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Legal Ethics and Professional Responsibility Commons™

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Legal ethics

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Articles 271 - 300 of 697

Full-Text Articles in Legal Ethics and Professional Responsibility

My Brother's Keeper: An Empirical Study Of Attorney Facilitation Of Money-Laundering Through Commercial Transactions, Lawton P. Cummings, Paul T. Stepnowsky Feb 2011

My Brother's Keeper: An Empirical Study Of Attorney Facilitation Of Money-Laundering Through Commercial Transactions, Lawton P. Cummings, Paul T. Stepnowsky

Faculty Scholarship

In recent years, various “gatekeeping initiatives” have been introduced through inter-governmental standard-setting organizations, such as the Financial Action Task Force, as well as through federal legislation in the United States, which seek to apply the mandatory customer due diligence, record keeping, and suspicious activity reporting obligations contained in the existing anti-money laundering regime to lawyers when they conduct certain commercial transactions on behalf of their clients. The organized bar has argued against such attempts to regulate it, in part, due to the lack of empirical data showing that, as a threshold matter, lawyers unwittingly aid money laundering in a significant …

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Fred Zacharias And A Lawyer's Attempt To Be Guided By Justice: Flying With Harry Potter And Understanding How Lawyers Can Prosecute The People They Represent, Randy Lee Feb 2011

Fred Zacharias And A Lawyer's Attempt To Be Guided By Justice: Flying With Harry Potter And Understanding How Lawyers Can Prosecute The People They Represent, Randy Lee

San Diego Law Review

This Article seeks to embrace Professor Zacharias’s call for lawyers to consider more deeply what it means for a lawyer—and here particularly a government lawyer—to do justice. In so doing, it recognizes two parameters that Professor Zacharias wisely established for this task: first, that lawyers need direction that is concrete in how to behave as lawyers; and second, that lawyers can understand “justice,” “fairness,” and “truth” to be amorphous concepts and that lawyers may even attempt to define those terms with equally amorphous words. This Article also recognizes, however, that although justice, fairness, and truth can be reduced to abstraction, …

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Federalizing Legal Ethics, Nationalizing Law Practice, And The Future Of The American Legal Profession In A Global Age, Eli Wald Feb 2011

Federalizing Legal Ethics, Nationalizing Law Practice, And The Future Of The American Legal Profession In A Global Age, Eli Wald

San Diego Law Review

This Article is organized as a response to Zaharias’s influential paper, revisiting each of his four analytical steps. Following Zacharias, Part II documents the growing nationalization and globalization of law practice, and argues that the transformation of law practice renders the state-based regulation of lawyers ineffective. Part III parts ways with Zacharias’s thesis. It asserts that nationalizing, by federalizing, legal ethics is not warranted by changing practice realities and that, worse, federalizing legal ethics without more will leave some of the most troubling aspects of the transformation of law practice, including client needs, unaddressed. Instead, Part III argues that the …

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Zacharias's Prophecy: The Federalization Of Legal Ethics Through Legislative, Court, And Agency Regulation, Daniel R. Coquillette, Judith A. Mcmorrow Feb 2011

Zacharias's Prophecy: The Federalization Of Legal Ethics Through Legislative, Court, And Agency Regulation, Daniel R. Coquillette, Judith A. Mcmorrow

San Diego Law Review

This Article will carry on Professor Zacharias’s profound insights and prophecies by examining the trends in direct regulation of attorneys through federal law, with a particular focus on expanding agency regulation. We will also touch on international trends that draw on federal treaty obligations to implement international norms of attorney conduct.

