Law Commons^™

Ethical Tax Problems In Tax Practice, L. Paige Marvel, Paula M. Junghans

William & Mary Annual Tax Conference

No abstract provided.

A Critique Of Burrow V. Arce, Charles Silver

William & Mary Environmental Law and Policy Review

No abstract provided.

Lawyers' Ethics And Fiduciary Obligation In The Brave New World Of Aggregative Litigation, Lester Brickman

William & Mary Environmental Law and Policy Review

No abstract provided.

An Empirical Study Of Associate Satisfaction, Law Firm Culture, And The Effects Of Billable Hour Requirements - Part One, Susan Saab Fortney

Faculty Scholarship

This article considers billing practices, the effects of hourly billing pressure, and firm culture as reflected in a survey of associates in Texas law firms. Part I of this article reports the empirical information from the survey. This information includes insight into the toll an increase in billable hour requirements has taken on legal practitioners and the consequent affect on the legal field. Part II discusses what the data means and how it might be used to improve the outlook for attracting and retaining good associates.

Prosecutorial Ethics: Private Decision Making In The Very Public Practice Of Law, Charles E. Maclean

Charles E. MacLean

No abstract provided.

When Hope Unblooms: Chance And Moral Luck In The Fiction Of Thomas Hardy, Jil Larson

Center for the Study of Ethics in Society Papers

Paper presented at the Center for the Study of Ethics in Society at Western Michigan University, September 20, 2001.

Unreasonable Probability Of Error, Jed Handelsman Shugerman

Faculty Scholarship

In Strickland v. Washington, the Supreme Court sought to create a uniform standard to guarantee effective assistance of counsel to criminal defendants, to "ensure a fair trial," and to assure the reliability of "a just result."' Justice O'Connor's majority opinion created a two-pronged test for overturning a trial verdict: deficient performance and resulting prejudice. The Court explicitly established a difficult burden for proving deficient performance,² but set a moderate standard for prejudice as the "reasonable probability that, but for counsel's unprofessional errors, the result of the proceeding would have been different. A reasonable probability is a probability sufficient …

Attorney Fact-Finding, Ethical Decision-Making And The Methodology Of Law, Robert Rubinson

All Faculty Scholarship

This Article explores the significance, challenges, and complexities of attorney fact-finding in ethical decision-making. Almost all discourse about legal ethics, from the pedagogical to the scholarly to the practical, takes facts for granted in order to focus on issues about ethical rules. The factual dimension of ethical decision-making, however, is critical to the decision-making process and can be subjected to rigorous and systematic study. Indeed, it is lawyers in a situation who engage in ethical decision-making, and such a situation entails the assimilation and interpretation of many sources of information. Such a process necessarily includes the motivations and ambivalence of …

Nonlegal Regulation Of The Legal Profession: Social Norms In Professional Communities, W. Bradley Wendel

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

What should be done about lawyers who persist in violating ethical norms that are not embodied in positive disciplinary rules? That question has been a recurrent theme in recent legal ethics scholarship. One response has been to propose, experiment, amend, tinker, draft, comment, and redraft, in an attempt to codify the standard of conduct observed to be flouted widely by the practicing bar. Bar associations and courts are seemingly engaged in a never-ending process of promulgating new codes of professional conduct or rules of procedure under which lawyers may be sanctioned for such conduct as bringing frivolous lawsuits, abusing the …

Now You See It, Now You Don't: Depublication And Nonpublication Of Opinions Raise Motive Questions, Bennett L. Gershman

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

The basis for these comments is a decision last year by the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals in Anastasoff v. United States. The court held that an Eighth Circuit local rule, which authorized nonpublication of opinions and explicitly stated that unpublished opinions were to have no precedential effect, was unconstitutional. The panel, in an opinion by Judge Richard S. Arnold, reasoned that a court rule purporting to confer upon appellate judges an absolute power to decide which decisions would be binding and which would not be binding went well beyond the “judicial power” within the meaning of Article III of …

