Can a lawyer use an advice-of-counsel defense in a disciplinary case? The Florida Supreme Court last month accepted the defense, adopting a referee’s report in a case spotlighting the issue.
The lawyer in the case personally guaranteed a loan for his own business venture. Unable to repay the loan, and facing hard-hitting collection methods from
An Oklahoma lawyer was suspended last month for two years based on misconduct involving an unlawful response to a bad on-line review of the lawyer’s services. The disciplinary case is a lesson in being careful about who you’re dealing with when you hire a consultant, and also about not doubling down when confronted with a
If you’re a litigator, you may have already experienced the brave new world of remote videoconference depositions. If you haven’t yet you will, and when you do, you may have to think about what opportunities for misconduct arise when you aren’t in the room with the witness. If you’re not there to watch, can the
If you’re making a New Year’s resolution to improve your time-keeping and billing habits, you can draw inspiration from this cautionary tale, detailing how a Massachusetts lawyer, a partner at a large firm, has been suspended for six months for overbilling clients at her prior firm.
3,000+ billable hours?!
As widely reported, the partner’s
As widely reported in the news, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals last month harshly rebuked an Illinois lawyer for submitting a rambling 86-page appellate brief that the court said was “incoherent” and “gibberish.” Quotes from the brief indeed made it appear deficient. (One section, said the court, consisted solely of the heading “GAMESMANSHIP” and
A New Jersey lawyer was suspended for six months for misrepresenting to clients for about eight years that their arbitration matter “was proceeding apace,” when he actually had never filed their claim. The lawyer also concealed from his firm for almost two years the malpractice suit that the clients later filed, including the default judgment
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