legal ethics

Now THIS Is an Unethical Lawyer!

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

The Tennessee Supreme Court this month disbarred a Nashville lawyer, Brian Philip Manookian, for habitual unethical conduct that I have a hard time believing that any lawyer would dare to engage in even once. Manookian, wrote the Court, “engaged in this long pattern of intimidating and degrading conduct” to succeed in a medical liability case, the Tennessee Supreme Court said. His goal was to coerce opposing lawyers “into standing down to avoid personal humiliation and emotional distress for them or their families. A business model of sorts, based on fear….To say that Mr. Manookian engaged in multiple offenses is to understate,” the state supreme court continued. “Despite lectures, fines, sanctions and suspensions from judge after judge, Mr. Manookian did not choose merely to continue engaging in misconduct—each time he received the expected negative reaction to his behavior, he responded by escalating it.”

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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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Your Fani Willis Fiasco Update…

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

1. I had a long conversation with a close friend who is a retired lifetime federal prosecutor. She really detests Donald Trump, to the extent that she said she was initially “excited” about the Georgia case against him because, as a state prosecution, it would not be vulnerable to a presidential pardon. Now she says she is thoroughly disgusted with Willis, whom she termed an “idiot” for…

  • Hiring a lawyer to work on the case who would be using the fruits of his job to pay for benefits to her, what she called the equivalent of a kickback;
  • Having an intimate relationship with such a lawyer, which not only calls into question the reasons he was hired, but also her independent judgment regarding the case generally, since if he and she are benefiting from the case continuing, she sould not apply the required “independent judgment” to determine how to pursue the case or even whether to pursue it;
  • Doing this despite knowing that it would be a high profile case under constant scrutiny, requiring “Caesar’s wife” level, squeaky-clean management on her part;
  • Immediately “playing the “race card” as soon as her conflicts were raised in the court filing, when she knew or should have known that the ethics complaints have substance;
  • Creating a textbook “appearance of impropriety,” which as a government lawyer Willis had to know was taboo.

At very least, she agreed, Nathan Wade should have withdrawn from the case (or been removed by Willis) as soon as this controversy arose. That he has not, she said, proves that Willis is conflicted and her judgment is not trustworthy. My freind says the Georgia case is likely done-for, and that its demise will increase public skepticism about the legitimacy of the other cases being pursued against Trump. She also opines that even if Willis somehow is able to stay at the helm of the case, she is clearly such an incompetent that she will botch it in some other way.

I concur with all of the above.

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A “Nah, There’s No Mainstream Media Bias” Classic: CBS Reports on the Fani Willis Scandal

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Now that the anti-Trump, Democrat propaganda-promoting, biased and incompetent mainstream media has been forced to cover the unfolding Fani Willis ethics debacle that threatens to swallow her partisan “Get Trump!” prosecution, it is giving us blazing examples of just how untrustworthy its coverage can be. The headline above looms over CBS’s “news” story that is really a lame and transparent effort to try to spin the Fulton County DA out of the mess of her own making.

The focus of the report is that poor Fani just about had to hire her lover as one of the prosecutors in the high profile case against Donald Trump, because she was “unable to find someone in the DA’s office with the stature and credentials needed for the case,” and “turned to at least two other legal heavy hitters in Atlanta who turned the job down.” Then the article, while conceding that Nathan Wade had little relevant experience, tells us that Wade was Willis’s “friend and mentor” <cough!> and that she told colleagues he “had the toughness to handle the scorched-earth legal tactics that Trump’s lawyers and their co-counsel were likely to employ in the legal battle.” You know, because Trump is such an evil bastard.

Then the article explains that…

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Now THAT’s an Incompetent Lawyer! “Now What?” Asks His Death Row Inmate Client…

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

Joseph Gamboa, marked for execution in Texas, is petitioning the U.S. Supreme Court to save his life. His argument is that a court-appointed lawyer was so inept that he killed his chance to challenge his murder conviction in federal court. The Supreme Court is will examine this week whether justice was done in Gamboa’s case even though his attorney made one botch after another. Indeed, he could hardly have done worse if he had the Ghostbusters’ lawyer (Rick Moranis) from “Ghostbusters 2.”

Gamboa was convicted and sentenced to death in 2007 for two murders during a robbery, but he swears that he is innocent. His court-appointed lawyer, John J. Ritenour Jr., met with Gamboa only once, the condemned man argues in his SCOTUS brief, then filed a habeas petition. At that single meeting, Gamboa says he brought documents that indicated prosecutors withheld potentially exculpatory evidence (a Brady violation!) that another man had committed the killings. Ritenour did not take the documents, Gamboa’s brief says. In a sworn statement, Gamboa stated that “Mr. Ritenour told me that he had read the state court record in my case and believed I was guilty.”

