Legal Ethics and Professional Responsibility Commons^™

Corporate 'Miranda' Warnings, Peter A. Joy, Kevin C. Mcmunigal

Faculty Publications

Administrative agencies and prosecutors have adopted formal and informal measures to push corporations to establish compliance programs, to disclose wrongdoing voluntarily, and to cooperate with government investigations, creating what some commentators refer to as a culture of cooperation. Key to internal investigations are employee interviews by counsel.

Employees, especially senior employees, may assume that the lawyers representing their organizational employers represent them as well in matters relating to their work. To avoid this misunderstanding, both in-house and outside counsel now use “corporate Miranda warnings” or “Upjohn warnings.” In law enforcement interrogation, the Miranda warning is an antidote to the coercive …

Opposition To Clinics Tests Attorney-Client Privilege; Students Working On Pro Bono Cases Leave Schools Vulnerable To Confidentiality Challenges, Patrick C. Brayer

Faculty Works

This National Law Journal article draws attention to past attempts by government and private parties to pierce the protections of the attorney client relationship, specifically confidentiality, when it comes to the representation of clients by law school clinics. Several law school clinics and innocence projects have defended themselves against actions by prosecuting attorney offices and opposing parties who have attempted to obtain information that is traditionally protected by state and federal confidentiality rules. Law school clinics, public interest organizations, innocence projects, government agencies and Public Defender organizations can better protect themselves from future attempts by opposing parties to invade the …

A Critical Survey Of The Law, Ethics, And Economics Of Attorney Contingent Fee Arrangements, Adam Shajnfeld

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Sacrificial Yoo: Accounting For Torture In The Opr Report, David Cole

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

When the Justice Department finally released the report of its Office of Professional Responsibility on the “torture memos,” recommending that the initial torture memo’s authors, John Yoo and Jay Bybee, be referred for bar discipline, John Yoo declared victory in op-eds in the Wall Street Journal and Philadelphia Inquirer. The report itself concluded that Yoo and Bybee had acted unethically, and quoted many of Yoo’s successors in office as condemning the memos as, among other things “slovenly,” “riddled with error,” and “insane.” But Yoo claimed victory because Associate Deputy Attorney General David Margolis vetoed its recommendation that he be referred …

Lawyers In Character And Lawyers In Role, Katherine R. Kruse

Nevada Law Journal

This essay explores the possibilities that Leonard Riskin's call for the development of the trait of mindfulness offers for the discussion of lawyers' roles and lawyers' characters in legal ethics. First, the article explains three ways that the problems associated with legal professionalism have been framed within legal ethics, and critique the underlying assumptions that animate the dominant framing of the problems of professionalism in legal ethics. Next, it expounds the work of the two most prominent legal ethicists who have proposed the development of distinctively lawyerly character traits: Anthony Kronman's call for the revival of a “lawyer-statesman” ideal in …

Deliberately Defrauding Investors: The Scope Of Liability Comment., Andrew R. Simank

St. Mary's Law Journal

Since the Enron debacle, shareholders have increasingly filed suit in state and federal courts to recoup financial losses resulting from fraudulent representations made by failing corporations. These shareholders have advanced common law misrepresentation claims against publicly traded companies for alleged fraudulent U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filings. Originally, the scope of liability for common law fraud was very narrow. This scope was later broadened in an attempt to provide protection to individuals commonly victimized by fraudulent behavior. Texas courts have gone to great lengths to ensure the “expectation of influencing conduct” requirement for common law fraud requires more than …

Technical Problem: How City Of Dallas V. Dallas Morning News, Lp Exposed A Major Loophole In The Texas Public Information Act Comment., Alexander J. Yoakum

St. Mary's Law Journal

The Texas Public Information Act (TPIA) grants everyone a statutory right to access records of a governmental body unless disclosure would violate the law. Generally, TPIA is construed broadly to favor disclosure, but the rise of modern technology like email and text messaging reveals how dated TPIA truly is. According to the recent City of Dallas v. Dallas Morning News, LP, a governmental body is not required to release any business-related electronic communications sent via personal devices. This means governmental employees can conduct official business via personal email or cell phone without being subject to disclosure provisions, unless the requester …

Portraits Of Resistance: Lawyer Responses To Unjust Proceedings, Alexandra Lahav

Faculty Articles and Papers

This Article considers a question rarely addressed: what is the role of the lawyer in a manifestly unjust procedural regime? Many excellent studies have considered the role of the judge in unjust regimes, but the lawyer’s role has been largely ignored. This Article draws on two case studies: that of lawyers representing civil rights leaders during protests in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963 and that of lawyers representing detainees facing military commission proceedings in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. These portraits illuminate the role of the lawyer in a procedurally unjust tribunal operating within a larger liberal legal regime such as our own. …

