Legal Profession Commons^™

Professionalism And Life In The Trenches: The Case Of The Public Defender, Rodney Thaxton, Lida Rodriguez-Taseff

St. Thomas Law Review

I would like to start with a little story. This actually happened during my employment at the Dade County Public Defender's office, when I was in juvenile court. There was this very bright young man who, having been arrested for stealing bicycles, was in detention. He had figured out an ingenious way to steal bicycles. He would go into the bicycle section in department stores, get a bicycle, and start riding it around. An employee would invariably say, "Oh, you can't ride that bicycle in here. Take it out," and would escort him to the door with the bicycle. He …

Greetings, Daniel J. Morrissey

St. Thomas Law Review

No abstract provided.

Be Just To One Another: Preliminary Thoughts On Civility, Moral Character, And Professionalism, Mark Neal Aaronson

St. Thomas Law Review

The premise of this Article is that the inability of lawyers to conduct themselves in a reasonable fashion has less to do with a lack of good manners or ignorance about what conduct is expected, but has more to do with not having the strength of character needed to exercise self-discipline when making practical or ethical choices. I focus on civility because it speaks to both the profession's present distress over an apparent deterioration in lawyer behavior and its ongoing interest in lawyers of high moral character. My main agenda is to reintroduce certain ancient, classical ideas about civility as …

Remarks: Professionalism And The Courts, Ursula Ungaro-Benages

St. Thomas Law Review

No abstract provided.

Legal Professionalism: Do Ethical Rules Require Zealous Representation For Poor People, Michelle S. Jacobs

St. Thomas Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Profession Of Law: Columbia Law School's Use Of Experiential Learning Techniques To Teach Professional Responsibility, Carol B. Liebman

Faculty Scholarship

Columbia Law School's ethics course, "The Profession of Law" ("POL"), is an interactive, experiential exploration of lawyer ethics. The course, required for all third-year students, is taught on an intensive basis during the first week of the fall semester. It begins on Monday morning, the first day of the semester, and runs through mid-afternoon on the following Friday. The course has five goals: to introduce students to the rules that govern professional conduct; to help them develop an analytic framework for making ethical decisions in those broad areas where the rules do not give clear answers; to provoke them to …

Avoiding Error In Closing Argument, H. Patrick Furman

Publications

No abstract provided.

The Criminal Defense Lawyer's Reliance On Bias And Prejudice, Eva Nilsen

Faculty Scholarship

This Article is divided into three parts. Part I examines both the many contexts in which criminal defense lawyers and clinical students encounter bias and prejudice,¹² and the commonly-raised objections to its exploitation. Part II looks at the way the tactical use of bias relates to a lawyer's duty of zealous advocacy. Here, the Article focuses on whether existing ethics rules provide guidance for a lawyer's use of bias and whether proposed rules aimed at eliminating such advocacy would improve or diminish justice. This article argues against such efforts because they impinge on legitimate lawyering, and they may distract …

The Lawyer's Duty Of Public Service: More Than Charity?, Tigran W. Eldred, Thomas Schoenherr

Faculty Scholarship

The question of whether lawyers have an ethical duty to perform public service-and, in particular, whether the obligation requires that a percentage of time be devoted to providing free legal services to the poor'-has a disjointed and uneven history. Leaders of the bar, espousing various and often conflicting views of morality, compassion, noblesse oblige, and individual autonomy, have contributed to this state of affairs, creating a complicated web of vague ideals that today jeopardizes the legal profession's sense of its own public obligations. On the one hand, the legal profession remains dedicated to the traditional view that public service …

Government Civil Investigations And The Ethical Ban On Communicating With Represented Parties, Ernest F. Lidge Iii

Indiana Law Journal

No abstract provided.

The Law Between The Bar And The State, Susan P. Koniak

Faculty Scholarship

The traditional understanding of the relation between law and professional legal ethics is that legal ethics covers matters not covered by law; that ethics sits passively above law, starting where law leaves off. In this Article, Professor Susan Koniak argues that this understanding is wrong. She asserts that professional ethics are in competition and conflict with law as it is embodied in the pronouncements of courts and legislatures. Although "law" is usually considered to be the near exclusive preserve of the state, the Article contends that private groups also have "law," but it is usually called "ethics." The legal profession's …

Gentile V. State Bar Of Nevada: Trial In The Court Of Public Opinion And Coping With Model Rule 3.6 - Where Do We Go From Here, Lynn S. Fulstone

Villanova Law Review (1956 - )

No abstract provided.

Law And Conformity, Ethics And Conflict: The Trouble With Law-Based Conceptions Of Ethics, Steven R. Salbu

Indiana Law Journal

No abstract provided.

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 …

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

Indiana Law Journal

No abstract provided.

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 …

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 …

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

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

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

Publications

No abstract provided.

Responding To Client Perjury Under The New Pennsylvania Rules Of Professional Conduct: The Lawyer's Continuing Dilemma, Doris Del Tosto Brogan

Villanova Law Review (1956 - )

No abstract provided.

Confidentiality Under The Pennsylvania Attorney-Client Privilege Statutes And The New Pennsylvania Rules Of Professional Conduct, Leonard Packel

Villanova Law Review (1956 - )

No abstract provided.

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.

Common Issues Of Professional Responsibility, Thomas Ehrlich

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

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

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Attorney-Client Privilege: A Guide For Corporations, Pamela Taylor

University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review

No abstract provided.

Confidentiality: The Future Crime--Contraband Dilemmas, Deborah Abramovsky Touro College School Of Law

West Virginia Law Review

No abstract provided.

Judicial Control Over The Bar Versus Legislative Regulation Of Governmental Ethics: The Pennsylvania Approach And A Proposed Alternative, Stephen J. Shapiro

Duquesne Law Review

Pennsylvania courts, led by the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, recently have declared two sections of the Pennsylvania Ethics Act unconstitutional as applied to judges and attorneys. Citing the exclusive power of the supreme court to regulate the practice of law in Pennsylvania, the courts have struck down the Act's postemployment restriction and financial disclosure requirement. The author critically examines the Pennsylvania decisions in this area and concludes that the courts' reasoning is contrary to settled principles of separation of powers. He suggests an alternative approach for determining the constitutionality of ethics legislation that regulates the conduct of the judiciary and …

On Choosing Clients And Careers: A Speculative Essay On The Problems Of Initial Choice, Joseph P. Tomain

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

This paper deals with the moral dimensions of initial choices of careers and clients. Although the foregoing tale is addressed to the initial choice of career, similar considerations enter into the initial choice of clients. The problems of initial career choice were highlighted because they are more immediate to law students.' In addition, one's choice of career may have a significant effect on future choices of clients.

In order for a lawyer to make an initial choice of either career or client, moral questions of the first rank must be answered. The purpose of this paper is to discuss these …