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Academic

Legal Profession Blog

Cover legal ethics, bar discipline, business practice, the tension between the bar and the academy, ethical theory, and comparative legal professions.
By Alan Childress, Mike Frisch, and Jeff Lipshaw

Post Frequency: 40.8/day

Last Entry: April 01, 2011 at 14:56:26

Suspension En Masse

Posted on April 02, 2009
The New York Appellate Division for the First Judicial Department entered an order today suspended a batch of lawyers for non-compliance with registration requirements: Section 468-a of the Judiciary Law requires every resident and nonresident attorney admitted to practice in...

52 Pick Up

Posted on April 02, 2009
The Arkansas Supreme Court ordered the disbarment of an attorney who had been the subject of a wide array of charges alleging ethics violations. The court found that the attorney had racked up 75 ethical violations and that 52 were...

Back To Square One

Posted on April 02, 2009
There are relatively few cases that closely examine the procedural aspects of bar discipline. An interesting case decided today by the Oregon Supreme Court held that procedural irregularities merited a remand of findings of misconduct but not dismissal of the...

"The exception proves the rule."

Posted on April 02, 2009
That is an expression that is not so nonsensical after all, as Ray Ward notes and links here, to this excellent Snopes reference. It is just a tad incomplete but really makes a valid legal point. [Alan Childress]

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Presumptive Sanction Not Imposed

Posted on April 02, 2009
The Minnesota Supreme Court extended the ongoing suspension of a lawyer for three years based on a felony conviction for filing a false tax return. While the court noted that the presumptive sanction for a felony conviction is disbarment, the...

Are Those Sleek and Tidy Lawyer Offices In the Movies and on TV a Fair Depiction of Reality?

Posted on April 02, 2009
Posted by Alan Childress (and Kelly Anders, below) Or are the occasional messy and paper-filled depictions more real? Just how much of a lacuna exists between the representation and the reality of office godliness within the ontology of pop culture...

Yachting Litigation

Posted on April 02, 2009
In an appeal to determine eligiblity criteria for the Challenger of Record in the America's Cup, the New York Court of Appeals reversed the Appellate Division and reinstated the orders of the Supreme Court. The litigation had its genesis in...

Order To Produce Escrow Records Overturned

Posted on April 01, 2009
The Texas Board of Disciplinary Appeals conditionally granted mandamus relief to an attorney (not named in the order) who had been the subject of a 2006 bar grievance that alleged failure to account for monies given by a client in...

Still A Judge

Posted on April 01, 2009
The New York Commission on Judicial Conduct censured a city court judge who while engaged in a part-time law practice had (1) arranged to have charges against a client sent to a court that had no jurisdiction to handle the...

Ontology for Lawyers 101: Computer Programs, Contracts, and Reality

Posted on April 01, 2009
Posted by Jeff Lipshaw Bear with me here for a few minutes, because I'm thinking this through in real-time. (Also, for those of you who've complained in the past about my use of big words, you can free free to...

Resume Misconduct Leads To Sanction

Posted on April 01, 2009
Another report of discipline from the California Bar Journal notes the sanction of an attorney for a false employment resume: [The attorney] was suspended for two years, stayed, placed on three years of probation with a six-month actual suspension and...

Drugs For Fees

Posted on April 01, 2009
More from the April 2009 California Bar Journal: [an attorney] was suspended for three years, stayed, placed on five years of probation with a two-year actual suspension and until he proves his rehabilitation, and he was ordered to take the...

Anger Management

Posted on April 01, 2009
The California Bar Journal reports: [an attorney] was suspended for one year, stayed, placed on two years of probation and was ordered to take the MPRE within one year. The order took effect Oct. 10, 2008. [He] pleaded no contest...

Permanently Revoked

Posted on April 01, 2009
From the web page of the Ohio Supreme Court: The Supreme Court of Ohio today permanently revoked the license of attorney George N. Kafantaris of Warren based on findings that he misappropriated funds entrusted to him by two different clients,...

Twice Disbarred

Posted on March 31, 2009
An attorney convicted of a series of criminal offenses who was imprisoned and disbarred in New Jersey was also disbarred by the New York Appellate Division for the First Judicial Department. The underlying conduct: Respondent's conviction of official misconduct arose...

