Legal Ethics and Professional Responsibility Commons^™

Put Down The Phone! The Standard For Witness Interviews Is In-Person, Face-To-Face, One-On-One, Sean O'Brien, Quinn O'Brien, Dana Cook

Faculty Works

Professor and capital defense attorney Sean O’Brien, private investigator Quinn O’Brien, and mitigation specialist Dana Cook team up in this article to explain why the standard for competent defense investigation requires face-to-face, one-on-one, culturally competent client and witness interviews, and why short cuts to investigation, such as telephone calls or remote video links, are counter-productive, prone to failure, and constitute substandard work. Although the primary focus of this article is on standards that apply to capital mitigation work, the problems created by remote witness interviews are not unique to death penalty work; there are persuasive arguments and authority that the …

Rhode Was Right (About Character And Fitness), Leslie C. Levin

Faculty Articles and Papers

Almost 40 years ago, Deborah Rhode chronicled numerous problems with the legal profession’s character and fitness inquiry in her seminal article, Moral Character as a Professional Credential. This essay, which is dedicated to her memory, assesses the current state of that inquiry. The essay notes a few areas of improvement in some jurisdictions, but finds the character and fitness inquiry remains problematic. Some jurisdictions continue to operate without published standards and most character and fitness committees—and even the courts— do not publish information about their decisions. It is still the case, as Rhode noted, that there is little evidence that …

"This Is Not Normal": The Role Of Lawyer Organizations In Protecting Constitutional Norms And Values, Leslie C. Levin

Faculty Articles and Papers

Lawyer organizations in the United States perform a range of functions. Some are essentially social clubs that provide networking opportunities for lawyers. Others help their members stay up to date on changes in the law and provide other educational and material benefits.1 Through these efforts, lawyer organizations often serve as a site where lawyers learn the norms and values of the legal profession. Some lawyer organizations also perform more outward facing functions, working through lobbying and litigation to maintain lawyers’ status and protect their economic interests. Others pursue even broader goals, working to enhance the functioning of the courts, provide …

The Other Bar Hurdle: An Examination Of The Character And Fitness Requirement For Bar Admission, David L. Hudson Jr., Andrea Gemignani

Mitchell Hamline Law Review

No abstract provided.

An Apple A Day Keeps Educational Malpractice Lawsuits At Bay: Applying Principles Of Medical Malpractice's "Locality Rule" To Deconstruct The Academic Abstention Doctrine, Madeline Bergstrom

American University Law Review

Education serves as one of the most impactful and purposeful tools in American society. However, the United States education system suffers from many shortcomings and failures, and as a result, may occasionally lead to student harm from the actions of educators or academic institutions. These claims commonly allege that educators and academic institutions engaged in negligent behavior, and students or parents bringing these claims are often looking for legal relief through the judicial system. These claims are typically labeled as educational malpractice, and historically, courts have almost uniformly rejected these claims as non-cognizable actions.

This Comment argues that this judicial …

Decurtis V. Visconti, Boren & Campbell Ltd., 252 A.3d 765 (R.I. 2021), Alexus Bonilla

Roger Williams University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Helping Self-Represented Litigants Isn’T Charity Work, It’S A Professional Obligation, Suzanne Harrington-Steppen, Eliza Vorenberg

Law Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

When Patients Are Their Own Doctors: Roe V. Wade In An Era Of Self-Managed Care, Yvonne F. Lindgren

Faculty Works

The Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade framed the abortion right as a right to make the abortion decision in consultation with a “responsible physician.” Under this framing, doctors were cast in the role of medical “gatekeepers” to mediate patient access to abortion. In the ensuing years, the doctor-patient relationship has become the site of restrictive abortion regulations in many states. This Article argues that Roe’s framing suffers from a foundational flaw: While the gatekeeper framing may have been appropriate in the Roe era when abortion was surgical and non-clinical abortions were potentially lethal, today, medication abortion—a two-drug non-surgical regimen …

What Should Ethical And Strategic Employers Do About Covid-19 Vaccines?, Dale B. Thompson, Susan A. Suspina, Katherina G. Pattit, Dawn R. Swink

University of San Francisco Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Case For Pattern-Or-Practice Investigations Against District Attorney's Office, Rory Fleming

University of San Francisco Law Review

No abstract provided.

