basic antiquated assumption that the paradigmatic client-attorney relationship is between an individual client and an individual attorney. The result …

Professionalism And The New Normal, Philip J. Weiser

Publications

No abstract provided.