Character

Now THAT’S An Unethical Lawyer!

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments
Even Arnie didn't try THIS...

Even Arnie didn’t try THIS…

It’s bad enough that Minnesota lawyer Thomas P. Lowes had sex with his divorce client. That’s explicitly forbidden since Minnesota adopted ABA Model Rule 1.8 k, what “L.A. Law” fans fondly refer to as “the Arnie Becker Rule.” Not professional, exploits the relationship, interferes with independent judgment, a conflict of interest, you know, all that stuff.

But Lowes went a step further, and set some kind of a new record for…

  • gall,
  • unreasonable billing practices (ABA Rule 1.5)
  • inflated self image, or
  • always working on the case, no matter what, OR
  • …mixing legal work with prostitution.

…by charging his client/lover/sex toy his hourly fee for the time they spent having sex!

Continue reading →

Lance Armstrong and Oprah: First Impressions

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Lance Armstrong, Oprah Winfrey

I just finished watching the first installment of the Lance Armstrong-Oprah interview–almost twice, in fact. I’ll be watching tomorrow’s installment too (I am scheduled to talk about Lance on NPR’s “Tell Me More” on Monday, to be broadcast Sunday) and maybe it will alter some of my initial impressions.

But I doubt it.

Impressions:

1. Armstrong is not apologetic in the least, in any way, despite the occasional nod to apology-like langauge. He is not somewhat like, but exactly like, a mob hit man testifying before a Senate committee on organized crime. He is doing what he has to do, and if there is any genuine regret or contrition, I couldn’t discern it. Frankly, I am stunned at how unapologetic he is.

2. Most damning moment: Right off the bat, Oprah asks Lance “Why now?” It’s a superfluous question; everyone knows the answer is “Because I’m trapped; because the lies don’t work any more; because this is my best chance of persuading some people, the gullible ones, but we know how many of them there are, to give me a second chance.” I didn’t expect Armstrong to be that candid, of course, but I did expect him to have an answer, probably a contrite, self-serving one, prepared. He didn’t. “That’s a great question,” he said, stalling. Incredibly, he said he didn’t really have a good answer. “I know it’s too late,” he offered. Yes, I’d say thirteen years, marked by lying, doping, posturing and attacking is too late. That’s the best Armstrong could muster. Heck, if he just kept up with current movies, he would have had some great answers, like Denzel Washington, in the climax of “Flight,” confessing a career of flying commercial airlines drunk by saying, (I’m paraphrasing) “I just couldn’t stand telling one more lie.” Or that old stand-by, “It was the right thing to do.”

The sign of a completely unethical person is that they can’t even imagine what thinking ethically is like. On the evidence of this interview, that’s Lance Armstrong.

3. Most telling quote: while explaining that his 2009-2010 comeback is what opened the floodgates of attention and investigation that led to the explosion of his long campaign of deception and lies, Armstrong said, “Without the comeback, I wouldn’t be here now.” Translation: “Without the comeback, I would have gotten away with it, and I sure as Hell wouldn’t be sitting here spilling the beans to you.” He then terms his comeback a “mistake.” Armstrong is sorry he let himself be caught, and he is sorry for the consequences of his lies being discovered.

Continue reading →

Is It Fair that Manti Te’o’s Dead Girlfriend Hoax Might Make Him A Less Attractive Draft Choice?

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

Don’t be silly. Of course it is.

You'd think the green skin would have tipped him off....

The non-existent girlfriend. You’d think the green skin would have tipped him off….