What Happens Before The First Mediation Session? An Empirical Study Of Pre-Session Communications, Roselle L. Wissler, Art Hinshaw

Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution

Mediator, lawyer, and party preparation in advance of the first formal mediation session is widely seen as important for the effectiveness of the mediation. Communications between the mediator and the mediation participants before the first mediation session, along with the submission of case information and documents to the mediator, are two primary means of information exchange to aid preparation. Few studies have looked at what occurs during these early stages, despite their centrality to mediation. The present Article reports the findings of a study of more than 1,000 mediators in different mediation settings and dispute types across eight states that …

Every Reasonable Chance Plus Two: How The Red Hook Community Justice Center Bridges The Gap Between The Community And The Justice System, Se Won Park

Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution

The following is excerpted from an article published by Fordham Law News:

Standing before Judge Calabrese is Sean Johnson (his name has been changed to protect his privacy). Over the years he has been in and out of Rikers Island and has been arrested multiple times, most recently for shoplifting.

Today, Johnson has come before Judge Calabrese not for arraignment or sentencing but to do his part to solve some of the problems that have kept him cycling in and out of prison. On this afternoon, he has tested drug-free after months of counseling and treatment.

"Mr. Johnson," Judge Calabrese …

College Sport Ethics: Moral Versus Consequentialist Drivers Of Student Ethics In Sport Activities Extended Abstract, Arturo Z. Vasquez-Parraga, Miguel A. Sahagun, Jason Flores

AMTP Proceedings 2022

This study aims at explaining why college students cheat in sport activities. Knowing what induces students to cheat from their own rationale for cheating is the first objective and uncovers the first gap. Understanding how students solve ethical dilemmas in general and how such routine is applied to sport activities is the second objective and leads to visualize the second gap. Based on empirical research, this study evaluates the competing roles of morality or deontological norms and the consequences or teleological norms in the formation of ethical judgment and ethical intentions (Hunt and Vitell, 1986). Previous research shows that the …

A Study Of Tax Lawyers Discussing Duties, Michael Hatfield, Michelle Kwon

Articles

This Article reports the first qualitative empirical study of U.S. tax lawyers. We interviewed women lawyers who were tax planning specialists. Though this is the first such study of U.S. tax lawyers, this methodology has been used often to study the professional ethics of other tax practitioners around the world. We had three research questions that we sought to answer through dynamic conversations on topics such as the distinctions between good and bad tax plans and good and bad tax lawyers and also the joys and stresses of tax practice. Our first research question was as to the make-up of …

Impeaching Legal Ethics, Bruce Green, Rebecca Roiphe

Articles & Chapters

In the investigations, hearings, and aftermath of President Trump’s first impeachment, lawyer-commentators invoked the rules of professional conduct to criticize the government lawyers involved. To a large extent, these commentators mischaracterized or misapplied the rules. Although these commentators often presented themselves to the public as neutral experts, they were engaged in political advocacy, using the rules, as private litigators often do, as a strategic weapon against an adversary in the court of public opinion. For example, commentators on the left wrongly conveyed that, under the rules, government lawyers had a responsibility to the public to voluntarily assist in the impeachment, …

Legal Ethics For Government Lawyers: Confronting Doctrinal Gaps, Andrew Martin

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Despite the recent growth in the Canadian literature on legal ethics for government lawyers, the leading conceptual models have yet to be applied to resolve many of the most important legal questions facing government lawyers. In this article, I identify four key situations where the obligations of government lawyers as lawyers appear to clash with their obligations as public servants. I provide both a doctrinal analysis of how the current law applies in those situations and proposals for how the law can be clarified and improved. This analysis both provides much needed guidance to government lawyers and promotes a greater …

Colloquium: Subversive Lawyering: Foreword, Bennett Capers, Bruce A. Green

Fordham Law Review

Is there such a thing as subversive lawyering? And if so, what is it? These are the questions that motivate this colloquium issue. To be sure, other, similar terms exist and have been explicated. Movement lawyering. Rebellious lawyering. Resistance lawyering. Indeed,we were particularly inspired by Daniel Farbman’s article Resistance Lawyering, in which he uncovers the stories of abolitionist lawyers who, confronting the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, “employed every means at their disposal to frustrate, delay, and dismantle the system within which they were practicing.” But still, we wondered if subversive lawyering might be something different. Something akin to resistance …

Can Continuing Legal Education Pass The Test? Empirical Lessons From The Medical World, Rima Sirota

Notre Dame Journal of Law, Ethics & Public Policy

No abstract provided.

Trust And Distrust Across Constitutional Law, R. George Wright

Notre Dame Journal of Law, Ethics & Public Policy

No abstract provided.

The Legal And Ethical Implications Of Public Pension Reform: Analyzing The New Constitutional Cases, T. Leigh Anenson, Jennifer K. Gershberg

Notre Dame Journal of Law, Ethics & Public Policy

No abstract provided.