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Unauthorized Legal Practice Prosecutions And Independent Paralegals In Ontario And The United States, John A. Flood, Frederick H. Zemans

Articles & Book Chapters

The issue of unauthorized legal practice involves questions of professionalism and market protection. The legal profession, like other professions, is seen a being particularly successful at excluding others from its area of jurisdiction. Disputes over jurisdiction occur at the edge of this jurisdiction, specifically when certain condition arise. The e conditions are characterized by the "indetermination/ technicality (I/T) ratio", where "I" represents the ideological underpinning of the profession and "T" represents the technical knowledge. "If either the knowledge base or the ideological underpinning deteriorates, the occupation will lose control over its spheres of activity....For an occupation or a profession to …

Dtpa In The Courts: Two Empirical Studies And A Proposal For Change., Nancy Friedman Atlas, Scott J. Atlas, Raymond T. Nimmer

St. Mary's Law Journal

Abstract Forthcoming.

Recognizing An Implied Warranty That Professional Services Will Be Performed In A Good And Workmanlike Manner., Mark L. Kincaid

St. Mary's Law Journal

Although the Court received a deluge of amicus curiae briefs after its initial ruling in Melody Home ushering the Court to reevaluate the consequences of its decision, there is no sound basis for excluding professional services from the implied warranty recognized by the Texas Supreme Court that services will be performed in a good and workmanlike manner. The issue of what is properly considered a “professional” service or what definition is to be applied to distinguish “non-professional” and “professional” services if the latter were to be excluded from the implied warranty. Instead of differentiating between “non-professional” and “professional” services in …

Texas Disciplinary Rules Of Professional Conduct: Additional Liability For Texas Lawyers., Xavier G. Medina, Virginia Coyle

St. Mary's Law Journal

As a result of the enactment of the Texas Disciplinary Rules of Professional Conduct (“Rules”), Texas lawyer no longer practice under guidelines which include aspirational goals and discretionary moral choices. The Rules are mandatory in nature and depict a minimum standard of professional conduct which, if violated, could subject the offending lawyer to disciplinary action. Although the Rules provide a disclaimer stating that they “do not undertake to define standards of civil liability of lawyers for professional conduct,” Texas lawyers fear the Rules will be utilized as an independent basis for liability, or a standard of care for malpractice. The …

The Whole Truth Or Nothing But The Truth - Should Attorneys Who Advertise Be Required To Disclose Prior Disciplinary Actions Taken Against Them., Sara Murray

St. Mary's Law Journal

A state should not require attorneys who advertise to disclose all prior disciplinary actions in their advertisements. Attorney advertising, like other forms of commercial speech, is not immune to state regulation. The American public deserves access to accurate information about legal services, and lawyers have a duty to provide such information. However, attorneys and all other citizens have a constitutional right not to speak. A state must balance the competing interests carefully when the public’s right to know clashes with an individual’s right not to speak. There are several arguments against requiring attorneys to disclose all prior disciplinary actions in …

Court-Appointed Attorneys: Old Problems And New Solutions, H. Patrick Furman

Publications

No abstract provided.

Annual Survey Of Virginia Law: Professional Responsibility, Timothy M. Kaine

University of Richmond Law Review

This year, like many years, has been marked by increasing public concern over legal ethics. Public attention has been drawn to lawyers' participation in scandals such as the misuse of funds by the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the collapse of the savings and loan industry, and numerous ethical breaches by members of Congress.

Teaching Legal Ethics In A Program Of Comprehensive Skills Development, James E. Moliterno

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Professionalism: Rekindled, Reconsidered Or Reformulated?, Nancy J. Moore

Faculty Scholarship

It is increasingly commonplace for bar officials and others to decry what they see as a decline in "professionalism" among lawyers in recent years. For example, in 1984, former Chief Justice Warren Burger gave a speech to an ABA meeting in Las Vegas in which he chastised some members of the profession for taking their freedom to advertise as a "release from all professional restraints," as they use the "same modes of advertising as other commodities from mustard, cosmetics and laxatives to used cars.' 1 Catchy phrases, attractive well-dressed lawyers, and special rates on lossleader items are but some of …

Insuring Rule 11 Sanctions, Cary Coglianese

Michigan Law Review

Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 11 requires courts to sanction attorneys who file frivolous papers. Since 1983, when the rule was amended, attorney sanctions have emerged as an increasingly significant aspect of civil litigation in the United States.

Can these and other attorneys find coverage for sanctions under their existing policies? Should they be allowed to obtain coverage for sanctions at all? This Note addresses these questions and attempts to sketch the landscape surrounding the looming issue of insurance coverage for rule 11 sanctions. To determine whether sanctions can and should be insurable, it is necessary first to understand the …

Teaching Ethics In Civil Procedure Courses, Richard Matasar

Journal of Legal Education

No abstract provided.

Toward Moral Responsibility In Lawyering: Further Thoughts On The Deontological Model Of Legal Ethics, Edward J. Eberle

Law Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Advance Fee Payment Dilemma: Should Payments Be Deposited To The Client Trust Account Or To The General Office Account?, Lester Brickman

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Annual Survey Of Virginia Law: Professional Responsibility, Susan B. Spielberg

University of Richmond Law Review

This year, 1989, may become known as the Ethics Year as accounts of questionable behavior of public, governmental and leading business figures, many of whom are lawyers, proliferate in the media. Questionable ethical behavior leads to the erosion of public confidence in the legal profession and demonstrates the need for increased scrutiny of the conduct of lawyers in both their professional and private capacities.