Lawyer Crimes: Beyond The Law?, Charles W. Wolfram

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Nonlegal Regulation Of The Legal Profession: Social Norms In Professional Communities, W. Bradley Wendel

Vanderbilt Law Review

In this Article, Professor Wendel analyzes the advantages and disadvantages of community-based responses to unethical behavior by lawyers. The limits of formal legal regulation of the legal profession are well known. Additional questions have been raised about the efficacy of motivating lawyers to act ethically merely by giving appropriate instruction. What is left, therefore, is a complex and little-studied, but very real, array of informal sanctions. These sanctions are controlled by individual members of the professional community, not by the court or organized bar, and therefore operate largely without the transparency and procedural regularity of formal legal regimes. The advantage …

In Hell There Will Be Lawyers Without Clients Or Law, Susan P. Koniak, George M. Cohen

Faculty Scholarship

More than twenty years ago, moral philosopher Richard Wasserstrom framed the debate in legal ethics by asking two questions. Does the lawyer's duty to zealously represent the client, constrained only by the bounds of the law, render the lawyer "at best systematically amoral and at worst more than occasionally immoral in ... her dealings with the rest of mankind[?]" And is the lawyer's relationship with the client likewise morally tainted in that it generally entails domination by the lawyer over the client rather than mutual respect? Wasserstrom answered both questions affirmatively. Though these questions have preoccupied legal ethics scholars ever …

Clark Memorandum: Fall 2001, J. Reuben Clark Law Society, J. Reuben Clark Law School

The Clark Memorandum

• The Doctrine of Religious Freedom (W. Cole Durham)
• Practicing Law with the Attributes of Jesus Christ (Elder Earl C. Tingey)
• Civic Virtue (Seth P. Waxman)
• Filling Scott Cameron's Shoes

When Lawyers Break The Law: How The District Of Columbia Court Of Appeals Disciplines Members Of The Bar Who Commit Crimes, Larry Cunningham

University of the District of Columbia Law Review

No abstract provided.

Conference Program

Freedman Institute for the Study of Legal Ethics Conferences

No abstract provided.

Moral Philosophy Meets Social Work, Frederic G. Reamer

Faculty Publications

In recent years, social workers have become increasingly aware of ethical dilemmas in practice. Beginning especially in the mid-to-late 1970s, social work's literature has included a steady stream of reflections on difficult moral choices involving conflicts among professional duties and obligations (Loewnberg and Dolgoff 1996; Congress 1998; Reamer 1998, 1999). To what extent do clients have the right to engage in self-harming behavior without interference? How should social workers allocate scarce or limited resources such as emergency services, shelter beds, funds, and even their own time? Is it ethically permissible for social workers to violate laws and regulations they believe …

Tainted Prosecution Of Tainted Claims: The Law, Economics, And Ethics Of Fighting Medical Fraud Under The Civil False Claims Act, Dayna Bowen Matthew

Indiana Law Journal

No abstract provided.

The Duty Of Confidentiality, Roger C. Cramton

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Hate And The Bar: Is The Hale Case Mccarthyism Redux Or A Victory For Racial Equality?, W. Bradley Wendel

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

The application of the constitutional free expression guarantee to the activities of the organized bar is one of the most important unexplored areas of legal ethics. In this essay I will consider in particular the question of whether an applicant may be denied admission to the bar for involvement with hateful or discriminatory activities. This question reveals the tension between the first amendment principle, established after the agonizing struggles of the McCarthy era, that no one may be denied membership in the bar because of his or her beliefs alone, and the plenary authority of bar associations to make predictive …

Symposium Introduction - Ethics In Settlement Negotiations: Foreward, Patrick Emery Longan

Mercer Law Review

On March 9 and 10, 2001, Mercer University's Walter F. George School of Law and its Mercer Center for Legal Ethics and Professionalism held a Symposium on ethical issues in settlement negotiations. Funding for the Symposium came from a consent order, signed by United States District Judge Hugh Lawson, in which the DuPont Corporation settled claims of litigation misconduct in exchange for a payment of $11 million. Each of the four accredited law schools in Georgia received $2.5 million to endow a faculty chair in ethics and professionalism, and the other $1 million was set aside to endow an annual …