If you are not aware of the particulars of this weird and confusing tale, read the extensive account here, and good luck to you. From an ethics perspective, all that matters is:

  • Somebody perpetrated a web hoax, creating an imaginary online girlfriend for Notre Dame football star Manti Te’o.
  • The young man told the media a touching story about how his grandmother and girlfriend had died the same day.
  • Without checking any aspect of the story, outlet after outlet repeated and embellished the tale, despite the fact that the girlfriend never existed.
  • In his comments to the press, Manti Te’o never revealed that he had not, in fact, ever met the woman face to face. Indeed, many of his comments suggested otherwise.
  • As of this writing, no one is certain who created the fake girlfriend, or whether Manti Te’o was in on the deception. Continue reading →

At Last! The Ultimate Naked Teacher Principle Episode, Otherwise Known As “Hey, Isn’t This A Photo Of Miss…HOLY CRAP!!!”

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments
Stacy and Tiffany, together again.

Stacie and Tiffany Six, together again.

I’ve been writing about various manifestations of what I dubbed years ago “the Naked Teacher Principal” for a long time. The principle, based in accountability and responsibility, holds that once a teacher has allowed naked or otherwise sexually provocative photographs of herself or himself to become available over the internet, that teacher will be unable to properly maintain the respect of and proper professional relationship to students, serve as a role model, or be trusted to meet professional standards. Such a teacher will have no ethical defense when he or she is fired.

Variations and near-variations have ranged from the teacher whose room mate posted household photos of the teacher doing household chores in the nude, to the teacher who wrote sexually-explicit novels about werewolves, to the art teacher whose avocation of painting pictures with his genitals was revealed in an online sequence showing him doing so with a paper bag over his head.

Now at last we have a former porn star variation, and the NTP has been upheld. Continue reading →

“Lance Armstrong and the Cheapening of Indignation”

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

At NPR, Linda Holmes writes about  a little noted reason why Lance Armstrong is particularly despicable, and why the manner of his dishonest denials were especially harmful. You can read it here.

Author (NOT Lawyer) Elizabeth Wurtzel’s Careless Aspirations

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments
Well, she sure doesn't look like any lawyer I know...

Well, she sure doesn’t look like any lawyer I know…

The acclaimed author of “Prozac Nation” and “Bitch” graduated from Yale Law School while trying to figure out what she was going to do with her now rich and famous life. Elizabeth Wurtzel has yet to pass the NY bar exam successfully, however (she’s taken it at least once), which means she is not admitted to practice there or anywhere. Nonetheless, based on the fact that she was working as a paralegal at a law firm, Wurtzel gave an interview in which she arguably described herself as “a lawyer.”

This may not seem like a big deal, but it is. As discussed in the posts about Elizabeth Warren’s mysterious professional status, the unauthorized practice of law (UPL) is taken very seriously in the legal profession, and representing yourself as a lawyer when you aren’t is often enough to cross into UPL territory. Above the Law contacted two worthy legal ethics scholars who agreed that this did not constitute a professional ethics violation—that is, an inaccurate and sloppy remark in an interview, not designed to deceive, would not cause her trouble with the bar should she ever pass that pesky exam. A professional ethics violation is one that calls into question a lawyer’s integrity, honesty and trustworthiness sufficiently to raise questions about whether that lawyer should be allowed to practice law. The profs (Steven Lubet and Stephen Gillers) are right that Wurtzel’s puffery doesn’t reach that level. Continue reading →

Ethics Quote of the Month: Jodie Foster

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

Jodie foster

Why is Jodie Foster’s stream of consciousness speech as she accepted the Golden Globe’s lifetime achievement honor, the Cecil B. DeMille Award, worthy of praise for its ethical values?

  • It was genuine, open and honest. Celebrities are paid to live their lives in public, and all of them struggle to find the proper, fair, and sane balance between what they are obligated to show the world, and what they keep secure in their private lives. Nobody has struggled with this balance more than Foster, or suffered moire because of it. A performer since she was a toddler, she never really had a choice to live a normal life. Her speech was a gift to the public revealing inner thoughts and emotions about someone it cares about but has never known as well as it would like to. Continue reading →

Danger! Shameless Opportunists At Work!

/ Jack Marshall / 36 Comments
Lance Armstrong wouldn't understand this movie at all.

