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Full-Text Articles in Law
Attorney-Client Confidentiality: A Critical Analysis, William H. Simon
Attorney-Client Confidentiality: A Critical Analysis, William H. Simon
Faculty Scholarship
Attorney-client confidentiality doctrine is distinguished by its expansiveness and its rigid or categorical form. This brief essay argues that the rationales for these features are unpersuasive. It compares the “strong confidentiality” of current doctrine to a hypothetical narrower and more flexible “moderate confidentiality” and concludes that moderate confidentiality is more plausible. It is unlikely that current doctrine yields benefits that justify its costs.
Financial Rewards For Whistleblowing Lawyers, Nancy J. Moore, Kathleen Clark
Financial Rewards For Whistleblowing Lawyers, Nancy J. Moore, Kathleen Clark
Faculty Scholarship
The federal government relies increasingly on whistleblowers to ferret out fraud, and has awarded whistleblowers over $4 billion under the False Claims Act and the Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform and Consumer Protection Act. May lawyers ethically seek whistleblower rewards under these federal statutes? A handful of lawyers have tried to do so as FCA qui tam relators. They have not yet succeeded, but several court decisions suggest that they might be able to do so under confidentiality exceptions to state ethics law, which several courts have held are not preempted by the FCA. No lawyer has been publicly identified as …
Third-Party Funding In International Arbitration: The Icca Queen-Mary Task Force, William W. Park, Catherine A. Rogers
Third-Party Funding In International Arbitration: The Icca Queen-Mary Task Force, William W. Park, Catherine A. Rogers
Faculty Scholarship
Third-party funding raises a host of ethical and procedural issues for international arbitration, perhaps most notably in connection with arbitrator comportment. The need for sustained study of these concerns prompted establishment of a Task Force on Third-Party Funding in International Arbitration, convened by the International Council for Commercial Arbitration (ICCA) along with Queen Mary College at the University of London. The Task Force, comprised of stakeholders from a range of viewpoints and backgrounds, will assess both real and perceived concerns that this relatively new practice raises, as well as what might be done, and why. This article outlines the Task …
Musings On Mediation, Kleenex, And (Smudged) White Hats, Nancy A. Welsh
Musings On Mediation, Kleenex, And (Smudged) White Hats, Nancy A. Welsh
Faculty Scholarship
This Essay speculates on the global future of mediation. It anticipates that mediation’s popularity will continue to grow both in the U.S. and abroad particularly as courts continue to encourage and institutionalize the process. Meanwhile, the Essay acknowledges the existence and continuing development of a relatively small cadre of elite lawyers and retired judges who serve as private mediators in large, complex matters.
The Essay also raises concerns, though, regarding the current lack of clarity in the goals and procedural characteristics that define mediation. The Essay asserts that such lack of clarity invites abuse of the mediation privilege and exclusionary …
Attorney-Client Privilege, Ethical Rules, And The Impaired Criminal Defendant, The , James A. Cohen
Attorney-Client Privilege, Ethical Rules, And The Impaired Criminal Defendant, The , James A. Cohen
Faculty Scholarship
Attorneys who represent possibly incompetent defendants charged with criminal conduct face difficult ethical issues, implicating professional duties of loyalty, zealous representation, and confidentiality-as an ethical question and as a matter of the law of evidence. The principles of agency underlying the attorney-client relationship are also implicated when the defendant's capacity is in doubt. In the ordinary criminal case, the client has at least implicitly authorized his lawyer's conduct. But if the defendant is impaired, the client may not have the mental capacity to authorize the attorney's actions. Defense counsel representing the possibly incompetent criminal defendant will often be the only …