#legal-ethics

#legal-ethics

In 1985, President Ronald Reagan appointed me as a federal judge. I was 38 years old. At the time, I looked forward to serving for the rest of my life. However, I resigned Friday, relinquishing that lifetime appointment and giving up the opportunity for public service that I have loved. My reason is simple: I no longer can bear to be restrained by what judges can say publicly or do outside the courtroom.

To my mind, information that a person discloses in a publicly available manner is fair game for lawyers preparing for voir dire,

Today, I'm talking with Sean Fitzpatrick, the CEO of LexisNexis, one of the most important companies in the entire legal system. For years - including when I was in law school - LexisNexis was basically the library. It's where you went to look up case law, do legal research, and find the laws and precedents you would need to be an effective lawyer for your clients.

One day in the future, I hope they gather all the lawyers employed by the two Trump administrations and administer that Scientology test where you hold the two metal things while someone sizes you up for a donation. This is because administering a bar exam to the endless parade of fools and dolts marching out of the Department of Justice in order to do battle with the Constitution, the rule of law, English syntax, and common sense would be like teaching opera to a goat.

But state bar officials linked White to 40 counts of misconduct, involving 10 clients, over a six-year period, including acts of moral turpitude (misappropriation and conversion), misrepresentations to clients and the court, unauthorized practice of law, co-mingling client and personal funds, failing to perform diligently, failing to deposit advanced fees into a client trust account, failing to return client files, failing to respond to client inquiries, and failing to provide an accounting to her clients upon reasonable request.

An immigration barrister was found by a judge to be using AI to do his work for a tribunal hearing after citing cases that were entirely fictitious or wholly irrelevant. Chowdhury Rahman was discovered using ChatGPT-like software to prepare his legal research, a tribunal heard. Rahman was found not only to have used AI to prepare his work, but failed thereafter to undertake any proper checks on the accuracy.

It's been a little over six months since Donald Trump fired off a retaliatory executive order threatening to shut down Paul Weiss's ability to do business as a global law firm, which the firm immediately followed with sycophantic groveling. Paul Weiss offered the administration $40 million in free legal services - ostensibly for conservative-friendly charities - but we've since learned that they've taken on a role papering up work for the Commerce Department in a questionably legal arrangement.

The negative review, posted on the Facebook page for Gonzales' law firm, said Gonzales is a "horrible lawyer" who "doesn't do her job and is a nasty rude person." Gonzales replied in the comments section. "Be careful of this woman and her family," Gonzales wrote. "She is a terrible mother. She allows her kids to damage other people's property and then blames everyone else. She does not like hearing the truth about her lack of parenting nor the worthless child she raised.

Cooley Law Has Real Trouble Getting Its Graduates To Pass The Bar Exam: And the ABA has a real issue with that. Everyone Knows Biglaw Associates Work A Lot Of Hours: But where do the work the *most*? Biglaw Firm Files Lawsuit Against A Former Associate: After they say she made false allegations of sexual assault against a partner. Paul Weiss And Kirkland Got Some 'Splainin To Do (Again): Because how they're paying off their pro bono payola sure seems like it violates the law.

* Judge considering sanctioning DOJ lawyers over repeated statements compromising fairness of Mangione trial. [ NY Times] * Roberta Kaplan representing Disney shareholders seeking discovery to determine if Kimmel suspension demonstrates a breach of fiduciary duties. [ Semafor] * Group challenging SEC gag rule, which prevents parties who voluntarily settle enforcement cases from turning around and telling the market they did nothing wrong, seeks en banc review from the Ninth Circuit. But, you know, you don't have to settle. [ Law.com]

If I were a federal prosecutor in Utah bringing murder charges against Tyler Robinson in the killing of Charlie Kirk, this would strike me as more than a little ominous. The future of their case would likely rely in large part on the president and the crew of his big ship of fools. They've already mucked around with the case of Luigi Mangione in New York, who is charged with the murder of healthcare executive Brian Thompson.

He's one of scores of lawyers the Trump administration has named in executive actions, joining a list that includes big law firms and attorneys who worked for people Trump considers his opponents. There's no shortage of reasons why Donald Trump would hate Elias and want to shut him down: Elias has for decades represented high-profile Democrats, including the presidential campaigns of Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris, and prominent liberal groups, including the Democratic National Committee.

