I like the show in general, but its writers need to catch up with the Rules of Professional Conduct and their interpretation.
Twenty years ago, in “The Sopranos,” Tony and his wife Carmella were having marital problems—gee , I wonder why?—and Tony was tipped off that she was looking for a divorce lawyer. So Tony contacted every major divorce lawyer he could find to tell them all about his marriage on the pretext that he was considering retaining one of them.. The idea was to conflict them all out of representing her, because they had received confidential communications from Tony.
Rule 1.18, relatively new at the time, held that lawyers had to keep the confidences of even potential clients, making such a dastardly tactic possible. But not long after that episode of “The Sopranos” revealed the loophole in the rules, courts and legal ethics opinions closed it with the sensible holding that someone only consulting a lawyer to create a conflict and not as a good faith effort to seek legal representation was not a genuine potential client.
Nevertheless, in the current season of “The Lincoln Lawyer,” Mickey’s newly minted lawyer associate (and ex-wife) says she got her first family law client because the woman had been frozen out of hiring the established divorce lawyers after her louse of a spouse had pulled Tony’s old trick.
True, it’s not always easy to prove that an estranged spouse is seeking conflicts rather than a lawyer. Nonetheless, lawyer TV shows are ethically obligated not to deceive the public. Tony Soprano’s method is unlikely to work now, and hasn’t been viable for at least a decade.
In one area, “The Lincoln Lawyer” deserves praise for properly representing a lawyer’s duty that Hollywood almost always ignores. Whenever Mickey Haller, “The Lincoln Lawyer,” is presented with a plea deal or another offer from the opposing attorney, even if Mickey makes it clear that he thinks the offer is ridiculous, he always says, “I’ll run it by my client,” which he has to do. But even in some of the most celebrated legal films, like Paul Newman’s “The Verdict,” the lawyers don’t do that. As a result, many clients don’t know their attorney can’t reject or accept a settlement offer without consulting them. That misconception can cause real harm.
The previous installments of these legal ethics commentaries on the streaming series can be found here, here, and here.
In this limited series of as yet undetermined length, I’ll be examining the legal ethics issues raised by the Netflix limited series of as yet undetermined length based on the Michael Connelly character, fed through the filter of the ubiquitous David Kelley.
I’m not going in strict order chronological order because why should I? This issue is a rich one, and arrived in Season 3 of the show. A prostitute whom Mickey had advised and had testified to help a client in Season 2 turned up dead, and he agreed to represent the man, her cyber pimp, accused of killing her before he realized she was the victim. Mickey liked and sympathized with the victim; whether he was officially her lawyer is a bit vague, but she seemed to think of him that way.
Can a lawyer represent a defendant accused of killing a lawyer’s client? Sure enough, this has happened; there’s even a Supreme Court case about it.
Netflix’s “The Lincoln Lawyer” series has dropped its fourth season. This gave me an excuse to revisit the first three seasons of the legal show, based on the Matthew McConaughey film, itself based on Michael Connelly novels, about sketchy a Los Angeles criminal defense attorney whose office usthe backseat of a chauffeur-driven Lincoln town car. The series—it’s Netflix after all—has DEI’ed the movie, with Micky Haller, the central character, being transformed into a Mexican-American who speaks Spanish frequently (though not as often as Bad Bunny) and is played by Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, a Mexican actor who only plays Hispanic roles when he appears in U.S. movies and TV shows. He was, for example, the gratuitous Hispanic father in the ostentatiously “diverse” “Jurassic World” franchise addition last year (the worst of them all, in my opinion). That is not to say he isn’t an appealing, intelligent, entertaining leading man in “The Lincoln Lawyer.”
The show makes a point of highlighting legal ethics dilemmas, as Mickey habitually tightropes along ethical lines to zealously represent his clients. A fellow legal ethicist thinks the show is unusually good in this realm. I’m not quite so enthusiastic. I will examine some of the legal ethics dilemmas that surfaced in the first two seasons over the next couple days.
