Legal Ethics and Professional Responsibility | Open Access Articles

Professional Liability, Chelsea Glover, Sven Stricker, Stephanie Assi

SMU Annual Texas Survey

This article is a survey of the relevant developments in professional liability law from December 1, 2019, through November 30, 2020. The article focuses on law likely to be influential to Texas practitioners.

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Ad Tech & The Future Of Legal Ethics, Seth Katsuya Endo

UF Law Faculty Publications

Privacy scholars have extensively studied online behavioral advertising, which uses Big Data to target individuals based on their characteristics and behaviors. This literature identifies several new risks presented by online behavioral advertising and theorizes about how consumer protection law should respond. A new wave of this scholarship contemplates applying fiduciary duties to information-collecting entities like Facebook and Google.

Meanwhile, lawyers—quintessential fiduciaries—already use online behavioral advertising to find clients. For example, a medical malpractice firm directs its advertising to Facebook users who are near nursing homes with bad reviews. And, in 2020, New York became the first jurisdiction to approve lawyers’ …

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Solitary Confinement As Illegitimately Proscribed And Disproportional Punishment: Another Angle From Which To Attack The Inhumane Practice, Danika J. Anderson

Notre Dame Journal of Law, Ethics & Public Policy

No abstract provided.

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Judges And The Deregulation Of The Lawyer's Monopoly, Jessica Steinberg, Anna Carpenter, Colleen Shanahan, Alyx Mark

Faculty Articles

In a revolutionary moment for the legal profession, the deregulation of legal services is taking hold in many parts of the country. Utah and Arizona, for instance, are experimenting with new regulations that permit nonlawyer advocates to play an active role in assisting citizens who may not otherwise have access to legal services. In addition, amendments to the Rules of Professional Conduct in both states, as well as those being contemplated in California, now allow nonlawyers to have a partnership stake in law firms, which may dramatically change the way capital for the delivery of legal services is raised as …

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The Architecture Of Judicial Ethics, Charles G. Geyh

Articles by Maurer Faculty

In 1999, Professor Stephen Burbank wrote an article entitled The Architecture of Judicial Independence. It is a foundational piece that gave structure to what was then an understudied field. At the heart of that article is a profound insight: stable and enduring judicial systems are the product of forces in constructive tension. Thus, in the context of judicial administration, Burbank conceptualized judicial independence with reference to judicial accountability, and characterized pressure points in the relationship between them as complementary, not contradictory; and in later work, he made a similar point about the interplay between the law and policy in judicial …

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A Clumsy Couple: The Problem Of Applying Model Rule 1.7 In Transactional Settings, Katelyn K. Leveque

Indiana Law Journal

The American Bar Association’s Model Rules of Professional Conduct (“Model Rules”) have long addressed conflicts of interest, with fluctuating degrees of stringency.1 For as long as the rules have been in place, legal scholars have grappled with how lawyers can work within the confines of the rules to serve their clients best, as well as how the rules might better align with what clients seek and expect from their legal representation. In their current form, the Model Rules address conflicts of interest in Rule 1.7. However, both this rule and the Model Rules more generally are not one size fits …

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Going Beyond Rule 8.4(G): A Shift To Active And Conscious Efforts To Dismantle Bias, Meredith R. Miller

Journal of Race, Gender, and Ethnicity

No abstract provided.

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Testing Privilege: Coaching Bar Takers Towards "Minimum Competency" During The 2020 Pandemic, Afton Cavanaugh

Faculty Articles

The year 2020 was challenging for the bar exam. The longstanding argument that the bar exam is not a fair measure of the minimum competence of someone to practice law was cast into harsh relief and the truth-that the bar exam tests the privilege of its examinees-became startlingly apparent. Not only did 2020 kick off with a devastating global pandemic, but we also saw the rage against systemic racial injustice reach a boiling point just as we were charged with staying in our homes to avoid contracting COVID-19. With a pandemic raging, overt White supremacy on the rise, and racial …

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Neither “Post-War” Nor Post-Pregnancy Paranoia: How America’S War On Drugs Continues To Perpetuate Disparate Incarceration Outcomes For Pregnant, Substance-Involved Offenders, Becca S. Zimmerman

Pitzer Senior Theses

This thesis investigates the unique interactions between pregnancy, substance involvement, and race as they relate to the War on Drugs and the hyper-incarceration of women. Using ordinary least square regression analyses and data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ 2016 Survey of Prison Inmates, I examine if (and how) pregnancy status, drug use, race, and their interactions influence two length of incarceration outcomes: sentence length and amount of time spent in jail between arrest and imprisonment. The results collectively indicate that pregnancy decreases length of incarceration outcomes for those offenders who are not substance-involved but not evenhandedly -- benefitting white …

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Antiracism, Reflection, And Professional Identity, Andrew King-Ries, Monte Mills, Eduardo R.C. Capulong

