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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

The Empirics and Ethics of USNWR Gaming

Posted on August 26, 2008
Posted by Bill Henderson and Jeff Lipshaw The Wall Street Journal article on gaming the USNWR this morning prompts us to a joint posting of something we've been discussing with each over the summer. We see this particular exercise -...

Lineman! Lineman!

Posted on August 26, 2008
While football fans contemplate the possible return of Michael Strahan as a result of a recent injury to New York Giants defensive lineman Osi Umenyiori, the New Jersey Appellate Division has remanded Strahan's divorce case for further proceedings. The parties...

Author! Author!

Posted on August 26, 2008
In a 50 page opinion issued today, the Maryland Court of Appeals reversed a trial court determination (affirmed by the Court of Special Appeals) that author Tom Clancy had breached his fidiciary duties in his dealings with his ex-wife. The...

Rankings, Accounting, and Gaming

Posted on August 26, 2008
Posted by Jeff Lipshaw Fresh off the front page Wall Street Journal article this morning, friends Larry Ribstein and Nancy Rapoport nail the analogy between law deans gaming the USNWR rankings and accountants massaging the numbers to meet the quarterly...

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Wilson on Prosecutorial Ethics: What If The Defendant Seems Innocent But The Boss Says Convict?

Posted on August 25, 2008
Posted by Alan Childress Melanie Wilson (Kansas) has published in the Northwestern U Law Review's Colloquy a brief article called Finding a Happy and Ethical Medium Between a Prosecutor Who Believes the Defendant Didn't Do It and the Boss Who...

Certified Specialists In South Carolina

Posted on August 25, 2008
The South Carolina Supreme Court has announced amendments to its certification of specialty rules. The court has procedures for certification in three practice areas: (1) labor and employment law, (2) estate planning and probate law and (3) tax law. (Mike...

Attention To Detail

Posted on August 25, 2008
A Pennsylvania lawyer was transferred to inactive status during a period of time in which he was not practicing law. He also was admitted in New Jersey and was on retired status there. Notwithstanding these impediments, he began practicing corporate....

Part Of Nothing

Posted on August 23, 2008
A Pennsylvania lawyer (admitted in 1966) was the subject of two suspension orders. The first suspended him for three years; the second for a consecutive two-year term. He failed to make the required notifications of the orders to all his...

"Not To Be Taken Lightly"

Posted on August 22, 2008
A lawyer prepared a durable power of attorney for a friend's mother at no charge and thereafter notarized the mother's mark on the document even though he had never spoken to the mother and had not witnessed the signature. The...

Tragedy Leads To Litigation

Posted on August 22, 2008
The tragic death of a 10 year old child in the crash of a private plane led to a case decided today by the Mississippi Supreme Court. The child lived with her mother in Wichita Falls, Texas. Her schooling and...

Read The Fine Print

Posted on August 22, 2008
Good advice from the La Crosse (Wisconsin) Tribune concerning upcoming judicial election campaign ads: Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson will be up for re-election and likely will face opposition from big-money groups running so-called "issue ads" that actually are de-facto campaign...

A Serious Crime

Posted on August 22, 2008
An aspect of effective regulation of the legal profession are rules that impose interim suspension pending final disciplinary action when an attorney is convicted of a "serious crime" as that term is defined by the rules of the disciplining tribunal....

Conference Announcement: Using Empirical Data in Jury Trials

Posted on August 22, 2008
Posted by Jeff Lipshaw My colleague and suite-mate, Mike Rustad, is co-chairing "Successful Strategies for Jury Trials," a day-long conference to be held at the Suffolk University Law School here in the heart of downtown Boston on Friday, October 24,...

Grave Injustice

Posted on August 21, 2008
An attorney who had been suspended for two years in Oregon received a lighter six-month suspension in Massachusetts. One of the misconduct findings related to theft charges where the attorney had taken a Hewlett-Packard personal digital assistant from an electronics...

Change In Massachusetts?

Posted on August 21, 2008
The Massachusetts Board of Bar Overseers and Bar Counsel has issued a notice seeking comments on proposed revisions of the rules governing bar disciplinary proceedings. Among the proposals: giving Bar Counsel discretion not to open a file on a frivolous...