[Johnny Mathisfinally announced his retirement this year—he’s only 90. His has been one of the most recognizable, enjoyable, seductive voices in American popular music for almost 70 years. My college room mate always had his records on hand to create the proper mood for his dates. An old time crooner’s chances of being remembered rests now on whether there is a Christmas standard he can be associated with. Johnny’s best shots are “It’s Beginning to Lot Like Christmas,” and “We Need a Little Christmas” from “Mame.” He sings all the others beautifully too, but they are taken.]
I was informed by a fellow Christmas movie fan that it is almost impossible to watch the original “Miracle on 34th Street” film on streaming services or the networks. They prefer to show the various remakes, all inferior in every way. What made director-writer George Seaton‘s movie (it won him an Oscar) so superb in addition to the casting, his straight-forward style and his obvious love of Christmas is that it instantly felt perfect despite its many suspension of disbelief challenges. Why do they feel this film has to be remade? Is it the lack of color? (“Miracle on 34th Street” was one of the first movies Ted Turner colorizes, and that version is unwatchable.)
As I’ve stated here before I believed in Santa Claus until I was 12. I didn’t want to give the fantasy up: I loved magic, and my parents always tried to make the season magical. My late wife Grace and I tried to do the same with Grant, now “Samantha,” but he was a non-believer by the third grade. Is there anything more joyful to see than the look on a child’s face as he or she wakes up to find what Santa has delivered? Will anything feel that wonderful again?
“Miracle on 34th Street” is an ethics movie in many ways. The movie is about the importance of believing in good things, hopeful things, even impossible things. The movie reminds us that wonderful things can happen even when they seem impossible, and that life is better when we believe that every day of our lives. I’m engaged in that right now: all of 2025 has required it. I’ve had serious injuries, successes, new projects and setbacks. My father taught me to be ready for the worst but to never to give up on the best.
One thing this film does well is to concentrate on the secular holiday without any allusions to the religious holy day, but not being obnoxious about it. “It’s a Wonderful Life” also straddles the line very cleverly: it begins in heaven, after all. All the “A Christmas Carol” films include Bob Cratchit telling his wife that Tiny Tim mused about how his disability reminded people of Jesus’s miracles at Christmastime, and that’s Dickens’ only reference to Jesus in his story.
On the offensive side is the Rankin-Bass animated “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer”—I can’t believe they still show that thing—when the “stormy Christmas Eve” causes Santa to decide to “cancel Christmas.” I’d say that’s above Santa’s pay grade, wouldn’t you agree? It also suggests that Christmas is only about gifts and children. (Do parents today explain that the singing snowman who narrates the story is based on, and looks like) the real person who also sings the most memorable songs? They should. Burl Ives had a fascinating life and a varied career, and those kids will probably be hearing him sing “Have a Holly Jolly Christmas” for the rest of theirs.
Interestingly, all of the perennial Christmas movies have been made into stage musicals of varying success—“White Christmas,” “It’s a Wonderful Life,” “A Christmas Story,” “Elf”—- but “Miracle on 34th Street” flopped so badly when Meredith Willson [“The Music Man”] adapted it as “Here’s Love” on Broadway that nobody has tried again. The show included the song, “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas,” which Willson wrote long before the show was assembled. But as with all the movie remakes, the show missed Edmund Gwynn, the best Kris Kringle of them all. He was a distinguished classical actor until that movie: he complained that after the film he wasn’t allowed to get rid of his bushy white beard and was type-cast as jolly old men.
I decided to post the Companion earlier this year; I also was moved by the fact that a number of EA readers had sought out the 2024 version today. When I’ve posted it on Christmas Eve, it has lacked views for the obvious reasons.
The 2025 companion reflects some additional thoughts upon my re-watching “Miracle on 34th Street” last week—I even took notes. Mostly, I though about how important the holiday, the stories, the music, the movies and what they signify taken as a whole is to our nation, our society and our culture. Thus it was that I decided that here was a good place to re-post “Christmas, the Ethical Holiday” Besides, I need to read it myself.
Christmas: the Ethical Holiday
Benjamin Franklin recognized the importance of regularly focusing one’s attention on ethical conduct rather than the usual non-ethical goals, needs, desires and impulses that usually occupy the thoughts of even the most virtuous among us. He suggested that every morning an individual should challenge himself to do good during the day. In the 21st century psychologists call this “priming,” a form of beneficial self-brain-washing that plants the seeds of future choices.