Faculty Law Review Articles

Intent on more systematically developing the emerging professional identities of law students, the professional identity formation movement is recasting how we think about legal education. Notably, however, the movement overlooks the structural racism imbedded in American law and legal education. While current models of professional development value diversity and cross-cultural competence, they do not adequately prepare the next generation of legal professionals to engage in the sustained work of interrupting and overthrowing race and racism in the legal profession and system. This article argues that antiracism is essential to the profession’s responsibility to serve justice and therefore key to legal …

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Assertion And Hearsay, Richard Lloret

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

This article explores the characteristics and functions of assertion and considers how the term influences the definition of hearsay under Federal Rule of Evidence 801. Rule 801(a) defines hearsay by limiting it to words and conduct intended as an assertion, but the rule does not define the term assertion. Courts and legal scholars have focused relatively little attention on the nature and definition of assertion. That is unfortunate, because assertion is a robust concept that has been the subject of intense philosophic study over recent decades. Assertion is not a mere cypher standing in for whatever speech or conduct one …

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Achieving Better Care In Pennsylvania By Allowing Pharmacists To Practice Pharmacy, Travis Murray

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

Traditionally, state legislatures implemented Prescription Drug Monitoring Programs (“PDMPs”) to assist prescribers, pharmacists, and law enforcement in identifying patients likely to misuse, abuse, or divert controlled substances. PDMP databases contain a catalog of a patient’s recent controlled substances that pharmacies have filled, including the date, location, the quantity of medication filled, and the prescribing health care provider. Prescribers in Pennsylvania have a duty to query the PDMP before prescribing controlled substances in most clinical settings. Pharmacists have a similar duty in Pennsylvania to dispense safe and effective medication therapy to patients and to screen patients for potential signs of misuse, …

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The Specter Of Malpractice: When Law Firm General Counsel And Risk Management Professionals Are Confronted With Potential Malpractice Claims And Ethics Violations, Joseph R. Tiano Jr., Nancy B. Rapoport, William J. Siroky

Scholarly Works

Every day, law firm general counsel and other law firm risk management professionals face a very practical, very vexing problem. The problem is what to do when hearing that a serious ethical mistake or impropriety may have occurred—but without any concrete confirmation that something problematic has, in fact, happened. This essay discusses the most important initial steps and questions that the firm’s general counsel or other risk management professional must address in this confounding situation where the “specter of malpractice” is present. We call this the “specter of malpractice” because a malpractice claim has not yet fully materialized (and it …

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No, The Firing Squad Is Not Better Than Lethal Injection: A Response To Stephanie Moran’S A Modest Proposal, Michael Conklin

Seattle University Law Review

In the article A Modest Proposal: The Federal Government Should Use Firing Squads to Execute Federal Death Row Inmates, Stephanie Moran argues that the firing squad is the only execution method that meets the requirements of the Eighth Amendment. In order to make her case, Moran unjustifiably overstates the negative aspects of lethal injection while understating the negative aspects of firing squads. The entire piece is predicated upon assumptions that are not only unsupported by the evidence but often directly refuted by the evidence. This Essay critically analyzes Moran’s claims regarding the alleged advantages of the firing squad over …

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Table Of Contents, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Table of Contents

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Choice Of Law And The Preponderantly Multistate Rule: The Example Of Successor Corporation Products Liability, Diana Sclar

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

Most state rules of substantive law, whether legislative or judicial, ordinarily adjust rights and obligations among local parties with respect to local events. Conventional choice of law methodologies for adjudicating disputes with multistate connections all start from an explicit or implicit assumption of a choice between such locally oriented substantive rules. This article reveals, for the first time, that some state rules of substantive law ordinarily adjust rights and obligations with respect to parties and events connected to more than one state and only occasionally apply to wholly local matters. For these rules I use the term “nominally domestic rules …

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Don't Change The Subject: How State Election Laws Can Nullify Ballot Questions, Cole Gordner

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

Procedural election laws regulate the conduct of state elections and provide for greater transparency and fairness in statewide ballots. These laws ensure that the public votes separately on incongruous bills and protects the electorate from uncertainties contained in omnibus packages. As demonstrated by a slew of recent court cases, however, interest groups that are opposed to the objective of a ballot question are utilizing these election laws with greater frequency either to prevent a state electorate from voting on an initiative or to overturn a ballot question that was already decided in the initiative’s favor. This practice is subverting the …

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Professional Identity In Time Of Uncertainty: Not Moment Too Soon, Margaret E. Reuter

Faculty Works

This essay introduces the UMKC Law Review Symposium on Professional Identity Formation and Its Pedagogy, situating the collection of articles against the backdrop of extraordinary social and political upheavals, including the COVID-19 pandemic, racial justice movements, and threats to constitutional democracy. The Symposium brings together leading scholars and educators to explore how law schools can better prepare students to meet professional and societal demands by fostering a strong sense of professional identity. Themes emerging from the contributions include the integration of reflective practice, mindfulness, leadership, grit, growth mindset, externship experiences, and virtue ethics into legal education. Collectively, the works argue …