Session Two: Conditional Settlement Agreements

Mercer Law Review

A transcript featuring The Honorable Marvin Aspen, Evett Simmons, Esq., Professor Ronald Ellington, and Professor Bruce Green, Moderator

Symposium Article - The Incompleteness Of The Model Rules And The Development Of Professional Standards, Nathan M. Crystal

Mercer Law Review

Rules and standards of professional conduct are proliferating. In November 2000, the American Bar Association's ("ABA's") Ethics 2000 Commission released its final report recommending changes in the ABA's Model Rules of Professional Conduct. Earlier in the year the American Law Institute ("ALI") issued its long awaited Restatement of the Law Governing Lawyers.

The Model Rules and the Restatement are similar in two respects. Both contain detailed rules and both are comprehensive, covering relationships between lawyers and their clients, the courts, and third parties. Standards prepared by other organizations, however, have taken a narrower approach. Some have focused on particular activities …

Symposium Speech - Those Who Worry About The Ethics Of Negotiation Should Never Be Viewed As Just Another Set Of Service Providers, Lawrence J. Fox

Mercer Law Review

It is an honor to address this distinguished group of lawyers and law students this evening as part of the very first Symposium funded by the duPont Company's generosity by way of Judge Lawson. The issues important themes in the bigger professional responsibility arena, and examining them with this level of care can inform the profession more widely.

It is ironic then that when Professor Pat Longan invited me to give the keynote address, he himself negotiated my appearance in a highly questionable manner. "Would I like to be the keynote speaker at this upcoming Symposium?" Would I? Of course, …

Session Four: Special Issues In Assisted Settlement

Mercer Law Review

No abstract provided.

Session Three: Fairness Issues In Negotiation

Mercer Law Review

No abstract provided.

A Transcript Of The March 10, 2001 Luncheon Speech, Patrick E. Higginbotham

Mercer Law Review

Introduction of Judge Higginbotham by Professor Patrick Longan

Judge Higginbotham comes to us from Dallas. He has had a very distinguished career. He was a United States District Judge in Dallas for seven years and then was appointed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. In addition to his judicial duties, he has served in a number of capacities throughout his career. Most recently he served a four-year term as president of the American Inns of Court Foundation. He has served as the Chairman of the Advisory Committee on Civil Rules. He has done a number …

Session One: Limits On Misleading Conduct

Mercer Law Review

A transcript featuring The Honorable Thomas Zlaket, Wm. Reece Smith, Jr., Esq., Professor Nathan Crystal, and Professor Amy Mashburn, Moderator

Resolving The Mdp Issue: Deciding If The Status Quo Is What's Best For The Client, Julia J. Hall

Mercer Law Review

On the forefront of the current debate surrounding legal ethics is the heated question of whether the legal profession should permit its members to participate in multidisciplinary practices or partnerships ("MDPs") and thereby share fees with nonlawyers. Currently, this conduct is prohibited by the Model Rules of Professional Conduct. This issue clearly has global implications for various professions desiring to partner with attorneys, and those persons with interest in this area have followed the debate closely as viewpoints are researched and expressed in support of one position over another. Nonetheless, the American Bar Association ("ABA") has effectively closed the door …

Lawyer Advertising In The Electronic Age, Ronald D. Rotunda, Louise L. Hill, Tom Spahn, Ted Allen, William Spruill

University of Richmond Law Review Symposium

The April 5, 2001 symposium consisted of an informal roundtable discussion for the presenters from 2:30-4:30 p.m., followed by a public evening program, from 6:00-8:30 p.m., which featured a role-playing portrayal of a mock disciplinary proceeding about a dispute over lawyer advertising.

Participants in the roundtable discussion were: Ronald D. Rotunda, the Albert E. Jenner, Jr. Professor of Law at the University of Illinois College of Law; Louise L. Hill, Professor of Law at the Widener University School of Law; and William Hornsby, Legal Counsel to the American Bar Association, Commission on Responsibility in Client Development.

The Moot Court program …