What are your ethics obligations when your client gives you documents that the client may not be entitled to have? Model Rule 4.4(b), adopted in some form by most jurisdictions, provides some guidance. Applying it, together with other principles, a New Jersey appeals court, in an unpublished ruling, recently disqualified a firm from
Ticket to hell, take two: FL lawyers face probation for giving Rays tix to judge
You might remember our report last year on the Florida judge who resigned after accepting Tampa Bay Rays baseball tickets from lawyers who had a pending case before him.
The lawyers were representing plaintiff in a slip-and-fall case against Wal-Mart. The day after the jury came back with a defense verdict, one of the lawyers
Insured’s non-cooperation is confidential information, says TX ethics opinion
We’ve written before about what you can and cannot say when withdrawing from representation. Now a Texas bar ethics opinion adds a twist: what can you tell an insurance company that retains you to represent its insured, when the client won’t cooperate?
Lonely in the Lone Star state
A Texas lawyer had a quandary. An
Whoops! When do you have to tell a client about your error?
If you believe that you may have materially erred in a current client’s representation, your duty of communication under Rule 1.4 requires you to inform the client.
That’s the unsurprising conclusion that the ABA’s Standing Committee on Ethics and Professional Responsibility reached in its latest opinion, issued April 17.
Of note, though, is that
Litigation funding spotlighted in WI disclosure statute, NY ethics opinion
Early last year, the federal Northern District of California became the first court to require — by rule — that a party receiving outside litigation funding must disclose the arrangement. As we described, the rule is limited to class actions; it had been favored by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which views it as
What’s in a name? Semi-retired lawyer suspended for letting others use it
In a warning to semi-retired lawyers and others, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals earlier this month affirmed a 90-day suspension for a lawyer who let others draft and sign his name to deficient pleadings, saying that “a lawyer’s good name and professional reputation are his primary stock in trade, an asset to be cultivated
Watch those hypotheticals, says ABA in new opinion on blogs, tweets, “public commentary”
We’ve written before about the breadth of the duty of confidentiality we owe to our clients, and how it even extends to matters that you think are safe to discuss because they are of “public record.” (See here and here.) Now comes the ABA’s latest on the subject of lawyer “public commentary” — Formal
Litigation privilege didn’t shield lawyer’s demand letter; defamation suit vs. Bill Cosby revived
One of Bill Cosby’s accusers can continue with her defamation suit, the California state court of appeals said in an opinion late last year, holding that the trial court erred when it used the state’s anti-SLAPP law to partially strike Janice Dickinson’s complaint against the entertainer. Dickinson had based one of her claims on statements
Want to limit the scope of your representation? You’d better document it.
The concept of “unbundled” legal services is laid out in Model Rule 1.2(c), which provides that lawyers may limit the scope of their representation in reasonable ways, if the client gives informed consent. The rule opens the way to representing a client as to one phase of a matter, or as to certain issues or
Apocalypse now? Two tales of dishonesty, fraud, deceit, misrepresentation
In the ethics class that I teach as an adjunct law prof, I refer to Model Rule 8.4(c) as “The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse,” because of the four things the rule prohibits: dishonesty, fraud, deceit and misrepresentation.
While these ethical no-no’s are certainly not equivalent to the biblical “four horsemen” (Death, Famine, War and