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A Tribute To Professor Catherine Mahern, Lawrence Raful

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

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Algorithmic Responsibility, Algorithmic Bias, Darla Jackson

Other Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

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Complicity And Lesser Evils: A Tale Of Two Lawyers, David Luban

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Government lawyers and other public officials sometimes face an excruciating moral dilemma: to stay on the job or to quit, when the government is one they find morally abhorrent. Staying may make them complicit in evil policies; it also runs the danger of inuring them to wrongdoing, just as their presence on the job helps inure others. At the same time, staying may be their only opportunity to mitigate those policies – to make evils into lesser evils – and to uphold the rule of law when it is under assault. This Article explores that dilemma in a stark form: …

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Heroes Among Us: Good Samaritan Laws And Paddlers Turned Swiftwater Rescuers, Jennifer Jolly-Ryan

University of San Francisco Law Review

No abstract provided.

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"Man Is Opposed To Fair Play": An Empirical Analysis Of How The Fifth Circuit Has Failed To Take Seriously Atkins V. Virginia, Michael L. Perlin, Talia Roitberg Harmon, Sarah Wetzel

Articles & Chapters

In 2002, for the first time, in Atkins v. Virginia, 536 U.S. 304 (2002), the United States Supreme Court found that it violated the Eighth Amendment to subject persons with intellectual disabilities to the death penalty. Since that time, it has returned to this question multiple times, clarifying that inquiries into a defendant’s intellectual disability (for purposes of determining whether he is potentially subject to the death penalty) cannot be limited to a bare numerical “reading” of an IQ score, and that state rules based on superseded medical standards created an unacceptable risk that a person with intellectual disabilities could …

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To Err Is Human, To Apologize Is Hard: The Role Of Apologies In Lawyer Discipline, Leslie Levin, Jennifer K. Robbennolt

Faculty Articles and Papers

The lawyer discipline system is often the only recourse for complainants when lawyers misbehave. Yet it is also deeply unsatisfying. Most grievances are dismissed and even when a sanction is imposed, the complainant receives no monetary compensation. Lawyers rarely even apologize for the harm they caused. Yet apologies can repair relationships and trust, decrease distress, restore the victim’s standing, and affirm important values. In this article, we explore whether and how apologies might be more systematically incorporated into the lawyer discipline system to address lawyer mistakes and misconduct. We detail how apologies are currently sporadically used and evaluated by disciplinary …

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The Politics Of Bar Admission: Lessons From The Pandemic, Leslie C. Levin

Faculty Articles and Papers

No abstract provided.

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Should Justices Be Historians? Justice Scalia’S Opinion In District Of Columbia V. Heller, Todd B. Adams

University of San Francisco Law Review

No abstract provided.

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Biglaw: Money And Meaning In The Modern Law Firm, Milton C. Regan, Lisa H. Rohrer

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The Great Recession intensified large law firms’ emphasis on financial performance, leading to claims that lawyers in these firms were now guided by business rather than professional values. Based on interviews with more than 250 partners in large firms, Mitt Regan and Lisa H. Rohrer suggest that the reality is much more complex. It is true that large firm hiring, promotion, compensation, and termination policies are more influenced by business considerations than ever before and that firms actively recruit profitable partners from other firms to replace those they regard as unproductive. At the same time, law firm partners continue to …

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Client-Centered Communication: How Effective Lawyering Requires Emotional Intelligence, Active Listening, And Client Choice, Heather Heavin, Michaela Keet

Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution

For the lawyer-client relationship to work effectively, lawyers need to provide clients with competent, understandable, and relevant legal advice. This proposition is so central to the lawyer's role that it is difficult to challenge. Yet, we suggest, this proposition belies the complexity of the responsibility, given the decision-making process that clients are going through (or should be going through) when deciding to litigate or to settle through negotiation or mediation. The educational literature contains much advice for lawyers on the benefits of dispute resolution processes, how to select and navigate through them, but much less on how lawyers should guide …

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The Small-Er Screen: Youtube Vlogging And The Unequipped Child Entertainment Labor Laws, Amanda G. Riggio

Seattle University Law Review

Family vloggers are among the millions of content creators on YouTube. In general, vloggers frequently upload recorded videos of their daily lives. Family vloggers are unique because they focus their content around their familial relationships and the lives of their children. One set of family vloggers, the Ace Family, has recorded their children’s lives from the day they were born and continue to upload videos of each milestone, including “Elle Cries on Her First Rollercoaster Ride” and “Elle and Alaïa Get Caught Doing What!! **Hidden Camera**.” Another vlogging couple, Cole and Savannah LaBrant, post similar content, including videos titled “Baby …

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The Proposed Rules On Advertising And Solicitation, Vincent R. Johnson

Faculty Articles

This article addresses the rule proposal appearing as ballot item E for the State Bar of Texas rules vote February 2 to March 4, 2021. The proposed rules dealing with lawyer advertising and solicitation seek to clarify, simplify, and modernize this area of the law, while nevertheless continuing to endorse principles and practices that have proved to be sound.

