In the aftermath of Hurricane Florence, which last month dumped up to 35 inches of rain on parts of the Carolinas, Virginia and Maryland, caused 48 deaths, and up to $22 billion in property damage, comes a timely new ABA opinion about our ethical obligations related to disasters.
The hurricane did not spare
You can’t interview potential expert witnesses and share confidential information with them solely to taint them with a conflict that would prevent the experts from working for the other side, the Texas State Bar Professional Ethics Committee recently said in Opinion No. 676.
“T’aint” ethical
Lots of litigation requires expert testimony in order to
Making big news this summer was the shut-down of Avvo Legal Services just a few months after it was acquired by Internet Brands. (A couple of the many reports are here and here.) Some speculated that the new corporate owner had no stomach to continue to fight for that portion of Avvo’s business
The New York City Bar Association recently found that common forms of third-party litigation funding for law firms violate New York’s Rule 5.4(a), which like the analogous Model Rule, bars fee-splitting with non-lawyers.
In its Opinion 2018-5, the NYCBA’s Professional Ethics Committee advised that “a lawyer may not enter into a financing agreement
In the movie “Goodfellas,” Robert De Niro famously advises that the two greatest life lessons are “Never rat on your friends, and always keep your mouth shut.” Those are good rules if you’re in a crime syndicate. But as most lawyers know, our Rules of Professional Conduct can actually require us to “rat out” our
In an unusual application of the lawyer-witness rule, a district court recently held that the rule would not prevent an assistant state attorney general from being on an open phone line along with the court and other party representatives during the execution of a death-row inmate — even though the assistant AG might have to
Confession: I’m a lawyer who’s married to a lawyer. If that’s your situation too, then you know some of the challenges — how life at home falls apart when you both have trials scheduled; the strain on the budget in those early days when you’re paying off two sets of law school loans; playing rock-paper-scissors
A Washington lawyer was disbarred last month by the state supreme court in a disciplinary case with an interesting array of issues: the heavy penalties for using trust account money to “rob Peter to pay Paul;” the danger of treating the representation of a relative too casually; “compassion fatigue” as a potential mitigating factor in
As the legal market continues to change, attorneys face more challenges when it comes to client relations. While the trend has been for clients to slash attorney’s fees by hiring third party auditors to review bills, or to aggressively seek discounts on fees, ethical considerations, and now the United States Court of Appeals for the
Do you toil in the pressure cooker of a firm, but dream of going in-house? Many lawyers have that goal. But the churn works in the other direction, too, with in-house lawyers migrating to firms or solo practice. When they do, they can face conflict of interest issues leading to disqualification, as a former in-house