Ethics Heroes: My Neighbors, Ted and Linda West

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

The Wests have been our neighbors on the little cul-de-sac called Westminster Place in Alexandria, Virginia since Grace and I bought our home a week after getting engaged. They are the ultimate good neighbors in every respect. Today they really stepped up.

I have a year-long contract this year to do monthly legal ethics CLE presentations over Zoom for a national audience of lawyers in need of ethics credit. Today was the first of sixteen; with new material and a good impression to be made, I was a bit anxious. Scheduled for 9 am, the program occupied my attentions from 7 am on. Finally, I was ready.

A half hour before the program was scheduled to begin, power at the Marshall house went off. The problem could not be addressed by the power company for several hours. Desperate and panicked, I woke my neighbors (and their gigantic dog, Peaches) from a sound sleep, and asked 1) if one of them had a Zoom account (YES!) and 2) if I could use their computer to conduct my two-hour seminar.

And they said yes to that too. They made me a cup of coffee, set me up, and then fled the house, as most people tend to do when I start talking about legal ethics. I was ready seconds before the program’s scheduled start; it was very well received. Missing the first session in a series would have been disastrous. My neighbors had my back when I really needed them.

As I knew they would.

How Bias Makes You Stupid: A Case Study

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

I’ve written here quite a few times about the baseball pundit lawyer Craig Calcaterra, originally the author of an excellent baseball blog called “Shysterball.” Since then he’s apparently dumped law entirely, and is a full-time baseball analyst. Craig is a good guy, based on my many interactions with him over the years commenting on amd sometimes criticizing his work; he once called me “a handful,” which I take as a compliment. Now he makes his living on various paid newsletter platforms writing about one of my favorite topics.

I would dearly love to subscribe to Craig’s fascinating baseball musings, except for two thing. First, it’s awfully tight at the Marshall household since the pandemic wiped out 75% of our business, and second, Craig has increasingly marred the enjoyment he brings to baseball with metastasizing knee-jerk wokism. Yes, it has become worse since Donald Trump was elected.

Sadly, this hard left bias, which used to be undetectable, now frequently creeps into his baseball commentary, as when he opined that pitcher Josh Hader should have been fined or suspended from Major League Baseball because of some gay-bashing tweets he wrote to a handful of pimply faced friends when he was in high school. That’s ridiculous, of course, but it turned out to have signature significance. After that, Craig increasingly let his political obsessions creep into his view of baseball. Once he left NBC Sports for Substack, he indulged himself by including pure political punditry along with what people pay for, his baseball thoughts, in his newsletters. I know, I could just skip the progressive garbage, but it annoys me. Unlike his baseball instincts, these intrusions are emotional and logically sloppy.

Now Craig is pushing his newsletter to potential subscribers following his move to a new platform; sure enough, he is one of the Substack refugees who are boycotting that platform for not censoring a handful—okay, two handfuls—of neo-nazi and white supremacy extremists. (I wrote about this example of the new Left’s obsession with restricting ideas, speech and people they find “offensive” here.) For a while, he is sending out free samples of the new publication to people like me who have exchanged emails with him over the years. In today’s edition, he includes a deranged rant against “right wing politics” that perfectly illustrates how a progressive bias and hanging out in woke bubbles (lawyers, journalists) will poison even the best of minds.

Since he sent me that rant and I didn’t ask for it, I feel justified in reprinting the whole thing here, after which I will offer a few comments:

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Unethical Quotes of the Month: The University of North Carolina’s Faculty Council

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

This is not an encouraging situation.

Last week, the University of North Carolina’s Faculty Council met to consider, among other matters, a resolution condemning anti-Semitism on school’s campus. An on-campus event in November included a speaker who said, referring to the barbaric terrorist attack on Israeli civilians, that “October 7 was for many of us from the region a beautiful day.” No one at the event did or said anything to reject that sentiment. The proposed resolution stated, “We strongly condemn the antisemitic statements made during a Unity roundtable event No Peace Without Justice held on November 28, 2023.”

That wouldn’t seem too difficult to agree with or too controversial, would it? Yet the resolution failed to pass. The Faculty Council voted 32-29, with six abstentions, to table the resolution for the foreseeable future. Here are some of the most striking comments made by those who objected to the resolution:

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On Re-Making Classic Films, Hubris, and Race for Race’s Sake

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

Here is news you have all been waiting for, I’m sure. Kenya Barris, the black film and television writer, producer and director, is best known as the creator of the ABC sitcom black-ish as well as for writing or directing a number of mediocre-to-terrible movies like “You People,” “Coming 2 America,” and the “updated” versions of “Shaft,” “White Men Can’t Jump,” “The Witches,” and “Cheaper by the Dozen.” Now he has announced that he will be writing and directing new versions of “The Wizard of Oz” and “It’s A Wonderful Life.”

In a recent interview Barris revealed that his screenplay for “The Wizard of Oz” is completed, with the new Dorothy being black and not in Kansas any more, but rather a girl who lives in the Bottoms, a huge apartment complex located in Inglewood, California. “The original ‘Wizard of Oz’ took place during the Great Depression and it was about self-reliance and what people were going through,” Barris said. “I think this is the perfect time to switch the characters and talk about what someone imagines their life could be. It’s ultimately a hero’s journey, someone thinks something’s better than where they’re at, and they go and realize that where they’re at is where they should be. I want people to be proud and happy about where they’re from. But I want the world to take a look at it and I hope that will come through.” 

I’m so excited.

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The NY Times Promotes Big Lie #4 (“Trump Is A Racist/White Supremacist”) Again

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

“Nah, there/s no mainstream media bias!’“

Despicable.

