Legal Ethics and Professional Responsibility Commons^™

Lost In The Weeds Of Pot Law: The Role Of Ethics In The Movement To Legalize Marijuana, Helia Garrido Hull

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Globalization And The Aba Commission On Ethics 20/20: Reflections On Missed Opportunities And The Road Not Taken, Laurel S. Terry

Faculty Scholarly Works

The ABA Commission on Ethics 20/20 was established in order to “perform a thorough review of the ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct and the U.S. system of lawyer regulation in the context of advances in technology and global legal practice developments.” The thesis of this article is that the Commission was much more successful with the “technology” aspect of its work than it was with the globalization aspect of its work. This article offers an explanation for these differing levels of success and identifies an alternative path the Commission might have taken that might have led to greater success …

The Role Of Ethics Audits In Improving Management Systems And Practices: An Empirical Examination Of Management-Based Regulation Of Law Firms, Susan Saab Fortney

Faculty Scholarship

For decades, legal malpractice experts have urged lawyers to implement risk management measures. To assist law firms in doing so, legal malpractice insurers have provided audit services and self-audit materials. Under the Australian regulatory regime, incorporated legal practices are required to complete a self-assessment process and to report on the firm's compliance with ten objectives of sound law practice. Using management-based principles, this Article discusses steps to take to encourage ethics audits "to merge good ethics and good business" in the U.S.

Summary Of Greenberg Traurig, Llp V. Frias Holding Company, 130 Nev. Adv. Op. 67, Tom Stewart

Nevada Supreme Court Summaries

The Court adopted an exception to the common law litigation privilege for legal malpractice and professional negligence actions. A client can pursue malpractice and professional negligence actions against an attorney, and support those actions with communications made in the course of litigation.

Ethics, Advocacy, And The Child Client, Suparna Malempati

Cardozo Public Law, Policy & Ethics Journal

The article argues that lawyers representing children in abuse and neglect proceedings should act as traditional advocates, respecting the child's autonomy and adhering to ethical standards, rather than adopting a paternalistic role akin to a guardian ad litem. This approach ensures that children's voices are heard and their legal rights are protected.

Fraud And Abuse In Mesothelioma Litigation, Lester Brickman

Articles

No abstract provided.

An Analysis Of Death Penalty Decisions From The October 2006 Supreme Court Term, Richard Klein

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Clark Memorandum: Spring 2014, J. Reuben Clark Law School, Byu Law School Alumni Association, J. Reuben Clark Law Society

The Clark Memorandum

• Guardians of the Law (Sheila McCleve)
• Revisiting Humility (Brett G. Scharffs)
• Defending Innocence (Gregory W. Moeller)
• Martin Luther King and the Good Samaritan (Goodwin Liu)
• Oliver Cowdery (Jeffrey N. Walker)

Lawyering To The Lowest Common Denominator: "Strickland's" Potential For Incorporating Underfunded Norms Into Legal Doctrine, Lauren Sudeall

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

This symposium article explores how ineffective assistance of counsel doctrine, by its design, may incorporate and exacerbate the failings of an underfunded indigent defense system. Specifically, it highlights two aspects of the Strickland v. Washington standard for ineffective assistance of counsel: first, its inability to effectively address issues of underfunding through its two-prong test of deficient performance and prejudice; and, second, the way in which its eschewal of specific substantive guidelines for attorney performance in favor of reliance on "prevailing professional norms" may allow legal doctrine to be influenced by anemic, localized practice norms resulting from a lack of resources. …

New Technology And The Practice Of Law: Gear For Your Office And The Road, Maureen Cahill, Jason Tubinis

Continuing Legal Education Presentations

Provides guidance to legal professionals about ways that technology can make their practices more efficient, secure, and mobile. Includes discussion of hardware gadgets, helpful websites, and tips for comparing legal databases., as well as ethics considerations of electronic files.

Can We Keep A Secret?: The Attorney-Client Privilege And Work-Product Doctrine In The Internal Law-Firm Setting-St. Simons Waterfront, Llc V. Hunter, Maclean, Exley & Dunn, Pc., Nicholas J. Garcia

Mercer Law Review

Recognized at common law, the attorney-client privilege is often invoked for the purpose of fostering honest and fruitful communication between attorneys and their clients. In St. Simons Waterfront, LLC v. Hunter, Maclean, Exley & Dunn, P C., the Georgia Supreme Court ruled on an issue regarding the reach of this privilege that had never before been addressed in Georgia courts. St. Simons Waterfront, LLC (SSW) asked the court to determine the applicability of the attorney-client privilege and work-product doctrine to communication between attorneys at Hunter, Maclean, Exley & Dunn, P.C. (Hunter Maclean) and its in-house general counsel. The court …