Navigating Tricky Ethical Shoals In Environmental Law: Parameters Of Counseling And Managing Clients, Kim Diana Connolly

Journal Articles

This article explores some of the ethical situations that environmental and natural resource lawyers can encounter when counseling clients. It begins by exploring the Model Rule of Professional Conduct (MRPC) 2.1, regarding counsel’s role as “advisor,” which provides that appropriate client counseling refers not only to law, but also to moral, economic, social, and political factors, when making decisions. It also explores the environmental lawyer’s ability to withdraw from representation pursuant to MRPC 1.16. It places the obligations and options under these rules and other mandates in the environmental and natural resource context, and encourages attorneys practicing in the area …

Judicial Disqualification: An Analysis Of Federal Law, Second Edition, Charles G. Geyh

Books & Book Chapters by Maurer Faculty

Judicial Disqualification: An Analysis of Federal Law (second edition) outlines the statutory framework of federal judicial disqualification law under the statutes, 28 U.S.C. §§ 455, 144, 47, and 2106. The monograph substantially revises and expands on the first edition, and analyzes the case law, with a focus both on substantive disqualification standards and procedural requirements. It features a revised organizational structure and includes new material, as well as updated cases.

You Do Have To Keep Your Promises: A Disgorgement Theory Of Contract Remedies, Steve Thel, Peter Siegelman

Faculty Scholarship

Contract law is generally understood to require no more of a person who breaches a contract than to give the injured promisee the "benefit of the bargain." The law is thus assumed to permit a promise-breaker to keep any profit remaining from breach, after putting the victim in the position he would have been in had the promise been performed. This conventional description is radically wrong: across a wide range of circumstances, standard contract doctrines actually do require people to keep their promises, or to disgorge their entire profit from breach if they do not. Rather than protecting the expectation …

Mandatory Mediation: An Oxymoron? Examining The Feasibility Of Implementing A Court-Mandated Mediation Program, Dorcas Quek

Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution

The introduction of the "multi-door courthouse" concept at the Pound Conference is said to have ushered in a modern era of dispute resolution within the United States. This watershed event in the history of Alternative Dispute Resolution ("ADR") spawned greater involvement by the courts in ADR. Court-annexed ADR programs were set up throughout the U.S. and legislation was enacted to encourage the use of ADR. In 1983, Rule 16 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure was amended to exhort courts to consider the "possibility of settlement" or "the use of extrajudicial procedures to resolve the dispute" at pre-trial conferences. …

Mediation Ethics: An Exploration Of Four Seminal Texts, Barbara Wilson

Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution

The subject of mediator ethics is often conflated with discussions about standards of practice, the appropriate wording of codes of conduct, or forms of practitioner regulation. These discussions sometimes also extend to debates about practice dilemmas, such as conflicts of interest, voluntariness, confidentiality and stakeholder issues. The main purpose of this paper is instead to discuss the importance and problems of the differing ethical principles which, I argue, underlie four seminal and popular Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) books. These texts are in current circulation, although some have been republished as later editions since first appearing. They are often used-either separately …

Neither Reasonable Nor Remedial: The Hopeless Contradictions Of The Legal Ethics Measures To Prevent Perjury , Susan E. Thrower

Cleveland State Law Review

Analyzing the inherent conflict posed by the use of an undefined mandate-“reasonable remedial measures”-leads to analysis of the even deeper, unresolvable conflicts in the primary steps prescribed by commentary: the client's narration of his own story, the lawyer's withdrawal from representation, and the lawyer's disclosure of the client's false evidence. Not all of the reasonable remedial measures protect both the client's confidentiality and the court's insistence on honesty, and none of them protects the lawyer from charges of impropriety. In the face of the utter failure of the Model Rules to accomplish their conflicting goals, the ABA's rules drafters should …

Whom Should A Catholic University Honor?: "Speaking" With Integrity, Richard W. Garnett

Journal Articles

It has been more than two years since the announcement that our then-recently-elected President, Barack Obama, would be the featured speaker—and would receive an honorary degree—at the University of Notre Dame's graduation ceremony. No footnotes or citations are necessary for the report that the University's decision was controversial or the observation that the choice was both criticized and celebrated by students, faculty, alumni, political commentators, lay Catholics, and Church leaders.