From Towson Or Timbuktu

Posted on March 31, 2009
The Maryland Court of Special Appeals upheld the bond forfeiture against a professional surety that resulted from a defendant's failure to appear for trial. The bondsman hired a bounty hunter ("the very term... evokes a quaint nostalgia for a more...

New Judge Censured

Posted on March 31, 2009
A press release issued today by the New York Commission on Judicial Conduct reports that a part-time town court judge was censured for reducing speeding charges in five cases without consent of the prosecutor and reduced another speeding charge based...

The Reach Of Rule 8.4(b)

Posted on March 31, 2009
Last evening in my American Legal Profession class, we had a lively discussion of the reach of Model Rule 8.4(b), which prohibits criminal conduct that reflects adversely on a lawyers honesty, trustworthiness or fitness as a lawyer in other respects....

Contract Language Controls Fee Dispute

Posted on March 31, 2009
In a dispute between lawyers over a $1.9 million award of attorneys' fees in a medical malpractice action, the New York Court of Appeals held that an attorney who had brought in co-counsel to try the case was entitled as...

My Iconoclastic Approach to Contract Theory (or Its Ultimate Failure) - The Financial Crisis Edition

Posted on March 30, 2009
Posted by Jeff Lipshaw I was reading Bill Saporito's article in the March 19 Time on how AIG got "too big to fail," and one comment jumped out at this contract theorist, particularly after having just recently looked at another...

A Stressful Atmosphere

Posted on March 30, 2009
The Pennsylvania Court of Judicial Discipline has just posted its October 2008 decision finding misconduct on the part of an elected judge of the Luzerne County Court of Common Pleas. The judge was found to be "habitually and egregiously late...

Credit Or Debit?

Posted on March 30, 2009
The Legal Ethics Committee of the District of Columbia Bar opines as follows: A lawyer may accept credit cards from a client for payment of fees, including unearned fees (commonly referred to as a retainer or advance fees), so long...

Suit Against Co-Counsel Not Permitted

Posted on March 30, 2009
An attorney representing a client in a medical malpractice action brought in a second attorney as co-counsel. The second attorney assumed primary responsibility for the case with a 50-50 split of the contingent fee. Thereafter, the case settled for less...

Summary Medical Discipline

Posted on March 30, 2009
A doctor who had entered an Alford plea to charges that he had sexually assaulted a patient was found by the medical license board to have committed a crime involving moral turpitude. He contended, and the circuit court held, that...

Suing The Complainant

Posted on March 30, 2009
An attorney who had been suspended in Colorado for a year and a day violated ethics rules by bringing legal actions against persons who had reported his misconduct, according to a hearing board report imposing additional sanctions. Interestingly, the Colorado...

Relis on Perceptions of the Civil Litigation Process

Posted on March 29, 2009
Posted by Jeff Lipshaw Tamara Relis, whom I met at the 2007 Faculty Recruitment Conference, has two pieces of good news. First, she's joining the faculty at the Touro Law School next year. Second, she has a book coming out...

Worst Of The Worst

Posted on March 28, 2009
The New York Times has an article in today's paper describing the kickback scheme of two Pennsylvania judges to sentence juveniles to a detention facility that paid them for the business. The article cites to a number of "red flags"...

Law Dog and Other Curiosities

Posted on March 28, 2009
Posted by Jeff Lipshaw Max the Law Dog and I went for a walk today. Here's Max just after marking the Harvard Law School. I believe his comment was "nice shrubs." Just before we got to the Law School, we...

The Wrong Spot

Posted on March 27, 2009
The Vermont Professional Conduct Board recently decided a bar discipline case involving the following facts: Respondent is a sole practitioner with one non-lawyer employee. His practice focuses on real estate transactions and personal injury work. Respondent was admitted to the...

Uncovered

Posted on March 27, 2009
An insurance company is not obligated to defend claims brought against a law firm that do not involve allegations of negligence or malpractice, according to a decision of the New York Appellate Division for the Second Judicial Department: Here, Liberty...

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