Proposed Sanction Increased

Posted on August 21, 2008
The Arizona Disciplinary Commission affirmed a hearing officer's findings of misconduct but rejected the proposed suspension of six months and a day in a case involving multiple ethics violations. The hearing officer found that the lawyer had knowingly withheld evidence...

Bar Opposes Disclosure Of Application Information

Posted on August 20, 2008
The California State Bar has taken a position in opposition to the release of confidential information concerning applicants for bar admission, according to a report in Forbes.com. The Bar was responded to a request for information from UCLA Law Professor...

Anger As Mitigation

Posted on August 20, 2008
An Arizona lawyer was hired as the executive director of a nonprofit corporation, laeving his employment as an assistant county attorney. He represented the nonprofit in a dispute with a general contractor and identified himself as "chief counsel" as well...

Judge Not

Posted on August 19, 2008
The New Mexico Supreme Court removed a magistrate judge from his judicial office, rejecting the suggestion that the matter should have been considered by a special master rather than the Judicial Standards Commission. The judge was found to have engaged...

Charges Dismissed

Posted on August 19, 2008
A hearing officer in Arizona dismissed misconduct charges against an attorney who represented a client in civil litigation. The attorney chose a doctor to conduct a medical examination of the opposing party. The doctor wished to charge an additional $1,000...

No Mitigation For ADHD

Posted on August 19, 2008
A Louisiana hearing committee recently recommended the disbarment of an attorney who was the managing partner of a law firm's office in Baton Rouge. He had taken on a personal injury claim on behalf of two minors involved in an...

Let's Not Meet By Accident

Posted on August 18, 2008
A hearing board in Louisiana has recommended a suspension of a year and a day of an attorney for misconduct arising out of a rear end collision. The lawyer asked the other driver if the matter could be resolved amicably...

Better Left Unsent

Posted on August 18, 2008
After twice rejecting proposed consent dispositions as unduly lenient, the Arizona Disciplinary Commission has recommended a 30-day suspension followed by two years probation based on the recommendation of a hearing officer after a full hearing. The attorney, admitted in 1991,...

Informal Attire Not Unethical

Posted on August 18, 2008
A hearing officer in Arizona "[h]aving served as a disciplinary committee member or hearing officer for over 25 years" for the first time recommends "complete dismissal" of all misconduct charges against a lawyer admitted in 1999. The alleged misconduct? First,...

No Expert Testimony Needed To Establish Fiduciary Breach

Posted on August 16, 2008
The Mississippi Supreme Court affirmed a jury verdict in a case brought against an attorney by a former client. The lawyer had been retained by a husband and wife to prosecute a medical malpractice claim on behalf of them and...

Playbook for Institution Building

Posted on August 15, 2008
[posted by Bill Henderson] With all the discussion we have been having on institution building (Henderson, Lipshaw I, Chen, Madison, Caron, Smith, Lipshaw II, and Ribstein), it should not go unnoticed that one of the truly great deans of our...

Soccer League Treasurer Sanctioned

Posted on August 15, 2008
I came across an October 2004 order of revocation upon consent in Virginia that may be of some interest. The revocation is based on an averment that the attorney had passed the bar in 1982 but never practiced law. The...

Accepting Responsibility

Posted on August 15, 2008
A non-attorney town justice has resigned effective today and agreed to the public disclosure of pending charges, according to a press release from the New York State Commission on Judicial Conduct. The justice also agreed not to seek judicial ofice...

"Go To Hell" Goes To Remand

Posted on August 15, 2008
The District of Columbia Court of Appeals remanded a 'hybrid" bar discipline case that arose out of the denial of admission in Montana and a subsequent five-year suspension imposed in Virginia. The Board on Professional Responsibility had recommended that the...

Joy, Inspiration, Leadership, and Free Agency

Posted on August 15, 2008
Posted by Jeff Lipshaw Gordon Smith has jumped into the fray Bill Henderson created with his deft analysis of the "faculty free agency" issue, since added to by Jim Chen, Mike Madison and Paul Caron. Gordon's focus was on the...

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