After announcing the publication of my new article Ethics Accountability: The Next Era for Lawyers and Judges last week I have another to share hot off the press, this one co-authored with Hannah Johnson (Southern Illinois) and published in the U.C. Davis Law Review. You can download Dirty Laundry: A Book Review of Supreme Bias: Gender and Race in U.S. Supreme Court Confirmation Hearings by Christina L. Boyd, Paul M. Collins, Jr., and Lori A. Ringhand (Stanford University Press) for free at this . Here's a teaser.

Unchecked Entitlement? From A Lawyer? No!

As we progress through our series on the strategic value of presenting CLEs, we've explored how these presentations can enhance your professional reputation and serve as powerful tools for networking and client development. Now, we turn our attention to another critical advantage: the long-term benefits of using CLEs to stay current in your field and sharing that knowledge with others.

Hello from California! This week I'm in the Bay Area participating in a leadership conference organized by Women Execs on Boards, an off-shoot of Harvard Business School's Women on Boards, after spending the weekend at the Omega Institute in upstate New York. (I'm gathering lots of ideas for the next edition of my book Law, Leadership, and Pipelines to Power, co-authored with Hannah Johnson, the new dean of Southern Illinois University Simmons Law School.)

It should go without saying that when you are looking for an attorney to set up your estate plan, especially if you have children you want to pass along money or possessions to, you need to feel absolutely comfortable that whatever documents are set up are done with your best interest in mind. There is no question that what this original lawyer did to this Redditor is both morally and ethically wrong.

Lawyers often need to represent clients that do not have too many defenses for the crimes charged or the civil wrongs alleged. However, our adversarial system of justice requires that people get solid representation since justice is easier to attain when the best arguments are presented by all sides. As attorneys, it can sometimes be easy to give up and throw in the towel on certain aspects of a representation. However, in most situations, lawyers should not go down without a fight.

Here at Kaleidoscope, the newly minted 8am's inaugural conference, lawyers gathered to hear about the dangers lurking in their pockets. Rather than being happy to see us, the phones they lug around carry a ticking ethical timebomb poised to erupt as their terminally Millennial clients demand to talk about their cases over SMS. It's not an outlier scenario anymore. Mark Palmer, Chief Counsel of the Illinois Supreme Court Commission on Professionalism, explained that 59 percent of clients want to communicate with their lawyers by text.

"It is now settled law in the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit that California law limiting law enforcement coordination with federal immigration enforcement activities 'does not directly conflict with any obligations that the (Immigration and Nationality Act) or other federal statutes impose on state or local governments,'" wrote David Sapp, legal affairs secretary for the governor's office.

On May 20, 2022 - a year after John Durham had obtained evidence showing that the draft SVR report that he always claimed was the basis of his investigation was based on "composite" emails, and as such, proof that the SVR was framing Hillary Clinton - his lead prosecutor, Andrew DeFilippis, openly defied a judge's order.

The allegations made by Mr. Bryant against the firm and its partners are categorically false and repugnant. The firm will vigorously defend itself and our colleagues and intends to explore all available remedies in response to these outrageous claims.

Erez Reuveni highlights the pressure on career attorneys within the Justice Department: "Career attorneys can't...go to court and parrot these similar talking points that have no basis in law and have no support."

Amaris Marie Delapena, a Florida lawyer, has been suspended after being convicted of 15 counts of wire fraud and 22 counts of bank fraud, amounting to over $193,000 in embezzlement.

Jones, the (now former) federal bankruptcy judge, somehow didn't recuse himself from cases involving Freeman, the (now former) partner at Jackson Walker. As a result, Jones resigned and the Department of Justice sued Freeman's former firm to try to disgorge up to $23 million in fees it collected in the 33 cases overseen by Jones while he was involved with Freeman.

'Each citation, each argument, each procedural decision is a mark upon the clay, an indelible impression that may one day be studied, critiqued, or serve as a cautionary tale.'

Joseph Dunn, former executive director of the State Bar of California, should receive a brief suspension for misrepresentations regarding funding for a trip to Mongolia.