The Christmas season operates as an effective form of mass population priming, using tradition, lore, music, poetry, ritual, literature, art and entertainment to celebrate basic ethical virtues and exemplary conduct toward other human beings. Kindness, love, forgiveness, empathy, generosity, charity, sacrifice, selflessness, respect, caring, peacefulness…all of these are part of the message of Christmas, which has become more universal and influential in its societal and behavioral importance than its religious origins could have ever accomplished alone. Secular and cultural contributions have greatly strengthened the ethical lessons of Christmas. “It’s A Wonderful Life” urges us to value our ability to enrich the lives of others, and to appreciate the way they enrich ours. “A Christmas Story” reminds us to make childhood a magical time when wishes can come true. O. Henry’s story “The Gift of the Magi” proves that it is not the value of gifts, but the love that motivates them that truly matters. Most powerful of all, Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” teaches that the admirable conduct the spirit of the season can inspire need not be short-lived, and that if we use Christmas properly, as Ben Franklin used his morning exhortation to good conduct, it can make all of us better, happier, more virtuous human beings.
At this point in civilization, the religious context of Christmas almost does more harm than good. Though the day chosen to celebrate Jesus of Nazareth’s birthday has been spectacularly successful in promoting the ethical and moral ideals he taught, the idea that Christmas is indistinguishable from the religion he founded has made it the object of yearly controversy, as if celebrating Christmas is an affront to other faiths.
This is a tragedy, because every human being, regardless of religious belief, can benefit from a culture-wide exhortation to be good and to do good. “Happy Holidays!”—the bland, generic, careful greeting of those afraid to offend those who should not be offended—does nothing to spur us toward love, kindness, peace and empathy. “Merry Christmas!” does.
This is not just a religious holiday; it is the culture-wide ethical holiday, the time when everything should be aligned to remind us to take stock of our lives, think about everyone else who lives on earth with us, and to try to live for others as well as ourselves. Christians should be proud that their religion gave such a valuable gift to humanity, and non-Christians should be eager to accept that gift, with thanks.
It is foolish and self-destructive for there to be a “war on Christmas.” Charles Dickens understood. There is hardly a word about religion anywhere in his story. There doesn’t need to be. Christmas is the ethical holiday. Christians and non-Christians can celebrate it or not as they choose, but whether they do or not, the Christmas season is more important than any one religion, even the one that gives the holiday its name.
Christmas is important because it primes us to be good, be better, be more ethical, for the rest of the year. There should be nothing controversial about that.
I got fired again yesterday. Sometime I need to go back through my memory banks and figure out how many times this has happened, but it’s a lot. My proclivity for getting canned was a main motivation for me starting my own business thirty years ago, because I was reasonable certain that I wouldn’t fire myself, and that I could probably talk my late wife, the company’s COO, from doing it.
Technically one could say that my company, ProEthics, was fired, but since I’m the only employee now, that would be nit-picking. This bar association had contracted with me as its primary legal ethics teacher for the entire 30 years, with my handling between three and five three-hour seminars every year, plus the ethics segment in the monthly bar’s orientation session for new bar admittees. Its support was a substantial reason Grace and I were willing to take the plunge as a small business in the first place.
By the time the axe fell, on a Zoom call, naturally, I pretty much knew what was coming. The CLE director, whom I had worked with amicably for ten years, had suddenly stopped responding to my emails until he sent me the dreaded “we need to talk” message last week. There had been no incident, screw-up, failure or apparent precipitating catalyst for the end that I could detect: my participant evaluations have remained in the 4-5 range in all categories on a 1-5 scale for all three decades years. My last seminar, an adaptation of my one-man show about Clarence Darrow with ethics commentary on the issues raised by his career, was especially popular, in great part because of the talented D.C. actor who played Clarence, Steve Lebens. One lawyer rushed up and after the program, grabbed my hand, and said the seminar had changed his whole perspective on practicing law as he choked back tears.
