Law Commons^™

The Entity Attorney-Client Privilege Meets The Twenty-First Century: Rethinking Functional Equivalent Analysis In The Time Of A Nonemployee Workforce., Grace M. Giesel

Faculty Scholarship

Courts have struggled with whether an entity’s attorney-client privilege can protect communications between the entity’s lawyer and a nonemployee who has information the entity’s lawyer needs to best advise the entity. The nonemployee might be a former employee. But increasingly in recent times, the nonemployee is an individual who was never an entity employee. Corporations and other entities have incorporated nonemployees in their economic enterprises in all sorts of roles—roles employees may have held in the past. Many courts have accepted that the privilege can apply to communications involving former employees.

When faced with nonemployees who are not former employees, …

Client Responsibility For Lawyer Conduct: Examining The Agency Nature Of The Lawyer-Client Relationship., Grace M. Giesel

Faculty Scholarship

In the 1962 decision of Link v. Wabash Railroad Co., the United States Supreme Court reviewed a district court's sua sponte dismissal of a diversity negligence action. Six years after the plaintiff filed the matter, the district court scheduled a pretrial conference and gave counsel two weeks notice of the scheduled conference. On the day of the conference, plaintiffs counsel called the court to say that he would be unable to attend the conference, giving the impolitic reason that he was busy preparing some documents for the state supreme court. The attorney did not attend the conference, and the district …

Specifying Grounds For Judicial Disqualification In Federal Courts., Leslie W. Abramson

Faculty Scholarship

One essential component of equal justice under the law is a neutral and detached judge to preside over the court proceedings. Public confidence in the legal system is maintained when a judge has no interest in the parties, attorneys or subject matter of the litigation. Sua sponte or by motion of a party, a federal judge is subject to disqualification for conflicts of interest on both constitutional and statutory grounds