Lance Armstrong wouldn’t understand this movie at all.

Less than two weeks after Ethics Alarms wrote about the ethics-free deliberations in the Lance Armstrong camp about whether or not to finally tell the truth and “apologize,” Armstrong prostrated himself in a 90 minute confession to Oprah Winfrey, who has branded herself as America’s confessor, capable of washing away sin and shame with a hug, a tear, and a stern word.

It makes me want to vomit, frankly.

I saw this coming, of course, as did you. One thing we could count on with Lance (and Bill, and Pete, whose odious club Armstrong joins with the Oprah tactic) was that he would do whatever was necessary to benefit him. There is nothing, absolutely nothing, in common with a genuine confession and a real apology in Armstrong’s 180 degree reversal with Oprah, or in the necessary preparations for it he engaged in, like apologizing to the cycling community and the Livestrong staff. When Armstrong thought he could continue to fool some of the people all the time by lying, posturing, and viciously attacking—sometimes with lawsuits—those who he knew were telling the truth about his cheating, he continued to lie. Now that the jig is up and he has no other options, he’s going to come clean and weep softly with the Big O. Sociopaths are usually very good actors. Some of them have won Academy Awards. Continue reading →

The Newtown Massacre Ethics Train Wreck Picks Up An A-Lister!

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

I know—I need to settle on a consistent name for this particular train wreck. I’ve used at least three. Luckily, it is clearly going to be rolling along, causing ethics havoc in its wake, long enough for me to be consistent.

Hey, everybody! Bubba's on board!

Hey, everybody! Bubba’s on board!

Wow! They must be all-tingly on the Newtown Massacre Aftermath Express–Bill Clinton! The architect of one of the great ethics train wrecks of American history has deigned to come on board! What other A-listers will follow? Oprah? David Letterman? Even the President himself! Now, anything is possible.

The nation’s grandmaster liar bought his ticket with this Newtown-inspired statement, uttered at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Jan. 9, 2013

“Half of all mass killings in the United States have occurred since the assault weapons ban expired in 2005, half of all of them in the history of the country.”

This was classic Bill, false and self-glorifying. After all, that ban that expired had been signed into law by Bubba himself. But as the Washington Post’s fact-checker, Glenn Kessler confirmed, his striking “fact” was a whopper. Continue reading →

Is Ronald Miller An Ethics Dunce? How Unethical Is Really, Really Stupid?

/ Jack Marshall / 51 Comments
Is stupidity a defense for unethical conduct?

Is stupidity a defense for unethical conduct?

The news report from Texas about a father posing as an armed intruder to test the security of his son’s school once again raises the thorny problem of how to distinguish ethically obtuse and dumb as a brick. From U.S. News and NBC:

Officials say Ronald Miller was unarmed Wednesday when he told a school greeter outside Celina (Texas) Elementary School that he had a gun… The greeter froze in panic when Miller said he was a gunman and his target was inside, Celina Independent School District Superintendent Donny O’Dell told NBCDFW.com. Miller was then able to walk into the school and entered the office. “He told them that he is a shooter and ‘you’re dead, and you’re dead,'” O’Dell [said.] Never showing a weapon, Miller then reportedly revealed his stunt was a test of school safety and he wanted to talk to the principal. School staffers knew Miller, who was a father of a student, and police were not called until he left the school, The Dallas Morning News reported. He was arrested Wednesday evening and is being held in lieu of $75,000 bail…”

Is Miller so stupid he doesn’t know why this is wrong? It is “the ends justifies the means” thinking personified: he was willing to risk a panic, scare school workers sick, possibly set off a violent incident (what if, as the NRA fervently wishes were the case in all schools, someone in the principal’s office was carrying a gun and decided the safest thing was to shoot Miller before he started his rampage?), and undermine what little rational trust there is left in schools these days, all to prove absolutely nothing, other than the fact that parents aren’t high on the list of suspected school shooters, since no parent has ever been one. Continue reading →