To be honest, the blow yesterday was more sentimental than anything. Dr, Fauci’s stupid Wuhan virus lockdown killed the live seminar part of my business, and it never recovered. I was paid by the head by this bar association as a matter of loyalty and courtesy, and the heads had almost completely disappeared. I used to have 100-150 lawyers in a classroom; for the last few years it’s been less than ten, with maybe 20 more online or zooming, sometimes a few more. Lawyers don’t like mandatory CLE, and the lockdown gave them an excuse to use remote technology and videos, meaning that they could be doing billable work or playing with their dogs, with no one the wiser.
Those methods don’t work pedagogically nearly as well as face-to-face training, and everybody knows it; they also do not let me do what I do better than most legal ethics teachers, which is engage and entertain while teaching. Most of my income is from expert consulting now, which I am good at but nowhere near as much fun. This association’s seminars were a loss leader for me by the end.
Still, the “we’ve decided to go in another direction” message was a bit mysterious. I was told by the CLE director that the orders came from “upstairs.” The numbers still said I was their best and most popular ethics teacher: why the new “direction”? I’ve won the bar two national awards for innovative CLE, and do the only musical ethics programs in the field with my long-time collaborator Mike Messer. What’s not to like?
A personal injury law firm whose name will remain unspoken “explains” on its website why exorbitant contingent fees are justifiable and ethical. The page says that a lawyer receiving a higher potential fee will probably do a better job representing the client than one who will receive a lesser proportion of the settlement or damages: more motivation!
This is exactly the opposite of what the ethics rules of every jurisdiction mandate. A lawyer is obligated to represent a client to the best of his or her ability regardless of the fee, including when the representation is pro bono, that is, for no fee at all. A lawyer who calibrates the effort and passion he or she puts into a case based on the size of the fee, negotiated or potential, is an unethical lawyer, an untrustworthy lawyer.
A bad lawyer.
And yet here is a law firm stating, “The more you pay us, the better job we’ll do.”
That is one of several plaques around San Antonio that memorializes William Barrett Travis’s desperate but inspiring letter on this date in 1836 calling for assistance as the fortress Travis commanded found itself under siege by the Mexican army. Last year at this time, I’m ashamed to say, I was too preoccupied to write about the Alamo, its defenders and its importance in American history and lore. I’m just as preoccupied now, frankly, but also determined not to neglect my duty to give proper respect and acknowledgement to 220 or so volunteers who, by their courage, comradery and dedication to a cause, displayed the best of the American spirit. Travis, Bowie, Crockett, Bonham and the rest would have really gotten a kick out of Trump’s post-assassination attempt theater.
Meanwhile,
1. I won’t be using the History Channel’s daily history prompts from now on. It seriously hacked me off, first by insisting that I consent to an A&E “Consumer Agreement” and not making a way to consent to it evident, but worse, presenting me with this monster (skip to the end; for God’s sake don’t try to read it!)
I have lectured and written abut this before. No ethical lawyer should prepare such a thing which they know with 100% certainty that literally no one can or will read. That’s not informed consent. That’s chicanery. Nor should a consumers have to pay lawyers to explain what what they are agreeing to. If I were asked to advise a client about the propriety of inflicting such a document on anyone, I would a) end up charging them several thousand dollars for my time and b) tell them that if they couldn’t cut the agreement down to three pages while defining every legal term in it, I would regard it as signature significance for an untrustworthy company. Give consumers a video to listen to that explains what the document covers in simple English. Something…anything but that mess. This is how Disney ended up using the agreement to sign up for a free trial on Disney+ to try to dodge a negligence suit at EPCOT. Over the past year, as I have been digging out from a financial disaster, I’ve become really good at saying, “You know what? I don’t want or need this service enough to tolerate the way you manipulate and mistreat customers. Screw you.”
I admit it: I’ve been avoiding this large, stinky elephant in the ethics room because I have nothing good to say about any side of the controversy.