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When Realism And Idealism Collided In Fred Zacharias's Work On The Purposes And Limitations Of Legal Ethics Codes, Ted Schneyer Feb 2011

When Realism And Idealism Collided In Fred Zacharias's Work On The Purposes And Limitations Of Legal Ethics Codes, Ted Schneyer

San Diego Law Review

I look back at one of Fred’s early works, a 1993 article entitled Specificity in Professional Codes: Theory, Practice, and the Paradigm of Prosecutorial Ethics. Specificity concerns the formal characteristics of legal ethics codes rather than the substantive values they embody. That topic might seem dry, but the article is intriguing because it evidences a clash between idealism and realism in Fred’s thinking. Although both strands of thought were prominent in much of Fred’s work, the clash between them was never starker than in Specificity. There, Fred the idealist offered up an elaborate methodology for drafting of legal ethics codes …

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Behind Closed Doors: Shedding Light On Lawyer Self-Regulation-What Lawyers Do When Nobody's Watching, John Sahl Feb 2011

Behind Closed Doors: Shedding Light On Lawyer Self-Regulation-What Lawyers Do When Nobody's Watching, John Sahl

San Diego Law Review

This Article summarizes Nobody’s Watching. It also examines some of the consequences of failing to enforce ethical rules for lawyer conduct and offers some lessons for future rule development and enforcement. Part III considers some of the academic and practical significance of Nobody’s Watching. The Article concludes by noting that Nobody’s Watching offers academics, lawyers, and regulators a valuable tool to better understand and improve the regulation of the profession.

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Crisis In The Legal Profession: Don’T Mourn, Organize!, Michael E. Tigar Jan 2011

Crisis In The Legal Profession: Don’T Mourn, Organize!, Michael E. Tigar

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

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Confidentiality And Claims Of Ineffective Assistance, Peter A. Joy, Kevin C. Mcmunigal Jan 2011

Confidentiality And Claims Of Ineffective Assistance, Peter A. Joy, Kevin C. Mcmunigal

Faculty Publications

This column discusses what a defense lawyer should do when called upon to reveal client information in response to an ineffective assistance of counsel claim.

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Taking The Ethical Duty To Self Seriously: An Essay In Memory Of Fred Zacharias, Samuel J. Levine Jan 2011

Taking The Ethical Duty To Self Seriously: An Essay In Memory Of Fred Zacharias, Samuel J. Levine

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

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Engaged Client-Centered Representation And The Moral Foundations Of The Lawyer-Client Relationship, Kate Kruse Jan 2011

Engaged Client-Centered Representation And The Moral Foundations Of The Lawyer-Client Relationship, Kate Kruse

Faculty Scholarship

The field of legal ethics, as we know it today, has grown out of thoughtful, systematic grounding of lawyers’ duties in a comprehensive understanding of lawyers’ roles and the situating of lawyers’ roles in underlying theories of law, morality and justice. Unfortunately, the field of theoretical legal ethics has mostly lost track of the thing at the heart of a lawyers’ role: the integrity of the lawyer-client relationship. The field of theoretical legal ethics has developed in ways that are deeply lawyer-centered rather than fundamentally client-centered. This paper, which was delivered at Hofstra Law School as the Lichtenstein Distinguished Professor …

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The Jurisprudential Turn In Legal Ethics, Katherine R. Kruse Jan 2011

The Jurisprudential Turn In Legal Ethics, Katherine R. Kruse

Scholarly Works

When legal ethics developed as an academic discipline in the mid-1970s, its theoretical roots were in moral philosophy. The early theorists in legal ethics were moral philosophers by training, and they explored legal ethics as a branch of moral philosophy. From the vantage point of moral philosophy, lawyers’ professional duties comprised a system of moral duties that governed lawyers in their professional lives, a “role-morality” for lawyers that competed with ordinary moral duties. In defining this “role-morality,” the moral philosophers accepted the premise that “good lawyers” are professionally obligated to pursue the interests of their clients all the way to …

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Philosophical Legal Ethics: Ethics, Morals, And Jurisprudence, Katherine R. Kruse Jan 2011

Philosophical Legal Ethics: Ethics, Morals, And Jurisprudence, Katherine R. Kruse

Scholarly Works

The authors and moderator David Luban participated in a plenary session of the International Legal Ethics Conference IV, held at Stanford. Each author answered and discussed questions arising from short papers they had written about the principal concern of legal ethics was the morality of lawyers, the morality of clients, or the morality of laws.

