Law Commons^™

The Market For Bad Legal Advice: Academic Professional Responsibility Consulting As An Example, William H. Simon

Faculty Scholarship

Clients demand bad legal advice when legal advice can favorably influence third-party conduct or attitudes even when it is wrong. Lawyers supply bad legal advice most readily when they are substantially immunized from accountability to the people it is intended to influence. Both demand and supply conditions for a flourishing market are in place in several quarters of the legal system. The resulting practices, however, are in tension with basic professional and academic values. I demonstrate these tensions through critiques of the work of academic professional responsibility consultants in such matters as Enron, Lincoln Savings & Loan, and a heretofore …

Transparency Is The Solution, Not The Problem: A Reply To Bruce Green, William H. Simon

Faculty Scholarship

I fear that the diffuse and ad hominem tendencies of Bruce Green's reply will distract attention from the core issues I sought to discuss.

First, I argued that issues of professional and academic integrity and accountability are raised when lawyers give advice with certain third-party effects under conditions of partial or complete secrecy. I proposed a variety of soft norms, including especially a presumptive duty of publicity.

Second, I criticized novel aggregate litigation arrangements applied by Leeds, Morelli & Brown (LM&B) in a series of campaigns involving many hundreds of clients, and I criticized the opinions of academic experts, including …