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Full-Text Articles in Legal Ethics and Professional Responsibility

Professional Liability, Chelsea Glover, Sven Stricker, Stephanie Assi

SMU Annual Texas Survey

Ad Tech & The Future Of Legal Ethics, Seth Katsuya Endo

UF Law Faculty Publications

Solitary Confinement As Illegitimately Proscribed And Disproportional Punishment: Another Angle From Which To Attack The Inhumane Practice, Danika J. Anderson

Notre Dame Journal of Law, Ethics & Public Policy

Judges And The Deregulation Of The Lawyer's Monopoly, Jessica Steinberg, Anna Carpenter, Colleen Shanahan, Alyx Mark

Faculty Articles

The Architecture Of Judicial Ethics, Charles G. Geyh

Articles by Maurer Faculty

A Clumsy Couple: The Problem Of Applying Model Rule 1.7 In Transactional Settings, Katelyn K. Leveque

Indiana Law Journal

Going Beyond Rule 8.4(G): A Shift To Active And Conscious Efforts To Dismantle Bias, Meredith R. Miller

Journal of Race, Gender, and Ethnicity

Testing Privilege: Coaching Bar Takers Towards "Minimum Competency" During The 2020 Pandemic, Afton Cavanaugh

Faculty Articles

Neither “Post-War” Nor Post-Pregnancy Paranoia: How America’S War On Drugs Continues To Perpetuate Disparate Incarceration Outcomes For Pregnant, Substance-Involved Offenders, Becca S. Zimmerman

Pitzer Senior Theses

Antiracism, Reflection, And Professional Identity, Andrew King-Ries, Monte Mills, Eduardo R.C. Capulong

Faculty Law Review Articles

Assertion And Hearsay, Richard Lloret

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

Achieving Better Care In Pennsylvania By Allowing Pharmacists To Practice Pharmacy, Travis Murray

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

The Specter Of Malpractice: When Law Firm General Counsel And Risk Management Professionals Are Confronted With Potential Malpractice Claims And Ethics Violations, Joseph R. Tiano Jr., Nancy B. Rapoport, William J. Siroky

Scholarly Works

No, The Firing Squad Is Not Better Than Lethal Injection: A Response To Stephanie Moran’S A Modest Proposal, Michael Conklin

Seattle University Law Review

Table Of Contents, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Choice Of Law And The Preponderantly Multistate Rule: The Example Of Successor Corporation Products Liability, Diana Sclar

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

Don't Change The Subject: How State Election Laws Can Nullify Ballot Questions, Cole Gordner

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

Professional Identity In Time Of Uncertainty: Not Moment Too Soon, Margaret E. Reuter

Faculty Works

A Tribute To Professor Catherine Mahern, Lawrence Raful

Scholarly Works

Algorithmic Responsibility, Algorithmic Bias, Darla Jackson

Other Faculty Publications

Complicity And Lesser Evils: A Tale Of Two Lawyers, David Luban

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Heroes Among Us: Good Samaritan Laws And Paddlers Turned Swiftwater Rescuers, Jennifer Jolly-Ryan

University of San Francisco Law Review

"Man Is Opposed To Fair Play": An Empirical Analysis Of How The Fifth Circuit Has Failed To Take Seriously Atkins V. Virginia, Michael L. Perlin, Talia Roitberg Harmon, Sarah Wetzel

Articles & Chapters

To Err Is Human, To Apologize Is Hard: The Role Of Apologies In Lawyer Discipline, Leslie Levin, Jennifer K. Robbennolt

Faculty Articles and Papers

The Politics Of Bar Admission: Lessons From The Pandemic, Leslie C. Levin

Faculty Articles and Papers

Should Justices Be Historians? Justice Scalia’S Opinion In District Of Columbia V. Heller, Todd B. Adams

University of San Francisco Law Review

Biglaw: Money And Meaning In The Modern Law Firm, Milton C. Regan, Lisa H. Rohrer

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Client-Centered Communication: How Effective Lawyering Requires Emotional Intelligence, Active Listening, And Client Choice, Heather Heavin, Michaela Keet

Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution

The Small-Er Screen: Youtube Vlogging And The Unequipped Child Entertainment Labor Laws, Amanda G. Riggio

Seattle University Law Review

The Proposed Rules On Advertising And Solicitation, Vincent R. Johnson

Faculty Articles