Ethics

How should we apply income disclosure laws to politicians who are also lawyers?  Should exceptions be made to accommodate concerns about confidentiality and privacy?  New Yorkers, including our own Steve Gillers, are weighing in.    . . . .    The Seventh Circuit has had enough of litigation pursued by a lawyer against his former law partners.    . . . .    In Malaysia, vandals attacked the offices of lawyers who represented Christians in the dispute over the word "Allah."    . . . .    In San Jose, a judge found that a prosecutor had lied about a video tape that was not produced in discovery in a child molestation case.  (nod to South Carolina Criminal Defense Blog)    . . . .    Both the UK and Australia have liberalized the rules for owning law firms. Tahlia Ruth Gordon, Steve A. Mark, and Christine E. Parker have written, Regulating Law Firm Ethics Management: An Empirical Assessment of the Regulation of Incorporated Legal Practices in NSW.  Abstract:

The Australian state of New South Wales (NSW) was the first jurisdiction to fully deregulate law firm structure and allow incorporated legal practices without restriction on ownership. At the same time it also required that these firms implement ?appropriate management systems? for ensuring the provision of legal services in conformance with compliance with professional ethical obligations. This paper presents a preliminary empirical evaluation of the impact of this attempt at ?management-based regulation? to require firms to implement an ethical infrastructure. We find that the NSW requirement that firms self-assess their own compliance with this requirement leads to a large and statistically significant drop in complaints, but that the (self-assessed) level of implementation of ethical infrastructure does not make any difference. The applicability of these findings to other firms and jurisdictions is discussed, and the NSW approach distinguished from the English Legal Aid approach to regulating law firm quality management.