Professional Responsibility In An Uncertain Profession: Legal Ethics In China,
2015
The University of Akron
Professional Responsibility In An Uncertain Profession: Legal Ethics In China, Judith A. Mcmorrow
Akron Law Review
This essay starts with two simple questions: Why do law schools in China have so little discussion of legal ethics? Why do students not press or seek more discussion of this topic? The essay then looks at the creation of norms of legal ethics from a topdown perspective and the inadequacy of that approach. Both a bottomup and top-down examination identify the tremendous challenges facing the Chinese emerging legal culture in building a coherent model of lawyering that can serve as the foundation for a system of legal ethics. This essay is intended as a contribution to the growing English …
Electronic Data, Electronic Searching, Inadvertent Production Of Privileged Data: A Perfect Storm,
2015
The University of Akron
Electronic Data, Electronic Searching, Inadvertent Production Of Privileged Data: A Perfect Storm, Donald Wochna
Akron Law Review
This article suggests that the practical impact of treating electronic searching as an expert function is to permit attorneys to focus and strategize on the process of electronic searching rather than on the completeness of document production. In effect, electronic searching permits attorneys to quit focusing on finding documents and begin focusing on identifying electronic sources of information on which reside relevant documents that can be extracted by means of electronic searching protocols.
Supervising Offshore Outsourcing Of Legal Services In A Global Environment: Re-Examining Current Ethical Standards,
2015
The University of Akron
Supervising Offshore Outsourcing Of Legal Services In A Global Environment: Re-Examining Current Ethical Standards, Mark L. Tuft
Akron Law Review
There are many forms of legal outsourcing that range from outsourcing administrative and support functions to outsourcing legal and law-related services domestically and abroad to ―offshoring,‖ in which a firm relocates certain legal and law-related services to a foreign jurisdiction that allows the firm to realize greater efficiency and lower costs. The question is whether a distinction between the duty of supervision over the work of foreign lawyers and domestic lawyers will continue to be valid in the changing global legal environment and whether the ethical obligations under the current rules for partners, managers, and supervisory lawyers in the traditional …
Inside, Outside: Cross-Border Enforcement Of Attorney Advertising Restrictions,
2015
The University of Akron
Inside, Outside: Cross-Border Enforcement Of Attorney Advertising Restrictions, Margaret Raymond
Akron Law Review
The question that motivated this paper was three-fold: whether states can regulate this type of cross-border advertising, whether they do, and whether they should...If a state wants to regulate advertising, it wants to regulate all advertising that the state‘s consumers will see, regardless of where it originated or where the lawyers who engaged in it are admitted to practice. Enforcement accordingly advances the interests that are assertedly served by attorney advertising restrictions. A failure to enforce restrictive rules against out-of-state lawyers, by contrast, has a somewhat counterintuitive result.
The Legal Ethics Of Metadata Mining,
2015
The University of Akron
The Legal Ethics Of Metadata Mining, Andrew M. Perlman
Akron Law Review
Bar associations have produced a number of legal ethics opinions that address the practice of metadata mining. This essay explains the nature of the problem, reviews the ethics opinions that have addressed it, and contends that the issue is simply a variation of the oft-examined problem of inadvertently disclosed documents. The essay concludes that flat bans on metadata mining are misguided and that metadata mining should be treated in the same manner as inadvertent disclosures more generally. Under this approach, if a state permits lawyers to review inadvertently disclosed privileged documents, the jurisdiction should also permit lawyers to review the …
Exporting American Legal Ethics,
2015
The University of Akron
Exporting American Legal Ethics, James E. Moliterno
Akron Law Review
Over the past decade or so, a massive exportation of U.S. lawyer ethics law, primarily to emerging democracies, has been taking place. The exportation has been managed largely, but not exclusively, by ABA Rule of Law programs, funded extensively by grants from USAID. Excellent work is being done by these programs and nothing in this essay should be read to suggest that these projects lack value. But in one respect, the work of these and other such projects is sometimes tinged with cultural imperialism...The large-scale adoption of U.S. models of lawyer and judge regulation outside the United States is likely …
Multijurisdictional Practice And The Influence Of Model Rule Of Professional Conduct 5.5 - An Interim Assessment,
2015
The University of Akron
Multijurisdictional Practice And The Influence Of Model Rule Of Professional Conduct 5.5 - An Interim Assessment, Arthur F. Greenbaum
Akron Law Review
In this piece I examine the influence of Model Rule 5.5 on the law of multijurisdictional practice in the states by lawyers licensed in the United States who are not working in-house for an organizational client. In doing so, I do not intend to revisit the debate on what lines should be drawn, if any, to control multijurisdictional practice. Those issues have been well debated in the adoption of the Restatement (Third) of the Law Governing Lawyers, the deliberations of the Commission on Multijurisdictional Practice,15 consideration surrounding state implementation initiatives, and voluminous commentary. Instead, I want to explore the impact …
Ethical Responsibility And Legal Liability Of Lawyers For Failure To Institute Or Monitor Litigation Holds,
2015
The University of Akron
Ethical Responsibility And Legal Liability Of Lawyers For Failure To Institute Or Monitor Litigation Holds, Nathan M. Crystal
Akron Law Review
The ethical and legal basis for subjecting counsel to discipline or liability for failing to initiate or implement litigation holds in connection with ESI exists. Recent important cases, while not imposing discipline or liability on counsel, have continued to lay the ground work for such liability. ...Cases in which counsel are held liable for damages to their clients or subject to discipline for failing to comply with well established ESI discovery obligations will not be long in coming as the new approach to winning litigation through discovery continues to develop.