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Engaged Client-Centered Representation And The Moral Foundations Of The Lawyer-Client Relationship, Katherine R. Kruse Jan 2011

Engaged Client-Centered Representation And The Moral Foundations Of The Lawyer-Client Relationship, Katherine R. Kruse

Scholarly Works

The field of legal ethics, as we know it today, has grown out of thoughtful, systematic grounding of lawyers’ duties in a comprehensive understanding of lawyers’ roles and the situating of lawyers’ roles in underlying theories of law, morality, and justice. Unfortunately, in the process, the field of theoretical legal ethics has mostly lost track of the thing that Freedman insisted was at the heart of a lawyers’ role: the integrity of the lawyer-client relationship. As I will discuss, the field of theoretical legal ethics has developed in ways that are deeply lawyer-centered rather than fundamentally client-centered. I am going …

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Mediating Multiculturally: Culture And The Ethical Mediator, Carrie Menkel-Meadow, Harold I. Abramson Jan 2011

Mediating Multiculturally: Culture And The Ethical Mediator, Carrie Menkel-Meadow, Harold I. Abramson

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This commentary on mediating multiculturally in a chapter of Mediation Ethics (edited by Ellen Waldman) suggests there are times when mediators should not mediate, because of their own ethical commitments. Commenting on a hypothetical divorce scenario (of Ziba, a 17 year old from her 44 year old husband, with two children aged 3 and 2, where the parties claim to want Shari’a principles to apply), the author (Carrie Menkel-Meadow) suggests that she would not mediate a case which might violate formal laws (American marriage and divorce laws) or infringe on rights that one of the parties might not be fully …

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Enforcement Of Law Schools' Non-Academic Honor Codes: A Necessary Step Towards Professionalism?, Nicola A. Boothe-Perry Jan 2011

Enforcement Of Law Schools' Non-Academic Honor Codes: A Necessary Step Towards Professionalism?, Nicola A. Boothe-Perry

Journal Publications

As law schools strive to enforce their codes of student conduct, enforcement has called into question the legal standing of the schools, since enforcement affects the fundamental rights of students. Consequently, this Article will address the following question: to what extent can law schools fulfill their responsibility and opportunity to enforce behavioral codes-specifically codes governing non-academic conduct-with a goal of improving professionalism? Through analysis of law schools' enforcement capabilities, this Article will suggest a practical framework by which law schools can promulgate and enforce codes and rules affecting students' non-academic conduct.

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Legal Ethics Scholarship Of Ted Schneyer: The Importance Of Being Rigorous, The Festschrift For Ted Schneyer Lawyer Regulation For The 21st Century: Foreword, Bruce A. Green Jan 2011

Legal Ethics Scholarship Of Ted Schneyer: The Importance Of Being Rigorous, The Festschrift For Ted Schneyer Lawyer Regulation For The 21st Century: Foreword, Bruce A. Green

Faculty Scholarship

This collection on "Lawyer Regulation for the 21st Century" celebrates Ted Schneyer's legal ethics scholarship. From my perspective as Ted's friend and colleague in the field of legal ethics, it is obvious how richly he deserves this festschrift, and it is my privilege to be invited to contribute its foreword. But to someone outside the field, many questions might be raised. Why celebrate legal scholarship? Why celebrate legal ethics scholarship? Why celebrate Ted Schneyer's legal ethics scholarship? And why celebrate it by collecting writings on the theme of Lawyer Regulation for the 21st Century? Though I have no desire to …

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Ethical Intersections & The Federal Tort Claims Act: An Approach For Government Attorneys, Paul F. Figley Jan 2011

Ethical Intersections & The Federal Tort Claims Act: An Approach For Government Attorneys, Paul F. Figley

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

This article suggests an ethical approach for government attorneys to follow when making decisions in the special context of the Federal Tort Claims Act. It reviews the history and purpose of the FTCA, the Judgment Fund, and the Westfall Act. It examines the swirl of competing interests that arise from the structure of the FTCA, the many defenses it provides, the deep pocket it grants successful claimants, the complete immunity it grants some tortfeasors, and the methods Congress chose for paying its settlements and judgments. It touches on the ethical obligations of government attorneys. It suggests that government attorneys responsible …

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Behind Closed Doors: Shedding Light On Lawyer Self-Regulation—What Lawyers Do When Nobody’S Watching, John P. Sahl Jan 2011

Behind Closed Doors: Shedding Light On Lawyer Self-Regulation—What Lawyers Do When Nobody’S Watching, John P. Sahl