Why U.S. Jurisdictions Should Adopt ‘Regulatory Objectives’ For The Legal Profession The Legal Profession, Laurel Terry

Faculty Scholarly Works

This link goes to the Professor Terry’s Lichtenstein lecture, which was on the topic of her recent article about regulatory objectives for the legal profession. For Professor Terry’s scholarship on this topic, see her long article here, a short article here, and the “regulatory objectives” research area section on her personal webpage. As Professor Terry noted in her lecture, t “regulatory objectives movement” can be traced to the adoption of the 2007 UK Legal Services Act. Section 1 of that Act, which was hotly debated, set forth the regulatory objectives that the Act—and its implementation—should achieve. The UK Act was …

Ethics 20/20 Successfully Achieved Its Mission: It "Protected, Preserved, And Maintained", James E. Moliterno

Scholarly Articles

The legal profession tends to look inward and backward when faced with crisis and uncertainty. The legal profession could make greater advances by looking outward and forward to find in society and culture the causes of and connections with the legal profession’s crises. Doing so would allow the profession to grow with society, solve problems with rather than against the flow of society, and be more attuned to the society the profession claims to serve.

The Ethical Implications Of Cloud Computing For Lawyers, 31 J. Marshall J. Info. Tech. & Privacy L. 71 (2014), Stuart Pardau, Blake Edwards

UIC John Marshall Journal of Information Technology & Privacy Law

This paper aims to isolate the pertinent ethical issues of cloud computing and chart a sensible path forward for lawyers. Part II briefly introduces the concept of cloud computing. Part III discusses the lawyer‟s duties of confidentiality, of competence, to protect client property, and to oversee non-lawyers who are providing assistance. Part III also examines the application of these duties by the various state bar associations to the problem of cloud computing. Part IV looks at sample terms of use of some of the more popular vendors. Part V suggests that securing informed consent, employing specialty cloud providers, and purchasing …

The First Thing We Do, Jorge R. Roig

Scholarly Works

There is currently a concerted effort to dumb down America. In the midst of this, the American Bar Association’s Council of the Section on Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar recently agreed to propose that tenure for law professors be eliminated as a requirement for accreditation of law schools. This article analyzes the arguments for and against tenure in legal academia, and concludes that the main proposed justifications for eliminating tenure are highly questionable, at best. A lawyer is more than a legal technocrat. Lawyers are policy makers and public defenders. They are prosecutors and activists. And the development …

Constitutional Law—Unauthorized Practice Of Law: Driving Legal Business Without A License, Legalzoom, Inc., And Campbell V. Asbury Automotive, Inc., 2011 Ark. 157, 381 S.W.3d 21., Pierce G. Hunter

University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review

No abstract provided.

Positivist Legal Ethics Theory And The Law Governing Lawyers: A Few Puzzles Worth Solving, Amy Salyzyn

Hofstra Law Review

Debates about the proper boundaries of a lawyer’s role are far from new. A fresh spin on this old debate, however, has emerged with the "positivist turn" in legal ethics theory. While in legal theory scholarship the label "positivism" carries various nuances and controversies, its use in the legal ethics context is, as a general matter, more straightforward and uniform. Broadly speaking, positivist accounts of legal ethics share a general view that the law owes its normative content to its ability to solve coordination problems and settle moral controversies. This view of the law, in turn, informs a particular view …

The Cure For Young Prosecutors' Syndrome, Ronald F. Wright, Kay L. Levine

Faculty Articles

Although legal scholars treat prosecutors like interchangeable parts, we argue—based on interviews and surveys of over 200 state prosecutors in eight offices—that scholars should be alert to the differences among them, because new prosecutors experience their professional role differently than their veteran colleagues do. This divergence happens because, as new prosecutors gain experience, their professional identities shift—they become more balanced over time. This Article explores the prosecutor’s professional transformation and the possible catalysts for that change.

When experienced prosecutors describe their career trajectories, they regret the highly adversarial posture they adopted earlier in their careers. While the constant quest for …

Tax Advisors And Conflicted Citizens, Milton C. Regan

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Thousands of lawyers are involved every day in advising clients outside of litigation. These lawyers counsel clients on how they can benefit from or avoid violating statutes, regulations, and other sources of law. How should we think about the obligations of the lawyer in this setting? This article argues that we should eschew a single prescriptive model of the advisor in favor of a pluralistic conception that bases responsibilities on the salient factors of the context in which the advisor operates.

