Legal Ethics and Professional Responsibility Commons^™

Rediscovering The Republican Origins Of The Legal Ethics Codes, Russell G. Pearce

Faculty Scholarship

Many commentators wrongly assume that the hired gun ideal is the foundation of our legal ethics codes. This article explains that this assumption is based on an historical mistake that has consequences for interpreting the modern codes. Judge George Sharswood, the nineteenth century scholar whose work provided the basis for the 1908 A.B.A. Canons of Ethics, had a republican conception that rejected the adversarial ethic in favor of a more nuanced conception that combined loyalty to clients with a thick obligation to the public good that both bounded client representation and required lawyers to provide political leadership. Although the emphasis …

The Thomas Hearings: Watching Ourselves, Robert F. Nagel

Publications

No abstract provided.

Alter[Ing] People's Perceptions: The Challenge Facing Advocates Of Ancillary Business Practices, Marjorie Meeks

Indiana Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Some Sympathy For The Hired Gun, Ted Schneyer

Journal of Legal Education

No abstract provided.

The Trouble With Legal Ethics, William H. Simon

Journal of Legal Education

No abstract provided.

Ethical Ends And Ethical Means, Monroe H. Freedman

Journal of Legal Education

No abstract provided.

Ethics And Due Diligence: A Lawyer's Perspective On Doing Business With Mexico., Rona R. Mears

St. Mary's Law Journal

The focus of this study is to survey ethical issues faced by legal practitioners in providing legal counsel for international business transactions, with special attention to lawyers counseling clients who are doing business with Mexico. This paper is intended for lawyers who practice in the United States (U.S.), involved in counseling clients outside the U.S. The purpose of this study is to highlight only those issues that raise special difficulties for such a practitioner, and then to provide practical advice on how to avoid ethical problems in U.S.-Mexico transactions. The Model Rules of Professional Conduct (MPRC), the International Code of …

Punishing Ethical Violations: Aggravating And Mitigating Factors, H. Patrick Furman

Publications

No abstract provided.

Inaugural Howard Lichtenstein Lecture In Legal Ethics: Lawyer Professionalism As A Moral Argument, Thomas L. Shaffer

Journal Articles

The recurrent movement to call or recall lawyers to professionalism is a moral argument. It is an argument made to individual lawyers, a claim among lawyers, that professionalism has to do with being a good person.

I see two aspects to the claim that professionalism is a moral value: one aspect says to a person "be professional." It is an admonition to virtue. The other aspect says to a person, "be in the profession—be of it," with an appeal that seems familiar from other admonitions we have heard to align ourselves with groups that are supposed to make us better …

The Trouble With Legal Ethics, William H. Simon

Faculty Scholarship

Legal ethics is a disappointing subject. From afar, it seems exciting; it promises to engage the central normative commitments that make lawyering a profession and that account for much of the nonpecuniary appeal of the lawyer's role. Thus, when people see public spirit among lawyers threatened by commercial self-seeking, they often prescribe increased attention to the teaching and -discussion of legal ethics as a remedy.

But close up, legal ethics usually turns out to be dull and dispiriting. At most law schools, students find the course in legal ethics or professional responsibility boring and insubstantial, and faculty dread having to …

Clearly Erroneous: The Fourth Circuit's Decision To Uphold Removal Of A State-Bar Disciplinary Proceeding Under The Federal-Officer Removal Statute, Franklin D. Cleckley

West Virginia Law Review

No abstract provided.

Restraining The Overly Zealous Advocate: Time For Judicial Intervention, Paul Lowell Haines

Indiana Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Kentucky's New Rules Of Professional Conduct For Lawyers, Eugene R. Gaetke

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

On July 12, 1989, the Kentucky Supreme Court adopted its own version of the American Bar Association's 1983 Model Rules of Professional Conduct as the body of disciplinary law applicable to lawyers practicing in the state. These new rules constitute a major improvement in the state's law of legal ethics. Their adoption should be considered a victory for Kentucky lawyers and, more importantly, a victory for the people of the state, the ultimate beneficiaries of the regulation of the legal profession.

As with most victories, the adoption of the new rules was not unequivocally positive. Kentucky's version of the Model …

Collegiality, Justice, And The Public Image: Why One Lawyer's Pleasure Is Another's Poison, Andrew R. Herron

University of Miami Law Review

No abstract provided.

Ethical Considerations For The Corporate Legal Counsel, Thomas B. Metzloff

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Legal Ethics Of Fear: On The 1904 Report Of The Committee On Legal Ethics Of The Georgia Bar Association, Thomas L. Shaffer

Journal Articles

It would be possible for me now to round off a courteous comment on the 1904 Report with a disquisition on gentleman's ethics in the legal profession. That would have been a less novel thing to do in 1904 than it is now, but at either time it can be supposed to have been expected and, by and large, understood. But I think we can learn more from the 1904 Report by taking a more contentious and somber look at Branham's words. I suggest that what the report shows is unpleasant, that the legal ethic recommended there to Georgia lawyers …

Legal Ethics After Babel, Thomas L. Shaffer

Journal Articles

Legal ethics owes as much to Richard M. Nixon as it does to philosophy. The rebirth of legal ethics in the last decade is one of many consequences, although possibly the most obscure, of the burglary at the Watergate Hotel in 1972. The criminal politics that destroyed Mr. Nixon's presidency summoned American lawyers to a serious, systematic examination of the morals of their craft.

