Michael Rausch, a 46-year-old Cherry Hill, N.J., lawyer, threw three punches at a Scranton lawyer who, he said, called him stupid and bald.
The fisticuffs occurred in July at the Lackawanna County Courthouse during a civil suit regrading a car accident. Lawyer Rausch was placed on probation, and he resigned from his law firm as a result of the incident.
Hey…what’s wrong with being called “bald”?
”Radical times call for radical measures.”
—-Thomas Walkley, a lawyer from Norton, Ohio, explaining why he dropped his trousers while counseling two 19-year-old youths as part of mentoring program to help at-risk young people. Continue reading
The acclaimed CBS series “The Good Wife” premiered last night, with an episode called “Taking Control.” The title is ironic in one respect. Because the legal profession regards lawyers as being in control of the non-legal staff that works for them, good wife and whiz-bang attorney Alicia Florrick (played by Juliana Margulies) violated one of the most important legal ethics rules in the very first episode. This was far from unrealistic, however. Her ethical breach is not only a common one, but also one that many lawyers are careless about. It is also unethical conduct that the public assumes is standard practice for lawyers…because movies and TV shows make it seem that way. Continue reading
An ethics complaint has been filed against an Illinois attorney who, as he left a courtroom, bid farewell to his opposing party with the words, “Have a nice day, you piece of shit!” The alleged legal ethics violations are Illinois Rule 4.4, which prohibits using means that have” no substantial purpose other than to embarrass, humiliate or burden a third person,” and Rule 8.4, which among its provisions forbids “conduct prejudicial to the administration of justice.”
It seems unlikely that the Illinois Bar will find these Rules to have been violated to the extent justifying discipline. Make no mistake: the statement is unethical. Continue reading
Is it unethical for a lawyer to claim she is possessed by a client’s dead wife?
This question has been puzzling professional responsibility experts for decades. Okay, not really. In fact, surprisingly, it just doesn’t happen all that often. But in Arizona, a lawyer is now facing suspension for claiming that she was possessed by the spirit of a client’s dead wife, then lying about it under oath. The dead wife is being accused of illegal immigration.
[OK, I made up that part, too. Sorry; couldn’t resist.]
The ABA Journal reports that the lawyer, Charna Johnson, began representing a client during his divorce proceedings. Continue reading
Toledo, Ohio attorney Kristin Stahlbush has been suspended from the practice of law for two years for repeatedly over-billing the Lucas County juvenile and common pleas courts for her services as a court-appointed counsel representing low-income clients. On multiple occasions, Stahlbush billed more than 24 hours a day.
From the Legal Profession Blog:
“The Court agreed with the board’s conclusions that by knowingly billing for more hours than she had actually worked, [the attorney] violated the state disciplinary rules that prohibit charging an excessive fee; engaging in conduct involving fraud, deceit, dishonesty or misrepresentation; engaging in conduct prejudicial to the administration of justice; and engaging in conduct that adversely reflects on the attorney’s fitness to practice law.”
In the opinion, the Court said it did not impose more stringent penalties because she had no prior record of disciplinary issues,and was known as a competent and hard-working.
More than 24 hours a day? I’d say she’s hard-working, all right.
A Massachusetts lawyer, Daniel Szostkiewicz, tried to help out a former client by hiring her as his receptionist in August 2007. She asked him to pay her “under the table,” so she could keep state health benefits for her husband, who was ill. Szostkiewicz agreed. Six months later, he fired her, and his ex-receptionist applied for unemployment. This led to the state discovering the undisclosed payment arrangement.
Szostkiewicz has received a three-month suspension, with all but one month stayed as long as he allows his law firm to be audited.
I think he got off too easy. Continue reading
A lawyer wants to get access to an adversary witness’s Facebook page so he can use information he finds there to impeach her testimony at trial. But even though she accepts virtually anyone who asks to be her “friend” whether she knows them or not, he worries that she wouldn’t accept his request if she recognized his name and face from her deposition, which might prompt her to guess his intent. So the lawyer asks an office paralegal to send her a “friend request” instead. Sure enough, she accepts, and soon the paralegal is gathering all sorts of dirt on the witness and passing it on to the lawyer.
Is this an ethical plan for the lawyer, or not? Earlier this year, the Philadelphia Bar Association’s Ethics Committee issued a legal ethics opinion that concluded it was not: the paralegal was acting for the lawyer, who was using subterfuge and misrepresentation to gain the witness’s consent to explore her private (or semi-private) Facebook information. The Committee said that it didn’t matter that the witness was careless with granting access, or that she gave consent to other “friends” that she barely knew: Continue reading
In many high schools around the country, as many as fifty graduating seniors were designated “valedictorians,” because the traditional honor for the top academic performer is a coveted credential, and the schools wanted as many students as possible to have the benefit of it. On their future resumes, will these students footnote “valedictorian” to let potential employers know that it doesn’t mean they were #1 in their class? Of course not. Their schools have given them a license to inflate their qualifications and achievements. Until every school clones its valedictorians, the credential now is inherently deceptive, and it is the high school administrators, not the students, who are doing the deceiving.
Ah, but “you ain’t seen nothin’ yet!” The New York Times reported that at least ten law schools, S.M.U., New York University, Georgetown, and Tulane among them, have deliberately altered their grading curves—-some retroactively—in order to make their graduates artificially look better to employers. Continue reading
“The Good Wife,” CBS’s legal drama starring Julianna Margulies, began as an unusually nuanced show of its type that presented intriguing ethical dilemmas without crossing into David Kelley’s over-the-top Legal Theater of the Absurd. Little by little, however, the show’s willingness to ignore core legal ethics principles is becoming more pronounced. “Boom,” which aired last week, continues a trend that is ominous, considering “The Good Wife” is still in its first season. After all, the lawyers in Kelley’s “The Practice” didn’t start finding severed heads and getting charged with murder until a couple of seasons in.
If you missed “Boom,” or if you didn’t but had misplaced your A.B.A. Model Rules of Professional Conduct, here are the legal ethics howlers committed by the “Good Wife’s” attorneys: Continue reading
Ethics Alarms 