Sports And Entertainment Agents And Agent-Attorneys: Discourses And Conventions Concerning Crossing Jurisdictional And Professional Borders,
2015
The University of Akron
Sports And Entertainment Agents And Agent-Attorneys: Discourses And Conventions Concerning Crossing Jurisdictional And Professional Borders, David S. Caudill
Akron Law Review
Questions regarding the ethical obligations, pitfalls, and dilemmas facing attorneys who become sports or entertainment agents are not new. However, despite a substantial discourse on the topic, the sense persists that being both a lawyer and an agent is problematic. The applicable laws, including ethical regulations, seem to be clear, but are subject not only to law‟s usual jurisdictional variations and interpretive instability, but also to the mediation of conventions or tacit understandings that pervade the sports and entertainment industries.
The New Era - Quo Vadis?,
2015
The University of Akron
The New Era - Quo Vadis?, Jack P. Sahl
Akron Law Review
Although the Miller-Becker Institute for Professional Responsibility (the MBI) planned its Inaugural Symposium before the creation of the 20/20 Commission, the Symposium brought together twenty-six national and international experts to examine the consequences of globalization, rapid technological change, and more.
Indispensable Logic: Using The Logical Fallacy Of The Undistributed Middle As A Litigation Tool,
2015
The University of Akron
Indispensable Logic: Using The Logical Fallacy Of The Undistributed Middle As A Litigation Tool, Stephen M. Rice
Akron Law Review
This article explores the logical fallacy named the Fallacy of the Undistributed Middle and demonstrates how it can be a powerful tool for those engaged in the discipline of solving legal problems and evaluating legal arguments. First, it will explain what formal logic is, how it is different from informal conventions of logic, and describe the important role formal logic plays in skillful advocacy. Second, it will explain the Fallacy of the Undistributed Middle and why arguments falling into this fallacious pattern of reasoning are logically invalid. Third, it will examine the courts’ contemporary recognition of this formal logical fallacy …
Lawyers' Professional Independence: Overrated Or Undervalued?,
2015
The University of Akron
Lawyers' Professional Independence: Overrated Or Undervalued?, Bruce A. Green
Akron Law Review
This article grows out of a presentation on November 9, 2012, as part of the Distinguished Lecture Series of the Akron Law Joseph G. Miller and William C. Becker Center for Professional Responsibility. This article begins with some reflections on the principal meanings of professional independence, as that term is conventionally employed. Part II discusses the bar’s collective independence to regulate its members. Part III discusses individual lawyers’ independence in the context of professional representations, including independence from clients, on one hand, and independence from third parties, on the other. Part IV then suggests that there is a meaning of …
What It Means To Be A Lawyer In These Uncertain Times: Some Thoughts On Ethical Participation In The Legal Education Industry,
2015
The University of Akron
What It Means To Be A Lawyer In These Uncertain Times: Some Thoughts On Ethical Participation In The Legal Education Industry, Susan Carle
Akron Law Review
I will first take a quick look in Part II at the basic data regarding employment statistics for recent law school graduates. This is the primary source of concern cited by those who argue that legal education is in profound crisis. What those statistics show, in a nutshell, is that large law firm hiring is down, but that small firm hiring is up by even more significant amounts, and that salaries for employed graduates continue to rise. What also continues to rise is the new law graduate unemployment rate, though not by the exaggerated dimensions some reports imply. New lawyers …
Ethics 20/20 Successfully Achieved Its Mission: It "Protected, Preserved, And Maintained",
2015
The University of Akron
Ethics 20/20 Successfully Achieved Its Mission: It "Protected, Preserved, And Maintained", James E. Moliterno
Akron Law Review