“Mocking Haley, Trump Adds to His Long History of Racist Attacks—The former president is again focusing on race and background as he campaigns against Nikki Haley in New Hampshire.” crowed the New York Times in what was allegedly a news report. The story is another installment of Big Lie #4 on The Big Lies Of The “Resistance” Directory, “Trump Is A Racist/White Supremacist.”

The fact that the Times is still doing this—that lie is one of the hoariest and most persistent in the whole ugly batch—means, quite simply, that the paper can’t be trusted. Simple as that. Its editorial policy is to lie about Donald Trump, and other things, of course, but if a news organization will lie about anything to forward an agenda, then it should never be trusted.

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“When Ethics Alarms Don’t Ring,” Big Law Firm Edition

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

One morning, lawyers and other employees at the mega-firm Duane Morris‘s Philadelphia headquarters arrived to see the artwork above hung on a hallway wall. It was not appreciated. What was going on? Apparently it was time to switch out some of the firm’s publicly displayed artwork. One of the firm’s non-legal staff picked something out from the inventory of originals in storage, and efficiently hung one of 20th century African American artist Herbert Singleton’s painting depicting events he says he experienced growing up in the southern U.S. before anyone was troubled by a blank space. A placard explaining the work might have helped, but for some reason none was posted.

This prompted a long, long mea culpa by the firm’s senior partners and management after the painting was removed, presumably with the speed of light. I’ve bolded and numbered appropriate sections.

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In Case You Were Laboring Under The Delusion That Conservatives Are Any Less Inclined To Approve Unfair Attacks On Donald Trump…They Aren’t

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

The majority of the conservative pundits writing at conservative opinion juggernaut PJ Media are not Trump fans, though they of course will support him over Joe and his aspiring totalitarian party. One would think that the cheap tactics and strategies of misleading the public with assorted Big Lies used by the Left against Trump from at least 2015 on would be anathema to this group, and one would be tragically wrong.

For example, here is often amusing and occasionally trenchant columnist Stephen Kruiser bemoaning the failure of Ron DeSantis to gather any momentum in the primaries, and second guessing his approach:

Ron DeSantis became Public Enemy Number One-and-a-Half (after Trump, of course) largely because of the brilliant way he handled Florida’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic. He essentially gave the finger to Anthony Fauci, Rochelle Walensky, and every other egomaniacal bureaucratic tyrant.

DeSantis’s handling of COVID was his — I have to say it — trump card in his effort to catch Trump. It was Trump who weaponized Fauci, no matter how much he and the MAGA faithful deny it. That alone should have been mentioned by the DeSantis campaign as often as possible.

What DeSantis needed to do was ignore Haley, Vivek, and the rest of the Island of Misfit Republicans and hammer Trump on COVID. I’m pretty sure that’s what Trump and his people thought DeSantis would do because Trump and his online army were rewriting the history of his and DeSantis’s COVID responses from the moment the governor got into the race…

I am not at all positing that DeSantis would have fared better had he gone with a COVID-centric strategy; I’m saying that it was his only real shot.

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Florida Becomes the First Bar to Issue Ethics Guidance on the Use of Artificial Intelligence in the Practice of Law

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

After seeking comments last fall on a proposed advisory opinion to its members on the ethical use of artificial intelligence by lawyers in the practice of law, the Florida Bar’s review committee has voted unanimously to issue Florida Bar ethics opinion 24-1, the first such opinion by any U.S. jurisdiction about the assuredly revolutionary changes in legal practice and the concomitant perils that lie ahead as a result of AI technology. The advisory opinion’s summary:

“Lawyers may use generative artificial intelligence (“AI”) in the practice of law but must protect the confidentiality of client information, provide accurate and competent services, avoid improper billing practices, and comply with applicable restrictions on lawyer advertising. Lawyers must ensure that the confidentiality of client information is protected when using generative AI by researching the program’s policies on data retention, data sharing, and self- learning. Lawyers remain responsible for their work product and professional judgment and must develop policies and practices to verify that the use of generative AI is consistent with the lawyer’s ethical obligations. Use of generative AI does not permit a lawyer to engage in improper billing practices such as double-billing. Generative AI chatbots that communicate with clients or third parties must comply with restrictions on lawyer advertising and must include a disclaimer indicating that the chatbot is an AI program and not a lawyer or employee of the law firm. Lawyers should be mindful of the duty to maintain technological competence and educate themselves regarding the risks and benefits of new technology.”

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From the “Res Ipsa Loquitur” Files…Ethics Dunces: Parents Who Allow Their Daughters To Be Subjected to THIS

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

That’s Henry Hanlon, apparently a male basketball player who “identifies” as female. Clearly, it’s good for his ego. (Can’t tell who I’m talking about in the photo? Guess!)

The San Francisco Waldorf high school girls basketball team is on a roll, thanks to its court domination by team captain Henry Hanlon. No, he doesn’t even bother to carry a female name. California’s Interscholastic Federation (CIF) established “Gender Identity Participation” rule in 2013, and it is bats.“All students should have the opportunity to participate in CIF athletics and/or activities in a manner that is consistent with their gender identity,” the policy states. As CIF’s Associate Executive Director Brian Seymour explains, “All of our athletes, all the eligible athletes, are afforded the opportunity to compete with the gender they feel most comfortable with.” Oh. I can see where a high school athlete might be “most comfortable” with a fanciful gender ID that allows him to feel like the Harlem Globetrotters playing against their eternal patsies, the Washington Generals.

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Ethics Observations On The 2023 Gallup “Americans’ Ratings of Honesty and Ethics of Professions”

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Not a surprise, but still an ominous trend...

As usual, those polled were asked, “Please tell me how you would rate the honesty and ethical standards of people in these different fields — very high, high, average, low or very low?”

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