Legal Ethics and Professional Responsibility Commons^™

When Fantasy Becomes Reality: Attempts To Regulate The Highly Unregulated Daily Fantasy Sports Industry., Garrett Greene

St. Mary's Law Journal

Legislation is beginning to creep into the once safeguard-devoid sphere of the daily fantasy sports industry. Daily fantasy sports are a subset of traditional season-long fantasy sports and are immensely lucrative, yet there are hardly any standard regulations. Ironically, the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA) of 2006, which was used to outlaw online poker gambling, paved the way for daily fantasy sports, because it federally exempted fantasy sports from being classified as illegal sports gambling. The UIGEA further protects daily fantasy sports from the Professional and Amateur Sports Prohibition Act (PASPA) of 1992 which prohibits states from sponsoring sports …

Commentaries On The Model Rules Of Professional Conduct, Thomas Andrews, Karen Boxx

Books

This Fifth Edition of the ACTEC Commentaries continues the tradition of providing guidance on the Model Rules of Professional Conduct particular to estate and trust practitioners. The Fifth Edition update to the Commentaries takes account of amendments to the Model Rules adopted since the 2005 Fourth Edition, including those proposed by the American Bar Association Commission on Ethics 20/20 as adopted by the ABA in 2012 and 2013. It is current through August 31, 2015 as there have been no amendments to the Model Rules since 2013.

In addition to these updates, we have added Commentary and Annotations to four …

Reversal By Recusal? Comer V. Murphy Oil U.S.A., Inc. And The Needfor Mandatory Judicial Recusal Statements, Patrick A. Woods

The University of New Hampshire Law Review

[Excerpt] "In many cases, if not most, voluntary judicial recusal is both an efficient use of judicial resources and an exceptional safeguard to the legitimacy of the federal judiciary. However, voluntary judicial recusal poses its own unique problems when the withdrawing judge declines to issue a statement explaining the statutory grounds for his or her recusal. Unlike when a party seeks to disqualify a judge by motion—where the reasons for recusal will, at a minimum, be set out in the motion papers—when a judge voluntarily recuses, there is not necessarily any record created as to the reasons for the recusal. …

Is Pro Bono Practice In Legal “Backwaters” Beyond The Scope Of The Model Rules?, Barbara Graves-Poller

The University of New Hampshire Law Review

[Excerpt] "While many private sector attorneys offer pro bono legal services that reflect the same level of diligence and skill characteristic of the work done on behalf of their paying clients, the egregious failures described in the MC v. GC case and those that occur in many unreported matters highlight the dangers of pro bono initiatives designed to bridge the “access to justice gap.” As used here, the term “justice gap” refers to the chasm between the need for legal representation in civil disputes and public interest attorneys available to serve poor and working class clients. Justice gap pro bono …

The House Edge: On Gambling And Professional Discipline, Stacey A. Tovino

Faculty Articles

On March 26, 2014, the Iowa Supreme Court revoked the license to practice law of Cedar Rapids attorney Susan Hense. Admitted to the Iowa Bar in 1996, Hense subsequently misappropriated $837,000 in client trust funds to feed her addiction to casino gambling. This Article assesses how attorneys like Hense who are addicted to gambling are treated in professional disciplinary actions, including license suspension, revocation, and reinstatement proceedings. Themes that emerge include public misunderstanding of gambling disorder, stigma against individuals with gambling disorder, statutory recognition of substance addictions but not behavioral addictions, and mandatory attendance at religion based fellowship meetings as …

A New "Prospective" On Advance Waivers Of Conflict In Georgia, Charles G. Spalding Jr.

Georgia Law Review

As law firms and their corporate clients continue to expand into different legal jurisdictions, and since the conflict of one attorney is imputed to the attorney's firm, the potential for conflicts of interest increases. A law firm retained to advise a corporate subsidiary in a minor matter in one state may be disqualified from another, more significant matter in a different jurisdiction if the potential client is adverse to the parent company in the initial representation. Without a method for prospective waiver of conflicts, a law firm's only recourse is seeking the consent of the currently represented client. To avoid …

Bridge Over Troubled Waters: Resolving The Ri Grande (Rio Bravo) Water Dispute., Ruben R. Barrera, Dan A. Naranjo

St. Mary's Law Journal

Abstract Forthcoming.

Cultural Evolution Or Revolution? The Millennial's Growing Impact On Professionalism And The Practice Of Law, Jan L. Jacobowitz, Katie M. Lachter, Gabriella Morello

Articles

No abstract provided.

Peer Review: Navigating Uncertainty In The United States Jury System, Anna Offit

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

This Article examines American prosecutors’ approaches to uncertainty during voir dire. At different points during trial preparation— and during jury selection itself—lawyers draw on multiple interpretive systems to make sense of ordinary citizens. Taking Assistant United States Attorneys in a federal jurisdiction in the Northeast United States as a case study, and drawing on ethnographic research, I focus on three systems prosecutors alternately (and sometimes simultaneously) use to evaluate jurors: (1) probabilistic and evaluative analogies, (2) juror-types generated from the details of criminal cases, and (3) local knowledge stemming from prosecutors’ relationships and experiences outside of the courtroom. I show …

Infinity Goes On Trial: Sanism, Pretextuality, And The Representation Of Defendants With Mental Disabilities, Michael L. Perlin