The profession, it turns out, serves the status quo in multiple ways. At times, serving the status quo means making significant changes that will fend off outsiders or cultural change. At other times, serving the status quo means doing as little as possible in the vain hope that change will pass the profession by as if it were a bad dream rendered irrelevant by the morning light. In either event, the profession loses. Change comes and washes over the profession’s walls. The profession began to organize in earnest in the 1870s as state and local bar associations sprang up. For …
What Are Lawyers For?,
2015
The University of Akron
What Are Lawyers For?, Daniel Markovits
Akron Law Review
What are lawyers for? What social purposes do lawyers serve? What functions underwrite the special obligations and entitlements that accompany the lawyer’s professional role? I shall try to sketch an answer to these questions, at least with respect to lawyers who function as litigators, in adjudication. The answer will surprise many. Lawyers, I shall argue, do not serve truth or justice, and should not seek them. Instead, lawyers serve to legitimate
The Client Who Did Too Much,
2015
The University of Akron
The Client Who Did Too Much, Nancy B. Rapoport
Akron Law Review
Discussion of the effect of a lawyer pursuing actions based on pressure from his client.
Administrative And Interim Suspensions In The Lawyer Regulatory Process - A Preliminary Inquiry,
2015
The University of Akron
Administrative And Interim Suspensions In The Lawyer Regulatory Process - A Preliminary Inquiry, Arthur F. Greenbaum
Akron Law Review
Suspending a lawyer from practice, even for a limited period of time, however, can have substantial negative consequences for the lawyer, the lawyer’s clients, third-parties, and the legal system. In this article, I explore the differing rationales underlying each of these types of suspension and whether, in each instance, suspension is the appropriate tool to protect those interests, or whether less drastic remedies would suffice. Upon balancing the legitimate interests furthered by such suspensions against the substantial costs they impose, I argue for tempering those consequences in certain settings, such as pure administrative suspensions, and for employing less disruptive sanctions …
Tomorrow, And Tomorrow, And Tomorrow: Ethics 20/20 Amidst A Changing Profession,
2015
The University of Akron
Tomorrow, And Tomorrow, And Tomorrow: Ethics 20/20 Amidst A Changing Profession, Thomas Ross
Akron Law Review
In Part II of this paper, I will sketch briefly my sense of some of the important ways in which the practice of law seems to be evolving. Part III will revisit the work of the Ethics 20/20 Commission and suggest that the posture of the Commission and of the ABA elite in this initiative has been essentially one of accommodation and facilitation, rather than an oppositional stance. I will briefly note a historical instance of the organized bar taking such an oppositional stance and offer some hypotheses about why the organized bar has chosen these two different postures in …
Attorney As Ethicist,
2015
The University of Akron
Attorney As Ethicist, Terry Szmagala
Akron Law Review
This is a transcript of Terry Szmagala’s speech from The University of Akron School of Law’s Miller-Becker Center for Professional Responsibility Symposium, Navigating the Practice of Law in the Wake of Ethics 20/20 – Globalization, New Technologies, and What It Means to Be a Lawyer in These Uncertain Times, which occurred April 4-5, 2013.
Real Metamorphosis Or More Of The Same: Navigating The Practice Of Law In The Wake Of Ethics 20/20 - Globalization, New Technologies, And What It Means To Be A Lawyer In These Uncertain Times,
2015
The University of Akron
Real Metamorphosis Or More Of The Same: Navigating The Practice Of Law In The Wake Of Ethics 20/20 - Globalization, New Technologies, And What It Means To Be A Lawyer In These Uncertain Times, Jack P. Sahl
Akron Law Review
On April 4 and 5, 2013, The University of Akron School of Law’s Miller-Becker Center for Professional Responsibility (“MBC”) hosted the symposium, Navigating the Practice of Law in the Wake of Ethics 20/20 – Globalization, New Technologies, and What It Means to Be a Lawyer in These Uncertain Times (Ethics 20/20 – Uncertain Times). The symposium examined the myriad of changes and problems confronting the bar, legal education, and the courts. Although law schools, courts, and the organized bar have provided a steady supply of programs addressing the recent changes confronting the profession and legal education, Ethics 20/20 – Uncertain …
