Do lawyers need to be reminded not to lie to a federal agency?
As reported earlier this week on Law 360, the staff of the Federal Trade Commission has issued a wake-up call to lawyers who practice before the agency, warning them that intentionally misleading the Commission could lead to “public reprimands, sanctions and even
A New York lawyer representing a landlord was suspended earlier this month for conduct that included threatening a tenant with arrest and telling him that he was worthless and should commit suicide.
In its opinion, the court found that the lawyer violated Rule 3.4(e) of the state’s Rules of Professional Conduct, which bars threatening
A former part-time Ohio judge and bankruptcy trustee whose bookkeeper was convicted of stealing funds from his trust account was publicly reprimanded last week for failing to reconcile his trust account monthly and failing to adequately supervise his staff. The court’s opinion spotlights the potential legal ethics problems that dishonest non-lawyer staff can create. Below
Although I love my home state of Ohio, I have to acknowledge that we are not often in the avant-garde when it comes to legal ethics. After all, Ohio was one of the last jurisdictions in the Union to adopt the Model Rules of Professional Conduct (2007). But last week, the Ohio Supreme Court put
A Washington appellate court recently disqualified a county prosecutor’s entire office from participating in the re-trial of a murder case. The chief prosecutor had previously represented the defendant while in private practice. The case shines a light on government lawyers and imputed conflicts of interest.
Election win spells DQ
The county prosecuting attorney, Garth Dano,
Do we ever take off our “lawyer hats”?
The question has been in the news because of a tweet by Rep. Matt Gaetz, who represents Florida’s first congressional district and is a member of the Florida bar. Pictured at the right, the tweet was directed at Michael Cohen, President Trump’s former attorney, the night before
Five businesses filed suit earlier this month in a Texas federal district court against Morrison & Foerster, a 1,000+-lawyer mega-firm headquartered in San Francisco. The case is unremarkable in most ways: on the one hand, former clients who assert wrongdoing in how the law firm handled their matters (including billing improprieties) and a less–than-desirable outcome
Last week the media was abuzz with the allegations made against the National Enquirer by Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon and the owner of The Washington Post. The details in Bezos’ blog post about his ongoing dispute with the Enquirer and its publisher David Pecker are sensationalistic to say the least: the world’s richest
Going abroad? Think that “national counsel” is going to take care of anything that comes up when you’re gone? Get swamped when you return and take “several weeks” to wade through the e-mail that piled up in your absence? If you’re local counsel, that might be a recipe for disaster — for your client —
The Ohio Supreme Court is continuing its trend of suspending lawyers who violate the disciplinary rule on sex with clients, and has again rejected arguments that pointed to the consensual nature of the relationship. In a recent opinion involving sex between criminal defense counsel and his client, the court characterized the lower disciplinary Board’s analysis