The Lawyer's Duty To Keep Clients Informed: Establishing A Standard Of Care In Professional Liability Actions, Gary A. Munneke

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This Article will explore the problem of the attorney's duty to provide clients with adequate information to make informed decisions. It will discuss situations in which such a duty is appropriate, and suggest that a cause of action for informed consent must be limited to those fact patterns where courts have established the right of the client to make the decision. The analysis rejects establishment of a broad right of the client to control all aspects of the representation. The Article will first review the history of the development of professional liability law with particular emphasis on the medical profession, …

Law School's Pro Bono Role: A Duty To Require Student Public Service, Frederick J. Martin Iii

Fordham Urban Law Journal

The immense legal needs of the indigent are not being met. Pro bono work is the responsibility of every lawyer, but most lawyers do not do any pro bono work. The author argues that law schools have a responsibility not only to nurture student interest in pro bono work but also to develop students’ abilities to provide legal services to the indigent. The author proposes that law schools require students to participate in programs that provide legal services to the poor, either through a private organization or through a clinical program. The author contends that the latter method would be …

Lawyers And Conscience, Thomas Morawetz

Faculty Articles and Papers

No abstract provided.

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.

Can Shakespeare Make You A Partner., Michael L. Richmond

St. Mary's Law Journal

No abstract provided.

The Corporate Attorney-Client Privilege: A Study Of The Participants, Vincent C. Alexander

Faculty Publications

Empirical research on the practical effects of the attorney-client privilege in the corporate context has been almost nonexistent. This Article seeks to help fill the gap by synthesizing traditional doctrinal analysis with the results of a survey of individuals with first-hand information about the subject: corporate attorneys, corporate management, and federal judges and magistrates. The survey, which consisted of 182 interviews in New York City, produced a broad range of information about some of the assumptions underlying the corporate privilege, the forms and processes of corporate attorney-client communications and the adjudication of privilege claims.

Should A Christian Lawyer Serve The Guilty?, Thomas L. Shaffer

Journal Articles

People who teach or practice law are in some ways like public executioners or the Air Force officers who watch over the buttons that will send nuclear missiles into action: Other people, ordinary people, want to know what we do to overcome what seem to ordinary people to be moral obstacles to doing what we do.

What ordinary people say to lawyers, and what my students say when they first come to law school, when they are still more ordinary people than they are law students, is this: How can lawyers lend their skills and talents to the representation of …

Nonrefundable Retainers: Impermissible Under Fiduciary, Statutory And Contract Law, Lester Brickman, Lawrence A. Cunningham

Articles

Since the New York Court of Appeals banned nonrefundable retainers, numerous other courts have joined in prohibiting this widespread practice of lawyers charging a fee for services in advance and keeping the fee even if the services are not performed. This may reflect increased judicial recognition of the effect of egregious fee practices on the image of the bar and the role such practices play in the declining esteem in which the legal profession is held. Among the more provocative contributors to this ongoing debate, Professor Steven Lubet recently reviewed our work advocating the ban against nonrefundable retainers and posed …

Toward A Uniform System Of Attorney Fee Forfeiture, Nancy L. Sindell

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Role Of Legal Education In Shaping The Profession, Harry T. Edwards

Journal of Legal Education

No abstract provided.

The Noblesse Oblige Tradition In The Practice Of Law, David Luban

Vanderbilt Law Review

In 1905 Louis D. Brandeis delivered a talk entitled The Opportunity in the Law to the Harvard Ethical Society.' It was delivered as a pep talk, what Harvard Law Professor Duncan Kennedy, seventy-six years later, would refer to as "the old address to the troops." Brandeis hoped to rally law students to his vision of the moral possibilities of legal practice-specifically, the elite corporate legal practice into which Brandeis could assume his audience would enter. Brandeis was concerned that elite lawyers were becoming thralls of robber-baron capitalists, that they were ignoring the possibilities of law practice as a kind of …

Teaching Professional Responsibility In Law School, Alvin Esau

Dalhousie Law Journal

After eight years of teaching a three-credit course on The Legal Profession and Professional Responsibility to second- and third-year law students, I am left with a sense of great dissatisfaction with the whole enterprise. So deep is my dissatisfaction that I am questioning whether to continue or move into a different course instead. This paper is an opportunity to take stock of my experience and attempt to map out the causes of my dissatisfaction, and to seek some vision, if possible, of what the course should be about, how to teach it, and why I should bother. To give the …

Learning The Law Of Lawyering, Ronald D. Rotunda

Law Faculty News Articles, Editorials, and Blogs

No abstract provided.

Excessive Fees And Attorney Discipline: The Committee On Legal Ethics V. Tatterson, Cassandra M. Neely

West Virginia Law Review

No abstract provided.

Professional Responsibility, Clark D. Cunningham

Faculty Publications By Year

No abstract provided.

Facilitative Ethics In Divorce Mediation: A Law And Process Approach, Steven H. Hobbs

University of Richmond Law Review

Mediation is becoming a vital part of family legal problem solving and is creating new challenges for the lawyer practicing in the family law setting. The American Bar Association, the Association of Family and Conciliation Courts and others recently have proposed standards of behavior for mediators where none have existed before. States also have attempted to define the appropriate realm of ethical practice for family mediation.