One of my most consulted ethics resources, both for my ethics practice and Ethics Alarms, is the Legal Ethics Forum, created and operated by attorney John Steele with able assistance from some of the best legal ethics experts and scholars in the nation. John has posted the Forum’s Top Ten Legal Ethics Stories of 2012, which you can, and should, read about in detail here. These are John’s headlines: (Ethics Alarms, which is not written for an exclusively legal audience, has covered six of them, #4, #5, #6, #7, #9 (as well as this gem), and #10.) Continue reading
American Bar Association
Ethics Dunce: The ABA Journal
“I just know we’re forgetting something! “Effects”? No, that’s not it…”Ethanol”? No, no…”Prosthetics”? Arrrgh! What IS it?”
This is as disheartening and it is shocking. The American Bar Association Journal, the monthly magazine of the nation’s largest lawyer organization and in many ways the face of the legal profession in the United States, just announced its 6th Annual Blawg 1oo, its reader-chosen list of the best law-related blogs on the web. There are many excellent blogs honored, of course; indeed all of them are useful or entertaining. I’ve visited most of them, and some, like Popehat, the Legal Professions Blog, Above the Law, the Volokh Conspiracy, Scotus Blog, the New York Personal Injury Law Blog, and Over-Lawyered, I check on several times a week. There is a remarkably wide range of blog topics covered, including superhero law, practicing law in China and zombies. Guess what’s not covered?
Legal ethics. Continue reading
Ethics Hero: The American Bar Association
This week, the American Bar Association House of Delegates passed Resolution 100.
RESOLVED, That the American Bar Association urges all state, territorial, and local legislative bodies and governmental agencies to adopt comprehensive breed-neutral dangerous dog/reckless owner laws that ensure due process protections for owners, encourage responsible pet ownership and focus on the behavior of both dog owners and dogs, and to repeal any breed discriminatory or breed specific provisions.
Translation: stop discriminating against pit bulls and all the dogs that look like pit bulls, might be pit bulls, or that people who don’t know anything about dogs might think are pit bulls, as well as the dogs’ owners. It’s not fair, it’s unethical, and it’s un-American. Or, as Elise Van Kavage, chair of the Animal Law Committee of the Tort, Trial & Insurance Practice Section, put it, “People love their pets, no matter what their appearance,” she said. “This is America. Responsible pet owners should be allowed to own whatever breed they want.” Continue reading
Ethics Hero: The American Bar Association
Well, I'll be hornswoggled! INTEGRITY!
The mainstream media and left-of-center pundits managed to leave criticism of President Obama’s bizarre—for a lawyer and supposed authority on Constitutional law, and yes, for a President too—assertion that there was something “unprecedented” about the Supreme Court declaring an act of Congress unconstitutional, and something inappropriate for this to be done by “unelected” judges, to conservative sources, an increasingly common and deplorable technique that allows the Left to thereafter discredit legitimate and non-ideological observations as “partisan.” Thus it was a relief, and a credit to the organization, when the reliably liberal American Bar Association weighed in with the same critique of the President’s comments, with similar intensity. Continue reading
Now THIS Is What They Used To Call “Appearance of Impropriety”…
"So, Miss Scarlet!! At last you confess your guilt in this heinous crime! Now that that's over with, would you care to join me for dinner tonight?"
The prohibition against attorneys engaging in conduct that creates “the appearance of impropriety” was eliminated from the legal ethics rules (though not the judicial ethics rules) a long time ago, almost 30 years. Periodically a case will arise in which its absence is felt. The nice thing about the appearance of impropriety category is that it was flexible enough to use to sanction lawyers who figured out ways to make the profession look slimy without running squarely afoul of other rules…like San Diego prosecutor Ernie Marugg.
Marugg, it is alleged, used his defendants list as his little black book…seeking romantic relationships with the women he prosecuted after their trials were over. His habit was investigated one, but no specific ethical violation could be found. What would it be? Was he too easy on the women he was duty bound to prosecute zealously? One woman who pleaded guilty when Marugg prosecuted her is now suing him, claiming that his personal interest in her caused him to be biased against her. Huh? How does that work? “You always hurt the one you love,” as the old song says? Continue reading
As the Cancer of Corruption Spreads, a Diagnosis and Treatment
A sign in Africa, which corruption continues to ravage. We ignore its warning at our peril.
Last week, three more disheartening cheating scandals were in the spotlight, in completely separate areas of our society: legal education, the military, and college sports. The signs that the cancer of corruption is spreading through America’s culture with increasing speed are frightening, but being frightened isn’t constructive. Working to eradicate the cancer is. Last week’s revelations:
- The American Bar Association publicly admonished Villanova Law School for a pattern of misrepresenting—inflating—GPAs and LSATs of its applicants and admitted students in order to receive a higher ranking, which in turn would attract more and better applicants. The scandal broke in June, and the ABA was lenient, stating that the school had reported its own misconduct (the responsible parties had been discovered and dismissed). Is Villanova alone, or is it just the first law school in this increasingly competitive environment to get caught? If a law school cheats, what kind of lawyers will it produce? Continue reading
Ethics Quote of the Day: Ken, of Popehat
“Listen to me: a law school calculated to make students feel good about themselves is as ridiculous as a Marine boot camp designed to make enlistees feel good about themselves. Law students, God help us, will one day be lawyers. When they are, nobody will care about their self-esteem. The prosecutors seeking to jail their clients will not be seeking to foster a sense of community. The opposing civil lawyers seeking to bankrupt their clients will not be promoting a culture of dignity and respect. Most law practice is about conflict. It’s a bloody, ugly street fight. Self-esteem borne of law-should-be-harmony is useless to clients. The only self-esteem useful to clients is self-esteem earned by hard work, determination, command of the subject matter, and the willingness to stand up to adversity. People who object to law professors being wickedly Socratic, and classmates being cutthroat, are missing the point. If you’re put off by a Socratic professor, Mr. Fluffy Bunny, a run-of-the-mill judge is going to make you soil yourself. If nasty, backstabbing classmates upset you, the first time you get into a nasty letter-writing campaign with an opposing counsel you’re going to have a breakdown. Law school is not a fucking spa day. It’s training to stand between your client and whatever the world throws at him.”
—– Ken, the astute lawyer/sage/Don Rickles of the libertarian social commentary website Popehat, excoriating the University of St. Thomas Law School for, among other things, extolling the values of self-esteem, collaboration, harmony and community among their students.
What Ken is really talking about is zealous representation, that once universally accepted bedrock of the lawyer’s duty that has gradually fallen into disfavor with many academics and lawyers. Continue reading
The Unethical and Illogical Smearing of Justice Dept. Lawyers
The Senate Republicans, bolstered by the political Right, are angrily criticizing Attorney General Eric Holder for having former Gitmo defense lawyers on the Justice Department anti-terror team. This demonstrates many things, none of them good, some of them sad.
At least seven Justice Department lawyers previously worked on the legal defenses of Guantanamo Bay prisoners. Apparently this makes them terrorist sympathizers in the eyes of the Angry Right. This is the sad part. A flat learning curve is always sad. Continue reading
The Arnie Becker Rule [Updated 12/11/16]
For about 20 years, the consensus has been building in the legal profession that a lawyer sleeping with his clients is not only a bad idea, but also should be prohibited by the formal ethics rules. States like California, Oregon and New York quickly adopted such a rule while other bars resisted; when the ABA added the “no sex with clients” provision to is Model Rule 1.8 in 2003, more states followed suit. Now Virginia, one of the most respected bars in the country, is considering its first pronouncement on the subject, in the form of a formal ethics opinion. Continue reading
