Sport and justiceA fired GC of a public company recently fended off dismissal of his whistle-blower retaliation claims in California district court.  Adding to a split in authority, the chief magistrate judge for the Northern District of California held (1) that the protections of the Dodd-Frank Act applied even though the GC made his report internally, and

ThankfulnessThe world has been through dark things in the past couple weeks.  But here in the U.S., we will nonetheless sit down on Thanksgiving  Day with family and friends for a shared meal that is the proper antithesis — perhaps the strongest one — to hate, death and destruction.

And while you are feeling generally

locally grown red round grunge stamp on whiteIf you only agree to be “local counsel” in a matter, you can rest assured that your limited undertaking also limits the scope of your duties — right?   Wrong — as a recent disciplinary case and recent ethics opinion point out.

No “local counsel exception” to conduct rules

If your law school friend is serving

StoreIt’s pretty circular for a legal blogger to write a blog post about — blogging.  But bear with me:  there’s a legal ethics issue in here.  Thomson Reuters recently introduced a new product for busy lawyers who “do not have time to write articles,” but want to produce a blog.  (Hat tip to @kevinokeefe over

DisgorgementIn most houses, Halloween lasts until the kids eat that last candy bar — saving it from their parents’ grasp.  So I don’t think it’s too late to spotlight a case that’s bound to scare in-house counsel, in which the New Jersey Supreme Court recently ruled that the remedy of disgorgement can be applied to

Law firm signSanctions have long been available under federal statute for “multiply[ing] the proceedings in any case unreasonably and vexatiously.”  Entitled “Counsel’s Liability for Excessive Costs,” 28 U.S.C. § 1927 is a short and seemingly straightforward provision that applies to “[a]ny attorney or other person admitted to conduct cases in any court of the United States…” and

IdeaA Florida Bar rule blocking a personal injury law firm from stating that it specializes in mass-tort cases is unconstitutional as applied, a Florida federal district court recently held.  The court enjoined the Florida Bar from enforcing its Rule 4-7.14(a)(4), which prohibits statements “that a lawyer is … a specialist, an expert, or other

Tensed Businesswoman Using Computer At DeskWith the goal of positioning his on-line legal forms company as a solution to America’s access-to-justice problem, Chas Rampenthal, General Counsel of LegalZoom, zoomed through my home state last week, with two speaking engagements.  I caught his speech at a breakfast meeting at my home-town bar association, the Cleveland Metropolitan Bar Association (@clemetrobar).

A panacea

Green Cash key on a computer keyboard with clipping pathBartering for goods and services seems old-fashioned, even primitive — after all, that’s why money was invented, right?  But bartering might be viewed as a component of today’s “sharing economy,” which involves more-direct, Internet-facilitated interactions between consumers and providers.

A recent informal opinion of the Connecticut Bar Association Standing Committee on Professional Ethics