It took Ritenour almost a year to filed the habeus corpus petition, and it was a hack job. The petition was cut-and-pasted from an earlier one for another client, even repeating the same typos and grammatical errors. It even featured the name of the other client, Obie Weather, where the lawyer hadn’t quite finished proof-reading. Nor was the document signed by Gamboa, a requirement. Gamboa says that the petition did not include any of the arguments they had discussed…understandable, since the document was basically copied from a different case.

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Since the Media is Sure to Report This Major Ethics Story As Late As Possible If At All, I’m Going To Risk Commenting On It Too Soon…

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

This juicy legal ethics scandal is churning in the conservative media while the left side of our corrupt journalism is clearly going to slow walk it as along as possible or until the facts evaporate. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported the story first: The Democrat district attorney prosecuting Donald Trump over his alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia, Fani Willis, may have engaged in egregiously unethical conduct in prosecuting the case.

[A] motion, filed Monday by Trump co-defendant Michael Roman, alleged that Willis and special prosecutor Nathan Wade “have been engaged in an improper, clandestine personal relationship during the pendency of this case.” It also contended that Wade had paid for lavish vacations that he and Willis took with the money his law office was paid for his work on the election interference case.

Though this is right up the Ethics Alarms alley as a legal ethics story, I hesitated to post on it until the facts were verified by a neutral and reliable source. They haven’t been. Frankly, it is difficult for me to believe that Willis or any prosecutor could do something so stupid in any matter, but especially in such a high profile case. Continue reading →

Army Policy Is Apparently That Its Prosecutors Must “Believe All Women”

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

This story, initially reported by the Associated Press, is at very least ominous, and at most a reminder that the Biden Administration’s position is that a man accused of sexual assault is considered guilty until proven innocent.

Unless the man is Joe Biden, of course.

At the beginning of last month, the Army’s head sexual assault prosecutor, Brig. Gen. Warren Wells, was fired from his job by Secretary of the Army Christine Wormuth. The justification given was a 2013 email in which he had the audacity to remind Army defense lawyers that they were the last line of defense against false accusations. The message read,

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Harvard’s Claudine Gay Scandal Just Keeps Getting Better, Though I Guess We Shouldn’t Be Surprised That An Unethical University Uses Unethical Lawyers

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

It’s really a shame that I have to post this today, when the Ethics Alarms traffic consists largely of metaphorical tumbleweeds blowing down the empty dusty streets. However, we know most of the news media is trying to bury the series of revelations that prove that the leader of higher education rot hired an unqualified president because she was black, female, and a DEI agent, and that because she is black and female, Harvard is employing lies, excuses and rationalizations to avoid dumping her when a white male president who had been revealed as a plagiarist in scholarship and a blathering fool before Congress would have been fired in a flash.

I know this blog is a small, tinny voice in the vast wilderness, but it’s something.

Above you see excerpts from a 15 page letter sent to the New York Post threatening to sue on Harvard’s behalf if the paper continued to report the discovery by conservative reporter Christopher Rufo and others that Gay had plagiarized the works of other scholars by using their words and ideas as her own without attribution in dozens of instances, including her Harvard dissertation. The Post points out that Harvard, through its attorneys at Clare Locke, stated that there was no plagiarism and that the allegations were false before Harvard had bothered to investigate the claims. This also means that Gay approved of the letter, which she knew was itself “demonstrably false”:

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The 2023 Ethics Companion To “Miracle On 34th Street” [Updated and Expanded]

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

2023 Introduction

What makes “Miracle on 34th Street” the most appropriate classic Christmas film for 2023 is its theme: the importance of conquering cynicism and  pessimism, and always keeping one’s mind and heart open to hope. This has been a truly awful year, not one of the worst in our history but to a lot of Americans it seems that way (because they “don’t know much about history,” like Sam Cooke), but bad enough that we should be glad to see it go. I know my year has been especially miserable on multiple fronts. Nonetheless, I remain, at heart, about 12 years old. The same things make me laugh; my level of optimism remains high; I believe in this nation’s miraculous ability to somehow get out of the fixes it gets itself into; I’m still a romantic, and, yes, I think with a little luck and one more starting pitcher, the Boston Red Sox can make it to the World Series next year. I am being constantly confronted with old friends, some much younger than me, who have suddenly decided to be old: they think old, they act old, and they seem to have given up the future as irrelevant. The Santa Claus myth represents faith in the possible, or rather the impossible. Yes, its easier when you are a child, but it is worth the fight to never lose the part of you that still believes in magic and miracles. Kris Kringle really isn’t Santa Clause: he’s nuts, basically. But somehow that tiny wisp of a hope that he might be the real Santa is alive at the end of the movie. It’s really quite wonderful. It’s also important.