Articles & Chapters

This paper, presented to the mid-winter meeting of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (Austin, TX, 2/18/16), explains why it is essential for lawyers representing criminal defendants with mental disabilities to understand the meanings and contexts of sanism - a largely invisible and largely socially acceptable irrational prejudice of the same quality and character of other irrational prejudices that cause (and are reflected in) prevailing social attitudes of racism, sexism, homophobia, and ethnic bigotry - and pretextuality - the means by which courts regularly accept (either implicitly or explicitly) testimonial dishonesty, countenance liberty deprivations in disingenuous ways that bear …

Preservation: Competently Navigating Between All And Nothing, Lauren Wheeling Waller

Richmond Journal of Law & Technology

Merriam-Webster defines "competent" as "having requisite or adequate ability or qualities."' All professions require competence to be successful-from chefs, to tailors, to NFL quarterbacks. Without the adequate ability to poach an egg, alter suits, or read defenses, they lose patrons, customers, or-in the case of a quarterback-games and fans. Lawyers are no different. Without competence, they may not be successful. However, lawyers are different than the NFL quarterback in that they have an explicit duty of competence to their clients.

Brady Misconduct Remedies: Prior Jeopardy And Ethical Discipline Of Prosecutors, J. Thomas Sullivan

Law Faculty Scholarship

In an Arkansas capital murder prosecution that resulted in conviction and sentences of death based on the killing of a family offour, defense counsel learned after the conviction had been reversed that a key prosecution witness, the defendant's son, who testified against his father, implicating him in the murders at trial, had also given prosecutors a statement in which he claimed responsibility for the crimes and exculpated his father. Defense counsel moved to dismiss the prosecution on the ground of prosecutorial misconduct, then raised a prior jeopardy claim in an effort to bar retrial by taking an interlocutory appeal to …

Friend Request Denied: Judicial Ethics And Social Media, Shaziah Singh

Journal of Law, Technology, & the Internet

"Social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn have revolutionized our social lives and dominate the way we communicate with each other. Whether it comes to personal or professional use, social media platforms come with a multitude of complications. What to post, whom to “friend,” whom to share information with, and what job updates to share are just some of the problems social media users face daily. These complications are only multiplied for judges. A judge’s unique position to influence makes what constitutes acceptable social media usage much more complex. With almost 1.5 billion users on Facebook and 300 …

The Ethics Of Inter Partes Review Before The Uspto., Dorian Ojemen

St. Mary's Law Journal

Abstract Forthcoming.

Texas's Excessive Demand Doctrine Impacts Recoveries In Litigation., Stephanie M. Green

St. Mary's Law Journal

A party demanding money they are not entitled to becomes subject to the excessive demand doctrine. Because the excessive demand doctrine is an affirmative defense, a defending party must allege its claim of excessive demand in its pleadings. A party must “plead it, prove it, and obtain findings of fact on its essential elements.” To obtain findings on the issue, both the pleadings and the evidence are required to put a question or instruction before the jury. Ensuring that the evidence is enough depends upon the trial court—whose judgment will only be overturned upon a showing of an abuse of …

In Defense Of The Devil’S Advocate, Lonnie T. Brown

Scholarly Works

mong the many controversial positions for which Monroe Freedman advocated during his illustrious career, the one that I find most surprising and uncharacteristic is his contention that lawyers who undertake morally questionable representations have a duty to explain or justify their choice of client. Specifically, in 1993 Professor Freedman penned a well-known column in the Legal Times — titled “Must You Be the Devil’s Advocate?” — in which he took Professor Michael Tigar to task for his representation of reputed Nazi war criminal John Demjanjuk. Professor Freedman tacitly criticized Professor Tigar for his client choice and expressly called upon him …

Ethical Challenges Of Using Law Student Interns/Externs To Expand Services To Low-Income Older Adults, Eleanor Lanier

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Liberty And Justice For All? : Ethics In The American Criminal Justice System, Haley Hasenstein

Honors Program Theses

The American Bar Association (ABA) claims a commitment to ethics for all that fall under its jurisdiction. As a part of the Bar Exam that lawyers must take to join the Association they are issued a character and fitness test, where some prior misbehavior may disqualify an individual from becoming barred. “Miscarriages of justice” is a common theme among literature about lawyers in the criminal justice system. In this study I will shed light on some of the ethical discrepancies in the legal profession’s values and practice. This study focuses on criminal lawyers’ experiences with personal ethics as well as …

Of Lodestars And Lawyers: Incorporating The Duty Of Loyalty Into The Model Code Of Conduct, Colin Jackson, Richard Devlin, Brent Cotter

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

The “conflicts quartet” of cases decided by the Supreme Court of Canada can be understood as part of a long-standing tension in Anglo-Canadian jurisprudence between two competing conceptions of a lawyer’s professional identity. In the most recent of these cases, C.N. Railway v. McKercher, the Supreme Court conclusively preferred the loyalty-centred conception of the practice of law over the entrepreneurial conception. While the Federation of Law Societies of Canada amended its Model Code of Professional Conduct in 2014 in response to the Supreme Court’s decision in McKercher, this article argues that those amendments did not go far enough. The authors …

Section 276 Misconstrued: The Failure To Properly Interpret And Apply Canada's Rape Shield Provisions, Elaine Craig

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Despite the vintage of Canada’s rape shield provisions (which in their current manifestation have been in force since 1992), some trial judges continue to misinterpret and/or misapply the Criminal Code provisions limiting the use of evidence of a sexual assault complainant’s other sexual activity. These errors seem to flow from a combination of factors including a general misunderstanding on the part of some trial judges as to what section 276 requires and a failure on the part of some trial judges to properly identify, and fully remove, problematic assumptions about sex and gender from their analytical approach to the use …