It’s all very depressing. The organization I belong to consisting of just about every legal ethics teacher, lawyer and consultant in the country immediately showed (again) how Trump Deranged and biased the membership is. After the resignation letter of February 12 from then S.D.N.Y. U.S Attorney Sassoon to U.S.AG Pam Bondi refusing to carry out the DOJ’s directive that she move to dismiss the then pending corruption indictment against NYC Mayor Eric Adams (Quote: “It is a breathtaking and dangerous precedent to reward Adams’s opportunistic and shifting commitments on immigration and other policy matters with dismissal of a criminal indictment….Such an exchange…violates common sense beliefs in the equal administration of justice, the [DOJ’s] Justice Manual [for federal prosecutors], and the Rules of Professional Conduct.”), the listserv was immediately awash with comments like this one: “Once the rule of law cease, so does democracy. A client has the right to instruct an attorney; the attorney may seek to be relieved if the client’s directive is offensive. But what do we do when a “client”, or anyone, seeks to end democracy?”
Riiiight: not continuing with what looked a lot like a politically-motivated prosecution of Adams by the Biden Administration threatens democracy.
This Comment of the Day from the stellar Harkins household—this is from Ryan Harkins–was just posted three days ago and it seems like eons. It responds to another one of my arguments that sufficient demonstrations of stupidity by lawyers even outside the practice of law should be grounds for disbarment—a suspension isn’t enough, because such a lawyer will not become smarter after a professional “time out.” I think the first time I suggested this reform to legal discipline was when “The View’s” token lawyer, racist Sunny Hostin, suggested that eclipses and earthquakes were caused by climate change. It upsets me just think about the fact that this idiot has a law degree.
A basic and important rule of gun safety, perhaps the preeminent rule, is that you should never point a gun at anything you don’t intend to shoot. Playing around with a gun in the fashion that Medina did shows a disturbing lack of gun safety in particular, but of the principal normalization of deviance in particular.
To delve into a little bit of brain science, in following the cognitive-emotive-behavioral model, we start with a desire. Perhaps in Medina’s case, it was simply to have fun. But how would he possibly conclude pulling the trigger of an unloaded gun is fun?
There are a large variety of ways we can try to satisfy our desires. In the case of hunger, we could seek satiation from a myriad of venues. In the case seeking stress relief, we could seek out a movie, a game, exercise, or any of a host of other options. But there are options we can choose from that are unhealthy, dangerous, or even illegal. When presented with all these options, our brains experience a byplay between thought and feeling. Does this option satisfy? The emotions clamor for a particular avenue, and cognition weighs the risks and benefits. If I eat a salad, I might not feel satiated, but if I eat a Hardee’s Monster Burger, I’ll be consuming far too many calories. But the salad may not be very tasty, and the Monster Burger is delicious. Whichever way I choose, my brain will record the success or failure of the endeavor, and the next time I am hungry, I will have a precedent to fall back on. They byplay between cognition and emotion in subsequent encounters proceeds much more quickly. The Monster Burger was indeed delicious, filled me up, and I didn’t seem to suffer any negative consequences. So the next time, my brain is patterned to lean toward the Monster Burger because of the positive experience.
Florida lawyer Albert V. Medina, who practices in Boca Raton, had his law license suspended for 10 days, and you’ll never guess why.
Medina shot his brother in the arm while fooling around with a gun, pointing it at his brother and pulling the trigger. The brothers said that they engaged in this “horseplay” frequently: the wounded brother said his sibling had aimed an unloaded pistol at him and pulled the trigger ten times before, as a joke. This time, however, it was loaded.
The brother signed an affidavit affirming that the incident was unintentional, so the criminal case was resolved by Medina’s pleading guilty to the misdemeanor offense of culpable negligence causing injury to another. Medina has been a member of the bar since 2014 with no prior ethics offenses.
I don’t care. The idea of the legal discipline system is to protect the public from lawyers who are demonstrably untrustworthy or unfit to practice law for other reasons. Morons are unfit to practice law, and you can’t fix stupid. What is this guy, eleven years old? Anyone who aims guns at others “as a joke” and pulls the trigger shouldn’t be trusted with sharp objects, much less with the legal affairs of members of the public.
Absent a successful brain transplant, Albert V. Medina should have been disbarred.
Ethics Alarms 