In a USA Today opinion piece published a few days before the graduation ceremony, I suggested that the "angst at Notre Dame" was "not about what should be said at …

Deferring Ineffectiveness Claims To Collateral Review: Ensuring Equal Access And A Right To Appointed Counsel, Thomas M. Place

Faculty Scholarship

The article addresses a problem in criminal procedure that leaves an increasingly large number of defendants without a remedy to protect their right to effective assistance of counsel at trial and on direct appeal. The problem stems from the decision of states to move ineffectiveness claims from direct appeal to the post-conviction process and the fact that over half the states limit access to post-conviction remedies to defendants who are in custody. If the defendant’s prison sentence is completed during the period direct appeal is pending, or, in some jurisdictions, before the collateral review process is completed, the defendant is …

Not-So-Secret Ethics Committee Business, Kim Gifkins

ECU Research Week

Discover how ethics applications are reviewed.

Capteton V. A.T. Massey Coal Co.: The Texas Implications., Catherine Stone, Wendy Martinez

St. Mary's Law Journal

In Caperton v. A.T. Massey Coal Co., the United States Supreme Court addressed whether the Due Process Clause of the United States Constitution was violated by the denial of a motion to recuse. The motion sought to recuse a Supreme Court of Appeals Justice from West Virginia. The justice received an extraordinary campaign contribution from the chief officer of a corporate party to a case pending before the court. Several Texas courts addressed whether recusal was necessary based on campaign contributions prior to the decision in Caperton. Texas courts have universally held that recusal was not required. The United States …

Liberty Lost: The Moral Case For Marijuana Law Reform, Eva Nilsen

Faculty Scholarship

Marijuana policy analyses typically focus on the relative costs and benefits of present policy and its feasible alternatives. This Essay addresses a prior, threshold issue: whether marijuana criminal laws abridge fundamental individual rights, and if so, whether there are grounds that justify doing so. Over 700, 000 people are arrested annually for simple marijuana possession, a small but significant proportion of the 100 million Americans who have committed the same crime. In this Essay, we present a civil libertarian case for repealing marijuana possession laws. We put forward two arguments corresponding to the two distinct liberty concerns implicated by laws …

(Re) Constructing Judicial Ethics In Canada, Richard Devlin Frsc

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Any discussion of judicial ethics and accountability -- whether it is at the state, national, or international level-inevitably requires engagement with two key ideals: impartiality and independence. Ideals are important because they can provide a trajectory for human action. But ideals can also be a problem because their generality and abstraction can cause one to prevaricate -- or even pontificate -- when it comes to the immediate and the pragmatic Indeed, there are times when ideals such as impartiality and independence can become false gods insofar as they promise salvation but ultimately, deliver little. Consequently, when one is asked to …

'...And The Learners Shall Inherit The Earth': Continuing Professional Development, Life Long Learning And Legal Ethics Education, Richard Devlin, Jocelyn Downie

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

After many years of debate and resistance the Canadian legal profession is finally accepting that compulsory professional development is a necessity. We argue that as the legal profession begins to design and deliver these programmes it should take into consideration the insights of the educational literature on lifelong learning. By way of a concrete example we explore the ways in which lifelong learning theory can inform the design and delivery of legal ethics education.

Watch Your Language: A Review Of The Use Of Stigmatizing Language By Canadian Judges, Jocelyn Downie, Michelle Black

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Despite ongoing advances in understanding the causes and prevalence of mental health issues, stigmatizing language is still often directed at people who have mental illness. Such language is regularly used by parties, such as the media, who have great influence on public opinion and attitudes. Since the decisions from Canadian courtrooms can also have a strong impact on societal views, we asked whether judges use stigmatizing language in their decisions. To answer this question, we conducted a qualitative study by searching through modern Canadian case law using search terms that were indicative of stigmatizing language. We found that, although judges …

Dr. Cézanne And The Art Of Re(Peat)Search: Competing Interests And Obligations In Clinical Research, Robyn Bluhm, Jocelyn Downie, Jeff Nisker

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Clinician researchers have a number of roles, each of which carries specific obligations. There are times when these obligations may be in competition (up to and including conflict) with each other. Using a narrative case study that describes a group of colleagues discussing their clinical department's participation in an industry-sponsored research protocol, we illustrate a number of the obligations faced by clinician researchers, and discuss how competing interests and obligations can lead to ethical problems. The case study is followed by a discussion of the effect of university–industry relations on competing interests and obligations in both clinical research and the …

