We’ve posted here before about interesting sanctions that courts have ordered for lawyer misconduct. Here’s another one, in a case very recently tried to a jury verdict in the Eastern District of Louisiana.
In Kuran David v. Signal Int’l, LLC, plaintiffs were Indian guest workers who alleged that they were falsely promised green cards
Two trial courts — in New York and New Hampshire — recently weighed in on the in-house firm counsel privilege. The New Hampshire Superior Court, in Moore v. Grau, recognized the parameters of the privilege. In contrast, the New York County Commercial Division judge in Stock v. Shnader Harrison Segal & Lewis LLP ruled
In the law school legal ethics course I teach, we study a classic disciplinary case in which a lawyer concealed the fact of his client’s death – dodging interrogatories and an independent medical exam (!), and telling an arbitration panel the client was “unavailable” – all in aid of negotiating a more favorable settlement. My
No matter how much empathy you feel for a client with financial woes, giving a litigation client money generally violates your state’s version of Model Rule 1.8(e). The rule provides that the only financial assistance you may give a client in connection with pending or contemplated litigation is: (1) to advance litigation expenses and
In the olden days, lawyers and judges were men, couples lived together only after a wedding, divorce was less common, and marriage equality was not on the radar. So there was little occasion to wonder about ethical conflicts of interest that might be raised by lawyers or judges being married to each other, cohabiting with
Both in-house and outside counsel can learn valuable lessons from In re General Motors, a recently-issued federal opinion on the attorney-client privilege and work-product doctrine. While some recent decisions have chipped away at the protections for attorney notes and internal memos, this opinion reaffirms that documents a lawyer creates during a corporate investigation will
What are the legal ethics rules for using social media to market your legal practice? Judging from what’s out there, some lawyers view the social media space as the Wild West, where almost anything goes; and some lawyers are too worried about the possible snares to use social media at all to publicize or share
Small lapses can sometimes snowball into big problems, as an in-house Pennsylvania lawyer for a large pharmaceutical company found out when she was suspended for six months for the unauthorized practice of law.
The lawyer failed to comply with her yearly continuing-legal-education requirements; as a result, she was placed on inactive status in 2009,
A lawyer made an emotional appeal to a teen mother via Facebook message, begging her not to consent to her baby’s adoption. The lawyer represented the baby’s biological father; the mother was not represented by counsel. The lawyer’s conduct drew harsh criticism and a six-month suspension from practice when the Kansas Supreme Court considered it
The Law for Lawyers Today will be taking a short break over the holidays. We’ll be back with fresh and timely updates on January 8, 2015!