dishonesty

Law Students, Lawyers and Judges With Broken Ethics Alarms, 2009

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

I won’t keep you in suspense: my favorite is the Harvard law school whiz who celebrated his job offer from a top law firm by getting drunk and burning down a church. Forgot to check the batteries in the ol’ ethics alarm, I guess!

Here are two cautionary end-of-year lists: from the Avvo blog, the “Top Lawyers Behaving Badly” list for 2009, and, though not rich a source for  black humor, the even more disturbing “Year’s Most Infamous Lawyers” from the Business Insider.

Ethics Alarms thanks  Robert Ambrogi for finding them, as well the Avvo and the Business Insider for doing such an excellent job of compiling them.

Post Office Ethics: A Nightmare Come True

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

The Bad news: overworked Connecticut postal workers have been hiding mail

The Worse news: there’s no way of knowing whether this is just happening in Connecticut, or everywhere, but my guess is that it isn’t just Connecticut.

The Worst news: the story says that the head of the postal union got “the assurance it wouldn’t happen again.” This suggests that postal workers who have been hiding the mail still have their jobs.

If hiding the U.S. mail isn’t a firing offense for postal workers, what is? Could there be a greater breach of professional ethics?

Is Gossip Unethical? Is the Pope Catholic?

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

A recent Wall Street Journal blog post included this surprising statement:

“Amid a rise in office gossip, researchers are disagreeing over whether it is fundamentally good or bad.”

Pardon? Dictionaries are unanimous in defining  gossip as “idle talk or rumor, especially about the personal or private affairs of others.” That’s pretty clearly unethical, wouldn’t you say? Continue reading →

More Ethics Lessons from Tiger and His Friends

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

The fact that a story is tabloid fodder doesn’t  mean  it can’t carry ethical wisdom along with its titillation content. As the number of alleged Woods mistresses continues to climb ( fifteen, the last I checked, but that was three hours ago), the Woods saga is casting light on more ethics issues than most. Such as… Continue reading →

Ethics Quote of the Week

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

“Ms. Hanes was awarded the position based solely on her merit.”

—– Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus (D-Montana) spokesman Tyler Matsdorf, “explaining” that although the Senator’s  state office director, Melodee Hanes, and Baucus were in the midst of a year-long romantic affair when the Senator submitted her name to President Obama as a candidate  to be appointed U.S. attorney in Montana, the nomination was completely unrelated to the relationship.

Well.

This clearly calls for..

An Ethics Alarm Pop Quiz! Continue reading →

Palin Alarm

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

The search for authentic leaders in America is frustrating. It shouldn’t be. All we ask is for is honesty and integrity. Continue reading →