Akron Law Faculty Publications

This article, explores the ethical, procedural, and institutional dimensions of lawyer self-regulation. It critically examines how legal professionals govern themselves in the absence of external oversight and analyzes the effectiveness, transparency, and accountability of current self-regulatory frameworks. Drawing on case studies, disciplinary records, and empirical research, the article interrogates whether self-regulation serves the public interest or primarily protects the legal profession. It further investigates the cultural and systemic incentives that influence lawyers' conduct and the willingness of regulatory bodies to enforce professional standards. The work ultimately calls for rethinking regulatory models to promote greater accountability, public trust, and integrity in …

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The Limits Of Process, Robin West Jan 2011

The Limits Of Process, Robin West

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This article presents four major objections to Jeremy Waldron’s claim that for “Rule of Law” to exist it we must move beyond basic formal requirements that laws be general and knowable rules we can all comply with, towards substantive requirements that when the law imposes its censorial and punitive will upon us, it is applied in a way that acknowledges our intelligence and respects our individual dignity. After challenging Waldron’s claim, the author suggests that if Rule of Law theorizing is intended to capture our ideals of law, then the three paradigms of Rule of Law scholarship that Waldron has …

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The Challenges Of Developing Cross-Cultural Legal Ethics Education, Professional Development, And Guidance For The Legal Professions, Philip Genty Jan 2011

The Challenges Of Developing Cross-Cultural Legal Ethics Education, Professional Development, And Guidance For The Legal Professions, Philip Genty

Faculty Scholarship

The broad goal of this paper is to describe the need, and provide a framework, for engaging in cross-cultural conversations among lawyers, law teachers, and others, who are using legal ethics as a vehicle for improving the legal professions and the delivery of legal services. All legal cultures struggle with the question of how to educate students and lawyers to be ethical professionals and how to regulate the legal profession effectively. The purpose of the cross-cultural conversations discussed in this paper would be to develop principles of legal ethics education, professional development, and regulation of the legal professions that can …

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Colorado Legal Ethics: Guide To Resources, Robert Linz Aug 2010

Colorado Legal Ethics: Guide To Resources, Robert Linz

Other Faculty Publications

Officers of the court and public figures, including attorneys and judges, are required to adhere to high ethical standards in conducting their professional duties. Courts and bar associations have a long tradition of identifying ethical norms and regulating conduct through rules and action. Although some conduct is obviously incorrect, the appropriateness of other conduct is less clear. When attorneys are unsure of the ethical nature of an action, they will need to consult sources for guidance. These sources may be fellow attorneys or bar association ethics hotline advisors.These sources also include the rules, decisions, and commentary that constitute the body …

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Shadow Lawyering: Nonlawyer Practice Within Law Firms, Paul R. Tremblay Apr 2010

Shadow Lawyering: Nonlawyer Practice Within Law Firms, Paul R. Tremblay

Indiana Law Journal

Lawyers commonly associate with nonlawyers to assist in their performance of lawyering tasks. A lawyer cannot know with confidence, though, whether the delegation of some tasks to a nonlawyer colleague might result in her assisting in the unauthorized practice of law, because the state of the law and the commentary about nonlawyer practice is so confused and incoherent. Some respected authority within the profession tells the lawyer that she may only delegate preparatory matters and must prohibit the nonlawyer from discussing legal matters with clients, or negotiating on behalf of clients. Other authority suggests that the lawyer may delegate a …

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Three Models Of Legal Ethics, Anthony D'Amato, Edward J. Eberle Jan 2010

Three Models Of Legal Ethics, Anthony D'Amato, Edward J. Eberle

Faculty Working Papers

This article presents a picture of each of the three theoretical models—autonomy, socialist, and deontological—and indicates how they differ from one another in their application to some aspects of attorney-client confidentiality, one of the most hotly debated topics of professional ethics.

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Exporting American Legal Ethics, James E. Moliterno Jan 2010

Exporting American Legal Ethics, James E. Moliterno

Scholarly Articles

None available.

