Legal Ethics and Professional Responsibility Commons^™

The Word Is "Humility": Why The Supreme Court Needed To Adopt A Code Of Judicial Ethics, Laurie L. Levenson

Pepperdine Law Review

The Supreme Court is one of our most precious institutions. However, for the last few years, American confidence in the Court has dropped to a new low. Less than 40% of Americans have confidence in the Court and its decisions. Recent revelations regarding luxury trips, gifts, and exclusive access for certain individuals to the Justices have raised questions about whether the Justices understand their basic ethical duties and can act in a fair and impartial manner. As commentators have noted, the Supreme Court stood as the only court in America that was not governed by an ethical code. The question …

Foreword, Deborah W. Denno, Erica Valencia-Graham

Fordham Law Review

This Foreword overviews an unprecedented Symposium on these wide ranging topics titled The New AI: The Legal and Ethical Implications of ChatGPT and Other Emerging Technologies. Hosted by the Fordham Law Review and cosponsored by Fordham University School of Law’s Neuroscience and Law Center on November 3, 2023, the Symposium brought together attorneys, judges, professors, and scientists to explore the opportunities and risks presented by AI, especially GenAI like ChatGPT. The discussion raised complex questions concerning AI sentience and personal privacy, as well as the future of legal ethics, education, and employment. Although the AI industry uniformly predicts ever more …

Toward An Ethical Human-Computer Division Of Labor In Law Practice, Abdi Aidid

Fordham Law Review

In this Essay, I explain that responsible and ethical use of AI in law practice requires reconceptualizing the lawyer’s professional relationship to technology. The current commercial-industrial relationship is based on a stylized model of technology as mechanical application, not calibrated to emergent AI-enabled technologies. Put differently, lawyers cannot interact with AI-enabled technologies the way that they traditionally interact with, say, word processors. For AI-enabled technologies, I explain that a “division of labor” framework is more fruitful; like horizontal professional relationships between peers or vertical ones in professional hierarchies, lawyers ought to interact with sophisticated technologies through arrangements that optimize for …

Of Another Mind: Ai And The Attachment Of Human Ethical Obligations, Katherine B. Forrest

Fordham Law Review

We are entering a new world. A world in which we humans will be confronted with our intellectual limitations as we watch the evolution of artificial intelligence (AI) that we have created meet and exceed our capabilities. I have a few predictions about this—based first on how technology changes occur, with a layer of how human nature reacts to those changes.

My first prediction is that we may not initially recognize AI’s actual capabilities. We will find ways of describing what AI can do as somehow mimicry—the advances of a stochastic parrot, perhaps; we will not want to recognize our …

The Legal Imitation Game: Generative Ai’S Incompatibility With Clinical Legal Education, Jake Karr, Jason Schultz

Fordham Law Review

In this Essay, we briefly describe key aspects of [generative artificial intelligence] that are particularly relevant to, and raise particular risks for, its potential use by lawyers and law students. We then identify three foundational goals of clinical legal education that provide useful frameworks for evaluating technological tools like GenAI: (1) practice readiness, (2) justice readiness, and (3) client-centered lawyering. First is “practice readiness,” which is about ensuring that students have the baseline abilities, knowledge, and skills to practice law upon graduation. Second is “justice readiness,” a concept proposed by Professor Jane Aiken, which is about teaching law students to …

Burden Of The Bargain: Ineffective Assistance Of Counsel Claims In The Absence Of A Plea Offer, Sriram H. Ramesh

Fordham Law Review

The modern criminal justice system in the United States is a “system of pleas.” Plea bargains have largely supplanted trials as the primary method of resolving criminal proceedings in this country. Acknowledging their prevalence, the U.S. Supreme Court has held that the Sixth Amendment right to effective assistance of counsel extends to the plea-bargaining process. Thus, defendants may bring ineffective assistance of counsel (IAC) claims for alleged ineffectiveness during the plea-bargaining phase.

In two companion cases, Missouri v. Frye and Lafler v. Cooper, the Court held that its two-pronged test for IAC, laid out in Strickland v. Washington, …

Use Of Force In Policing: Do Female Police Officers Use Unjustifiable Force As Often As Male Officers?, Carma Dobson

Theses

Use of force (UOF) is a common practice in policing. My study focuses on the disposition of the use of unjustifiable force in policing. Utilization of pre-existing data with 5,771 use of force incidents from the New Orleans, Louisiana police department in the years of 2016-2021 produces an answer to the research question: Do female police officers use unjustifiable force as often as male officers? The chi-square test of independence results in my study indicates that there is no statistical difference between males and females.

Foreword: The Legal Profession And Social Change, Atinuke O. Adediran, Bruce A. Green

Fordham Law Review

Fordham University School of Law’s Stein Center for Law and Ethics has collaborated with the Fordham Law Review every year since the late 1990s to encourage, collect, and publish scholarly writings on different aspects of the legal profession, including its norms, regulation, organization, history, and development—that is, on themes relating to what law schools loosely call “legal ethics.” The legal profession is an important subject of study for legal scholars, among others. Although one U.S. Supreme Court Justice, himself a former law professor, airily derided legal ethics as the “least analytically rigorous . . . of law-school subjects,” we dispute …