The production of “Miracle on 34th Street” itself epitomizes the ethical values of competence and integrity. Watch any of the attempts to remake the film over the years; some aren’t bad, but none equal the original, or even justify a remake that places the story in contemporary times.There have been four remakes starring, as Kris Kringle, Thomas Mitchell, Ed Wynn, Sebastian Cabot, and Richard Attenborough. That’s a distinguished crew to be sure. Mitchell was one of the greatest character actors in Hollywood history. Wynn was nominated for an Academy Award (for “The Diary of Ann Frank”) and Attenborough won one, Best Supporting Actor Award in 1967 for “The Sand Pebbles.” Cabot wasn’t quite in their class, but he was a solid pro, and looked more like Santa Clause than Mitchell,  Wynn, or Attenborough.

None of them, however, were as convincing as Edmund Gwenn. He made many movies—all without a white beard— and had a distinguished career in films and on stage, but even audience members who knew his work had a hard time reminding themselves that he wasn’t Kris Kringle while they watched the movie. I still have a hard time.

 The film is one more example of the special, unappreciated talent of Maureen O’Hara, who never was quite regarded as a top rank a movie star, as lovely and strong an on-screen presence as she was. Her ability to anchor great movies while never dominating them is the epitome of the “collaborative art” they always blather about during the Oscars, but which is seldom truly honored.  O’Hara was the female lead in four genuine classics: “The Hunchback of Notre Dame,” “The Quiet Man,” “How Green Was My Valley,” and “Miracle on 34th Street.” She also starred in the original “The Parent Trap” for Disney.

“Miracle on 34th Street” is an ethics movie in part because its artists committed to telling a magical story and charming audiences by working as an ensemble selflessly and  efficiently. John Payne, as the idealistic lawyer in love with Maureen, is never flashy, just completely convincing. One reason may have been that, as he told an interviewer once, the role of Fred Gaily perfectly matched his own ideals and beliefs.  This is the magic of performing talent: they make audiences suspend disbelief because they seem to believe in the story and characters too. The director,  George Seaton (who also directed “Airport,” which is NOT an ethics movie), also wrote the script that won him an Oscar. He cast his movie brilliantly, and making the correct but bold decision to stick with a matter-of-fact, realistic, unadorned style that keeps the story grounded. There are none of the corny features or inexplicable gaffes in this film that make other holiday-themed classics inherently unbelievable, like the cheesy battlefield sets in “White Christmas” or the heavenly dialogues in “It’s a Wonderful Life.”

“Miracle on 34th Street” is, as I said at the start, about the importance of believing in good things, hopeful things, even impossible things. Today many of my friends, colleagues and associates are depressed and fearful of the future—their future, the future of the nation, even the future of the planet. (The planet will be fine…the rest? As Samuel L. Jackson says in “Jurassic Park, “Hold on to your butts.”) “Miracle on 34th Street” 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. Of course, some days are easier than others.

Never mind. As the Fairy Godmother in the musical version of “Cinderella” sings, “Impossible things are happening every day.” Continue reading →

What A Surprise! Unethical Ex-Trump Lawyer Michael Cohen Has An Unethical Lawyer

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

I guess that should be “another unethical lawyer,” since Trump’s disbarred fixer was previously represented by Lanny Davis, who previously spun for the Clintons.

This, however, is funny: Cohen’s current lawyer, in arguing to a judge that court supervision of his client should be terminated now thatCohen is out of prison, included three imaginary cases in his filing last month.

“As far as the court can tell,” Manhattan federal judge Jesse M. Furman, wrote yesterday, “none of these cases exist.”

Given that Cohen is Cohen and among the most unethical people with a law degree in the country, suspicion immediately was sparked that he was behind his lawyer’s fantasies. But this is the era of nascent SkyNet, and unwitting lawyers and paralegals have already been caught using chatbots for legal research, to their sorrow. Last June, for example, a federal judge fined two lawyers $5,000 for putting their names on a legal brief containing made-up cases and citations concocted by aspiring lawyer ChatGPT. The fines were widely derided as insufficient, but judges traditionally are sympathetic when lawyers misuse technology that the judges don’t understand….at least the first time around.

So maybe Cohen’s lawyer was fooled by a bot. Another possibility is that Cohen’s lawyer, Cohen-like, just cheated. I have been told by many litigators over the years that they routinely find fake cases in their adversaries’ briefs, memos and motions.

Furman has ordered Cohen’s attorney to provide copies of the three mystery decisions within a week, or provide a sworn declaration explaining “how the motion came to cite cases that do not exist and what role, if any, Mr. Cohen played in drafting or reviewing the motion before it was filed.”

Given the client, this story is as perfect a candidate for a Nelson as I could imagine.