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Lawyers In Character And Lawyers In Role, Kate Kruse Jan 2010

Lawyers In Character And Lawyers In Role, Kate Kruse

Faculty Scholarship

Legal ethicists have long been fascinated by the relationships between lawyers’ roles in an adversary system of justice and the character, attitudes, or dispositions that best suit the practice of law. Leonard Riskin’s scholarship has explored how lawyers’ practice of mindfulness can improve their legal practice, and his claim in this body of work – that the practice of mindfulness helps to develop the internalized trait of mindfulness – ties his scholarship to the work of legal ethicists who have endeavored to develop character-based theories of legal ethics. Riskin’s analysis of how lawyers might incorporate mindfulness into law practice also …

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Understanding Caperton: Judicial Disqualification Under The Due Process Clause, Dmitry Bam Jan 2010

Understanding Caperton: Judicial Disqualification Under The Due Process Clause, Dmitry Bam

Faculty Publications

It is virtually impossible to discuss the Supreme Court’s decision in Caperton v. A.T. Massey Coal Co. without hearing some variant of the following response: “I can’t believe it was as close as it was.” And it does not matter whether you are chatting with your next-door neighbor who had never thought about judicial ethics in his life or discussing the case with a judicial-recusal expert. Nearly everyone seems to agree: Caperton was an “easy” case and that four justices dissented is an indication that there is something terribly wrong. Not only has Caperton elevated the issue of judicial impartiality …

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A Tale Of Two Judges : A Judge Advocate’S Reflections On Judge Gonzales’S Apologia, Charles J. Dunlap Jr. Jan 2010

A Tale Of Two Judges : A Judge Advocate’S Reflections On Judge Gonzales’S Apologia, Charles J. Dunlap Jr.

Faculty Scholarship

This is a response to - and reflection about - Judge Alberto Gonzales's essay in the Texas Tech Law Review entitled "Waging War Within the Constitution" 42 Tex. Tech. L. Rev. 843 (2010). It argues that national security law policy in an era of complex challenges is best designed when the expertise of the widest number of knowledgeable practictioners is brought to bear in a principled and fearless manner.

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Relationships, The Rules Of Professional Conduct And Land Use: Ethical Quagmires For Land Use Attorneys, Patricia E. Salkin Jan 2010

Relationships, The Rules Of Professional Conduct And Land Use: Ethical Quagmires For Land Use Attorneys, Patricia E. Salkin

Scholarly Works

This article begins to fill the void by introducing the application of the various Rules of Professional Conduct, as adopted by the specific opining jurisdiction, through a review of the relevant reported opinions of the various committees and sometimes courts, in the land use context. Part I discusses the challenges that arise for lawyers vis-à-vis their clients in the land use context. This is followed by a discussion in Part II of the ethics and professionalism issues that confront lawyers who serve on local boards.

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Beyond Cardboard Clients In Legal Ethics, Kate Kruse Jan 2010

Beyond Cardboard Clients In Legal Ethics, Kate Kruse

Faculty Scholarship

This Article argues that the construction of cardboard clients in legal ethics has disserved legal ethics by obscuring what is arguably a more central problem of legal professionalism: the problem of legal objectification. The problem of legal objectification is the tendency of lawyers to "issue-spot" their clients as they would the facts on a blue-book exam, overemphasizing the clients' legal interests and minimizing or ignoring the other cares, commitments, relationships, reputations and values that constitute the objectives clients bring to legal representation. This Article proposes an alternative ideal of legal professionalism for "three-dimensional clients" based on helping clients articulate and …

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An Introduction To The Financial Action Task Force And Its 2008 Lawyer Guidance, Laurel S. Terry Jan 2010

An Introduction To The Financial Action Task Force And Its 2008 Lawyer Guidance, Laurel S. Terry

Faculty Scholarship

The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) is a thirty-eight-member intergovernmental organization whose mission is to fight money laundering and terrorism financing; the U.S. is a founding member of the FATF. The FATF is best known for its 40 Recommendations, many of which are directed towards various kinds of “gatekeepers” who are in a position to facilitate or inhibit money laundering and terrorism financing. (These were previously known as the 40+9 Recommendations). Lawyers are among those to whom the FATF’s recommendations apply. This article provides the introduction for the Journal of the Professional Lawyer’s Symposium about the application of the FATF …

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