Risks Of Violation Of Rules Of Professional Responsibility By Reason Of The Increased Disparity Among The States, Ted J. Fiflis

Publications

No abstract provided.

The Professional Ethics Of Individualism And Tragedy In Martin Arrowsmith's Expedition To St. Hubert, Thomas L. Shaffer

Journal Articles

Sinclair Lewis (1885-1951) was a resolute critic of pretension in American business and in the professions. His only hero story is the story of a physician and research scientist, Arrowsmith (1925).' It is a story that puts up for examination Lewis's prescription for a moral life in the professions in America and, beyond that, it shows what professional life is like. I want to argue here that (1) although the story is useful for lawyers and for legal ethics, Lewis's principal moral prescription, a brief for individualism in professional life, is incoherent. The ethic of individualism, as Lewis grounds it, …

Lawyers As Officers Of The Court, Eugene R. Gaetke

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

Lawyers like to refer to themselves as officers of the court. Careful analysis of the role of the lawyer within the adversarial legal system reveals the characterization to be vacuous and unduly self-laudatory. It confuses lawyers and misleads the public. The profession, therefore, should either stop using the officer of the court characterization or give meaning to it. This Article proposes certain modifications of the existing rules of professional responsibility that would bring lawyers' actual obligations more in line with those suggested by the label of officer of the court.

Professional Ethics Opinion 89-1, Propriety Of Non-Lawyer Employees' Names On Letterheads And Business Cards, David F. Forte

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

A lawyer or law firm may include on its letterhead and business cards the names and titles of its nonlawyer employees, so long as the letterhead or business card describes such employees as nonlawyers.

The Lawyer’S Duty To Report Another Lawyer’S Unethical Violations In The Wake Of Himmel, Ronald D. Rotunda

Law Faculty Articles and Research

No abstract provided.

Ethical Discretion In Lawyering, William H. Simon

Faculty Scholarship

In this Article, Professor Simon argues that conventional approaches to legal ethics are too categorical. Rather than operating within a system of formalized ethical rules, he argues, lawyers should exercise judgment and discretion in deciding what clients to represent and how to represent them. In exercising this discretion, lawyers should seek to "do justice." They should consider the merits of the client's claims and goals relative to those of opposing parties and other potential clients. They should also consider the substantive merits of the client's claims and the reliability of the standard legal procedures for resolving the problem at hand. …

The Legal Ethics Of Belonging, Thomas L. Shaffer

Journal Articles

Socrates went around Athens telling law teachers and law students that their highest concern should be to be good people. And, he said, the next and consequent concern of the profession should be to show the citizens of Athens how to be good people. For Socrates, as for virtually all of classical moral philosophy and much of Jewish and Christian moral theology, ethical discussion is discussion about the good person. When we talk about Aristotle's man of practical wisdom, or when we talk about heroes, saints, role models, paragons, or professional examplars, it is the good person we are talking …

Common Issues Of Professional Responsibility, Thomas Ehrlich

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Legal Ethics And The Good Client, Thomas L. Shaffer

Journal Articles

Modern ethics talks in terms of clients corrupting lawyers, and how lawyers must protect themselves from their client’s bad morals. This Article critiques that understanding and proposes that legal ethics is the study of what is good for a client, not what is good for the lawyer. Properly studied, it is thinking about the morals of someone else—the client. It is not thinking through the client’s conscience, but thinking through the lawyer’s conscience that seeks rectitude, freedom, and goodness for the client.

Practice And Procedure Under Amended Rule 11 Of The Federal Rules Of Civil Procedure, Kevin P. Roddy, William Woodward Webb

Campbell Law Review

The purpose of this article is to explore the substantive provisions of amended Rule 11 and its historic antecedents, the procedure by which sanctions may be sought and/or imposed, the sanctions which the court may impose and the persons upon whom the sanctions can be imposed.

The Lawyer As Informer, Gerard E. Lynch

Faculty Scholarship

From the schoolyard "tattletale" to the police officer's "confidential informant" to the Pentagon "whistle blower," our society is deeply ambivalent toward those who report the wrongdoing of others to the authorities. On the one hand, society values informers. Without informers, serious misbehavior would certainly escape correction. The police officers' code of silence with respect to fellow officers' crimes, for example, may be a major obstacle to eliminating police corruption and brutality. On the other hand, society scorns informers as betrayers of confidence. Even one who violates an antisocial pact such as the police officers' code of silence is viewed as …

"Understanding...": Processing Information And Values In Clinical Work, Edwin H. Greenebaum

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

A Uniform Rule Governing The Admission And Practice Of Attorneys Before United States District Courts, Michael S. Ariens

Faculty Articles

The increase in the interstate and international practice of law necessitates a review of the rules governing the admission of attorneys to practice before federal district courts. By virtue of the sweep of their jurisdictional net, federal district courts are likely to be the fora for litigating most interstate or international disputes. The present rules, based upon the antiquated notion that lawyers only rarely practice law in federal district court, and then only in the federal district court located in the state in which they practice, do not address this change in the practice of law.

For these reasons, a …