Canadian Parliament Must Act On Assisted Human Reproduction, Jocelyn Downie

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

In the past three months, three members of the Board of Directors of Assisted Human Reproduction Canada (AHRC) have resigned. Their resignation letters include the following statements: '[that following requests for information about the Agency's spending and budget] there was much reluctance and procrastination in providing information, and that when the information was provided, there were inconsistencies in what I received and what was originally presented. This raises concerns in my mind about the prudence and diligence in managing public funds'; 'I have encountered difficulties as a board member in receiving satisfactory replies to concerns and questions I have raised …

Ghostwriting: Filling In The Gaps Of Pro Se Prisoners' Access To The Courts, Ira P. Robbins

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

Compared with other litigants, pro se prisoners are at an inherent disadvan-tage when they try to vindicate their rights. They lack many of the resources enjoyed by non-prisoner litigants. They have limited finances and limited access to legal-research materials. Even if they had such access, their illiteracy would lessen its effectiveness. Moreover, many attorneys are unwilling or unable to undertake full representation of prisoner litigants. As a result, pro se prisoners struggle to navigate the complex legal system, often losing their cases on procedural grounds before ever reaching a decision on the merits. This Article argues that, in order to …

The Torture Lawyers, Jens David Ohlin

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

One of the longest shadows cast by the Bush Administration’s War on Terror involves the fate of the torture lawyers who authored or signed memoranda regarding torture or enhanced interrogation techniques against detainees. Should they face professional sanction or even prosecution for their involvement? The following Article suggests that their fate implicates some of the deepest questions of criminal law theory and that resolution of the debate requires a fundamental reorientation of the most important areas of justifications and excuses. First, the debate about torture has been overly focused on justifications for torture. This can be explained in part by …

Constructing Systemic Safeguards Against Informant Perjury, Peter A. Joy

Scholarship@WashULaw

Reliance on an informant's testimony as the primary basis for charging and convicting the accused is fraught with problems. While the hypothetical explicitly addresses the ethical dilemmas defense counsel faces when her client is trading false testimony in exchange for a reduced charge and shorter sentence, the hypothetical also implicitly illustrates the inadequacies of our criminal justice system's current handling of testimony from cooperating witnesses.

The focus on the ethical, and perhaps moral, obligations of Lawyer representing a potentially perjurious Client begs larger questions. Are there safeguards the prosecutor's office could employ to ensure that the trial prosecutor, who is …

A 2010 Update: What Every Entertainment Lawyer Needs To Know - How To Avoid Being The Target Of A Legal Malpractice Claim Or Disciplinary Action, John P. Sahl

Akron Law Faculty Publications

There is significant risk today that lawyers will become the target of a disciplinary or legal malpractice action, especially given the complexity of the law and advances in technology that reduce the amount of time that lawyers have to reflect about client matters. This risk is heightened by the increased competition in the bar to deliver legal services in a cost-effective manner, the sophistication of clients who expect competent, efficient and reasonably priced services, and the litigious nature of consumers. The risk is further exacerbated by the ever-changing methods and rules for electronic communication and the storage of information. The …

Foreword: The New Era- Quo Vadis?, John Sahl

Akron Law Faculty Publications

The Inaugural MBI Symposium’s twenty-six participants highlight many important developments and challenges caused by MJP and new technologies. Their assessments and suggestions provide a helpful roadmap for lawyers and regulators to negotiate the increasingly complex, fast-paced, and ethically risky landscape for delivering legal services. Several panelists suggested regulatory reforms that range from the creation of a regulatory framework for lawyers engaged in crossborder practice to the creation of standards for the supervision of offshore outsourced legal services268 and the mining of metadata. Some of the panelists’ suggestions and reforms are especially important given the “high [financial] stakes” involved in the …

A New Era – Quo Vadis? Symposium Introduction: Lawyers Beyond Borders And Practicing Law In The Electronic Age, John P. Sahl

Akron Law Faculty Publications

This symposium introduction explores the evolving landscape of legal practice in an increasingly globalized and digitized world. It highlights the challenges and opportunities posed by cross-border legal services, the rise of virtual law offices, and the transformation of attorney-client relationships in the electronic age. The article sets the stage for deeper discussions on jurisdictional boundaries, unauthorized practice of law (UPL), data security, and the ethical responsibilities of lawyers operating in transnational and virtual contexts. It also examines how traditional regulatory frameworks are adapting—or failing to adapt—to the realities of borderless legal practice. By framing the legal profession's current trajectory, the …