Lawyer-rating site Avvo is violating a state statute barring unauthorized use of “an individual’s identity for commercial purposes,” an Illinois lawyer has charged in a putative class-action complaint filed last week in the chancery division of Cook County Circuit Court.
Fee- based marketing plan
The gist of the complaint is that without any authorization or
The set-up: Potential client calls you on the phone. He says he is representing a government minister from a mineral-rich West African nation — he won’t say which one. But his (unnamed) principal needs legal help in order to move millions of dollars into the U.S. — consisting of what the representative candidly describes as
Be aware of your jurisdiction’s limits on what a “retired” lawyer can and cannot do, and obey them — or risk being tagged for the unauthorized practice of law. And, oh yeah — communicate politely. That’s a dual lesson a lawyer in Illinois may be about to learn, according to a disciplinary complaint filed in
What should you do when you have a thorny legal ethics problem that comes up in the course of representing a client? The answer is not “Call Ghostbusters.” There are a variety of ways to get ethics advice, and some could be better than others in putting you in the best position in case someone
Here’s an update on a case we reported on last year, where a lawyer agreed to a settlement on behalf of his plaintiff client — who happened to already be dead at the time. The court of appeals in the Illinois case, Robison v. Orthotic & Prosthetic Lab, (predictably) tossed out the settlement based
We’ve mentioned before that some courts look with disfavor on lawyers helping pro se litigants by ghostwriting briefs for them to file as their own. Some opinions discussing the issue frame the conduct as lawyer deceit, as misrepresentation, or even as potential contempt of court. In a related twist, the ABA ethics committee has recently
Did you make a New Year’s resolution to shift gears in your law practice? Maybe start practicing in a new area of the law that is unfamiliar to you? It’s always fine to add new skills, of course, and marketing yourself in new ways can be a good strategy for bringing in more revenue in
What was the most important development in the legal ethics arena over the past five years? I was honored to be asked by LexBlog, the folks who provide our blog platform, to share my views on this topic on the LXBN network, which has 8,000+ blog authors. But of course, the invitation also made
The Law for Lawyers Today will be taking a short break over the Xmas holiday. But we’ll be back on December 31 with our thoughts about the past year in Ethics World and predictions for 2016!
Here are three very recent reminders about what not to do online. These separate stories involve an Indiana lawyer and two judges: one state and one federal. Apparently human nature makes on-line misconduct irresistible to some people, even at the cost of their licenses to practice, and the risk of other professional embarrassment.
Don’t Steele