Should State Trial Courts Become Laboratories Of Upl Reform?, Bruce A. Green

Fordham Law Review

There is a growing “access to justice” movement that is principally driven by lawyers and judges. It has multiple objectives. One such objective is to make state court proceedings fairer, more reliable, and more accessible. This is important because state courts have a significant impact on peoples’ lives. They are where family members lose custody of children, where property owners obtain permission to evict tenants, where creditors are empowered to repossess people’s cars or garnish their wages, and (in some jurisdictions) where judges send people to jail to compel them to pay judgments or fees that they cannot afford to …

Regulating The Public Defender Identity, Irene Oritseweyinmi Joe

Fordham Law Review

The public defender institution has trouble meeting its mission. This is partly because, despite the specific and clear purpose of representing indigent defendants in criminal proceedings, public defender offices rely on various centering principles to meet this objective. The institution falters if it chooses a centering principle that unwittingly complicates its ability to meet the institution’s central mission. For public defender leaders tasked with developing and maintaining an institutional identity for a particular office, neither legal nor professional regulations supply the type of considerations that guarantee that an adopted identity will comply with core institutional responsibilities. This project seeks to …

Judging The Judiciary, Amanda B. Hurst

Georgia State University Law Review

Judicial legitimacy not only depends on judges maintaining the high ethical standards imposed on them but also on the public believing judges will be held accountable when they break the rules. However, judges are often viewed as “getting away with it.” This Article focuses on how to improve this problematic perception of state judicial discipline systems (JDSs). Part of the answer is more exposure, including a social media presence, for judicial discipline commissions (JDCs), the bodies in each state responsible for resolving misconduct complaints and recommending or imposing sanctions, because the public and media have a similar flawed understanding of …

Interpreting Ethics Rules, Samuel J. Levine

Pepperdine Law Review

This Article explores the interpretation of ethics rules through the prism of two rules that have been the subject of ongoing controversy and contention: Rule 4.2, the “no-contact” rule, which prohibits a lawyer from communicating with a represented client absent the consent of that client’s lawyer, and Rule 8.4(g), which prohibits various forms of discrimination and harassment. Each of these rules provides a model for a wider examination of different interpretive approaches to ethics rules, grounded in different attitudes toward the features and functions of ethics codes. Specifically, the debate revolving around Rule 4.2 illustrates competing approaches to interpreting a …

Gray Areas In Green Claims: Why Greenwashing Regulation Needs An Overhaul, Valerie J. Peterson

Villanova Environmental Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Examining The Examiner: An Amicus Brief On Conflicts Between Forensic Technology And Indigenous Religious Freedoms In Favor Of Virtual Autopsies, Peyton James

The Journal of Purdue Undergraduate Research

No abstract provided.

Navigating The Conundrum Of Mandatory Reporting Under The Pocso Act: Implications For Medical Professionals, Nanditta Batra

Articles

To address the under reporting of sexual offences against children, the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, 2012, makes reporting of such offences mandatory. The duty to report such offences has been extended to healthcare professionals. The inclusion of healthcare professionals within mandatory reporting, however, strikes at the very foundation of the doctor-patient relationship based on trust and confidentiality and conflicts with the patient confidentiality safeguards of the Mental Healthcare Act, 2017. It also has unintended public health consequences, such as denial of medical termination of pregnancy due to fear of prosecution under POCSO. An urgent reassessment of …

Revised Aba Standard 303: Curricular, Pedagogical, And Substantive Questions, Steven W. Bender

Seattle University Law Review SUpra

ABA accreditation standards now require law schools to provide education and training on racism, bias, and cross-cultural competence. This seemingly straightforward mandate raises numerous questions as schools plan for and implement compliance. Here, I articulate and approach these compliance questions using insights drawn from critical theory—which supplies helpful guidance for responses and ultimately antiracism legal education that is more than minimalist. Armed with critical insights, lawyers are better equipped to contribute to the struggle to eradicate systemic social ills in law and society.

Cyber Security: A Lawyer’S Ethical Duty, Meagan Folmar

St. Mary's Journal on Legal Malpractice & Ethics

No abstract provided.

“Zealous” Professional Ethics: The Transcendence Of Natural Law, Legal Positivism, And The Ethical Stage In The U.S. Legal Ethics System And The Moral Dilemma That Surround Zealous Representation, Sudarsanan Sivakumar, Marshall Maina

St. Mary's Journal on Legal Malpractice & Ethics

The zealous pursuit of law has its own ideals and dogma that sets it apart from the other rules in the Model Rules of Professional Conduct. Decades after many enactments and amendments, there still exists many debates considering its operation as to whether an attorney owes a duty toward society over the representation of the client. This is a Delphi method that has made even the best seasoned ‘Justiciar’ and ‘Legislator’ unable to find the proper guidelines to implement upon the Legal Superstructure. The Model Rules of Professional Conduct attempt to clear the fog around the existing principle of Zealous …

The Ethical Lawyer: Beyond The Rules, Nick Badgerow

St. Mary's Journal on Legal Malpractice & Ethics

Does being a lawyer mean more than the mere pursuit of a client’s cause and resulting (hoped for) financial success and professional standing, while avoiding discipline? This article invites a consideration of what it means to be a true “professional” in the practice of law. First, the article explores the definition of the term “professional,” and proceeds to examine the obligations undertaken by lawyers (a) in their oath of admission, and (b) in codes of professional conduct. However, the author posits, should not the true professional aspire to more than the mere compliance with these minimum standards? In answer, the …

Artificial Intelligence And Legal Malpractice Liability, Vincent R. Johnson

St. Mary's Journal on Legal Malpractice & Ethics

No abstract provided.