The model of the advocate that suggests that the lawyer take a relatively aggressive approach to interpreting the legal …

Friends Of Justice: Does Social Media Impact The Public Perception Of The Justice System?, Nicola A. Boothe-Perry

Journal Publications

Lawyers have long been recognized as being necessary in the effective functioning of an ordered society in roles as both officers of the court and, more broadly, as officers of the system of justice. In 2014, the ABA Task Force on the Future of Legal Education report noted that "[s]ociety has a deep interest in the competence of lawyers, in their availability to serve society and clients, in the broad public role they can play, and in their professional values." Values such as those noted in the Model Rules of Professional Conduct (advisor, counselor, and advocate) are instrumental in the …

The Irs Under Siege, Tanina Rostain, Milton C. Regan

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This is Chapter 1 of Confidence Games (MIT, 2014).

Confidence Games provides an account of the wave of tax shelters that occurred at the turn of the twenty-first century. During this period, some of America’s most prominent law and accounting firms created and marketed products that enabled the very rich—including newly minted dot-com millionaires—to avoid paying their share of taxes by claiming benefits not recognized by law. These abusive tax shelters bore names like BOSS, BLIPS, and COBRA and were developed by such prestigious firms as KPMG, Ernst & Young, BDO Seidman, the now defunct Jenkens & Gilchrist and Brown …

“Doomed Social Engineering?” Ethics And Professionalism Related To Sexual Orientation: The Florida Experience, Robert W. Lee

Barry Law Review

No abstract provided.

Rethinking The Character And Fitness Inquiry, Leslie Levin

Faculty Articles and Papers

The bar’s character and fitness inquiry seeks to protect the public. As part of this inquiry, bar applicants are required to produce detailed information about their past histories. The rationale for this inquiry is that this information can be used to identify who will subsequently become a problematic lawyer. Bar applicants bear the burden of providing their “good” character even though there is little evidence that past conduct predicts who will become a problematic lawyer. This article looks at psychological and other research that attempt to identify factors that might predict future misconduct in the work place. It also reports …

Residential Schools Litigation And The Legal Profession, Trevor C. W. Farrow

All Papers

The first purpose of this article is to examine some of the specific, problematic ways in which the adversarial process has handled the residential schools litigation. The second purpose, in the context of that litigation, is to examine whether the legal profession’s highly adversarial approach to survivors, their families and their claims has been consistent with the core values of the legal profession, and if so, whether those core values continue to be sustainable? What the residential schools legacy affords the legal profession is an opportunity to reflect not just on how it is handling this tragic legacy, but how …

Lawyers Beware: You Are What You Post - The Case For Integrating Cultural Competence, Legal Ethics, And Social Media, Jan L. Jacobowitz

Articles

No abstract provided.

Conceptions Of Agency In Social Movement Scholarship: Mack On African American Civil Rights Lawyers [Comments], Susan Carle

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

This essay examines the theory of individual agency that propels the central thesis in Kenneth Mack's Representing the Race: The Creation of the Civil Rights Lawyer (2012)-namely, that an important yet understudied means by which African American civil rights lawyers changed conceptions of race through their work was through their very performance of the professional role of lawyer. Mack shows that this performance was inevitably fraught with tension and contradiction because African American lawyers were called upon to act both as exemplary representatives of their race and as performers of a professional role that traditionally had been reserved for whites …

What It Means To Be A Lawyer In These Uncertain Times: Some Thoughts On Ethical Participation In The Legal Education Industry, Susan Carle

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

Discusses legal employment and salary and how legal education can address the current market.

Profit For Costs, Morris A. Ratner, William B. Rubenstein

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Law Firm Internships And The Making Of Future Lawyers: An Empirical Study In Singapore, Seow Hon Tan

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

This article examines the findings of an empirical study of law students from the Singapore Management University on their internship experiences at private law firms. As internships are frequently undertaken by law students, it is necessary for stakeholders to understand their impact on the values and ideals of law students in relation to the law and legal practice. This article seeks to increase the consciousness of law school educators, lawyers, and the professional bar about how law firm internships are contributing to the making of future lawyers, so as to facilitate the reflection by these parties as to their roles …

Are Clinics A Magic Bullet?, Deborah J. Cantrell

Publications

In the current conversation about reforming legal education, one of the constant refrains is that law schools must graduate students who are "practice ready." Commentators go on to argue that for law schools to produce "practice ready" students, they must expand how they offer experiential learning. One potential way to do that is to expand clinical legal education programs. I worry that law schools (and others) are envisioning clinical legal education as a magic bullet that will solve all of the ills and imbalances present in current legal education. In this article, I demonstrate the unhelpfulness of the phrase "practice …