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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

Insufficient Evidence To Establish Mitigation

Posted on March 16, 2008
In a case where a suspended attorney had practiced law in violation of an earlier suspension, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ordered a suspension of two years. The court appended the opinion of the Disciplinary Board explaining why the attorney's depression...

Sanction Proposed By Dissent Adopted

Posted on March 16, 2008
An attorney who had converted estate funds, made false statements, acted dishonestly and compounded the violations by failure to participate in the disciplinary process was suspended for two years by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. The Disciplinary Board majority had proposed...

Follow-up to post on law firm of Kimmel & Silverman

Posted on March 14, 2008
Posted by Alan Childress Even though I don't teach or even like Contracts, I do read the Contracts Prof Blog because its snippets and examples are often funny and telling. I recently expressed to its founding editor, Frank Snyder (a...

Secunda on the Lateral Market for Law Professors

Posted on March 14, 2008
Posted by Jeff Lipshaw Paul Secunda (left), who is moving from Mississippi to Marquette, has posted Tales of a Law Professor Lateral Nothing on SSRN. This is a combined narrative and "how-to" on moving from school to school once you...

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Questioning the WSJ's Anecdotal Evidence on In-House Lawyer Jobs

Posted on March 14, 2008
Posted by Jeff Lipshaw Dan Slater, the law blogger for the Wall Street Journal, has a post up on comparative pay as between in-house and out-house (oops, law firm) lawyers. I don't have any beef one way or another with...

Law Professor Suspended For Altering Student Evaluations

Posted on March 14, 2008
In a rare bar discipline case brought against a law professor, the Iowa Supreme Court imposed a suspension of a former University of Iowa law professor who had "raised the scores on two student evaluations and manufactured three highly positive...

No Revocation For Suspended Lawyer

Posted on March 14, 2008
The Iowa Supreme Court rejected the recommendation of its Grievance Commission of license revocation and reprimanded the attorney. The attorney had been suspended from practice on three prior occasions. Although the record supported the commission's findings of numerous ethics violations,...

Collective Responsibility

Posted on March 13, 2008
The web page of the Ohio Supreme Court has an announcement of payments in excess of $225,000 to victims of lawyer misconduct from the Clients' Security Fund of Ohio ("CSF"). The court assures the public that these payments are a...

Lawyer Logic

Posted on March 13, 2008
The District of Columbia Board on Professional Responsibility recently recommended disbarment of an attorney admitted in 2002 who used his law license for little purpose other than to steal "fees" from his numerous clients. The facts are detailed in a...

Sanction Appropriate For Pre-Admission Misconduct

Posted on March 13, 2008
The District of Columbia Court of Appeals held that reciprocal discipline may be imposed based on misconduct that led to disciplinary action in California but had taken place prior to the attorney's admission to the D.C. Bar. The attorney had...

Using Trust Account To Avoid Creditors

Posted on March 13, 2008
The Minnesota Supreme Court imposed a suspension for a minimum of one year in a matter where "a lawyer deceptively labeled a personal account as a trust account to shield his personal funds from judgment creditors, improperly kept personal funds...

Freedman on Client Perjury and the Hard Questions

Posted on March 12, 2008
Posted by Alan Childress Monroe Freedman (Hofstra) has posted to SSRN his article, "Getting Honest About Client Perjury," as published in vol. 21 of Georgetown Journal of Legal Ethics (2008). The abstract is: Chief Justice Warren Burger and two other...

Childress on Waiver of Jury Review for Sufficiency of the Evidence in Civil Cases

Posted on March 12, 2008
Posted by Steven Alan Childress There is no pretense that this has to do with the blog's topic, but since everyone knows blogue is French for self-indulgence, I am hereby posting a link to an SSRN page for my article,...

Admission Denied

Posted on March 12, 2008
The Maryland Court of Appeals adopted the recommendation of the State Board of Law Examiners and denied admission to an applicant who "had shown a pattern of financial irresponsibility, had not been candid in disclosures on his law school and...

Bar Discipline Consequences of Eliot Spitzer's Possible Criminal Charges

Posted on March 12, 2008
Posted by Alan Childress As Gov. Spitzer resigned just now, effective Monday, news organizations and blogs are speculating on possible disbarment to come. One brief post which helpfully lays out the law from NY (and notes the complication of federal....

Disability Or Disciplinary?

Posted on March 12, 2008
An Oklahoma lawyer who was charged with ethics violations in a series of matters admitted that he was addicted to methamphetamine. The Oklahoma Bar Association brought disciplinary, but not disability proceedings, against the attorney. The Oklahoma Supreme Court suspended the...

Law Students Hold Mental Health Day Mar. 27 Throughout U.S. Campuses

Posted on March 12, 2008
Posted by Alan Childress This press release was issued recently, and it seems like a great project (thanks to GW's Daniel Suvor [his email on the release is here and project's website here] for letting us know): LAW STUDENTS TO...

What It Was Was Football

Posted on March 12, 2008
The D.C. Board on Professional Responsibility has filed a recommendation for reciprocal discipline based on a sanction imposed in Colorado. The attorney had traveled from Denver to Georgia to attend a football game. Although he had a client in Georgia,...

Probation For Forging Court Order

Posted on March 12, 2008
In the wake of yesterday's post on crack cocaine addiction as possible mitigation comes an order from the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. The court approved a recommendation of supervised probation in a case where the lawyer previously had been arrested and...

Crack Addiction Not Considered As Mitigation

Posted on March 11, 2008
An attorney who had misappropriated client funds while addicted to crack cocaine was disbarred by the New York Appellate Division for the First Judicial Department. The attorney had not helped his cause by appearing at his deposition in the bar...

Misconduct Found By Default

Posted on March 11, 2008
The Arkansas Supreme Court reprimanded and fined an attorney who represented a client in a capital murder trial and appeal. The attorney filed two motions to withdraw from the appeal, stating that the "client did not pay the agreed fee...

Resignation Not Accepted

Posted on March 11, 2008
An lawyer drafted durable powers of attorney for a client and his spouse that contained a provision that gave the lawyer full authority as attorney-in-fact to deal with the client's assets. The client was "an elderly man residing in a...

"Much To Be Desired"

Posted on March 11, 2008
The Maryland Court of Appeals imposed an indefinite suspension in a case where the attorney (who had no record of prior discipline) was appointed as co-personal representative of the estate of a close personal friend. The attorney apparently had little...

Arrogance, Self-Deception, and Civility - A Thesis on the Balance between Principle and Learning

Posted on March 11, 2008
Posted by Jeff Lipshaw I was already reeling, in a way, from the spin now coming out of the Clinton campaign, distinguishing between primary delegates and caucus delegates, all apparently in an effort to persuade superdelegates that Senator Clinton really...

More Judicial Misconduct

Posted on March 10, 2008
The North Carolina Supreme Court ordered a censure and sixty-day suspension of a judge who was a practicing lawyer prior to his election as a district court judge. He leased the building where he had had his law office and...

Pattern Of Misconduct

Posted on March 10, 2008
An attorney who had violated a wide array of ethics rules in seven matters was suspended for one-year with six months conditionally stayed by the Ohio Supreme Court. The misconduct involved neglect and incompetence, taking a loan from a client,...

Not Disbarment

Posted on March 10, 2008
The Georgia Supreme Court imposed an indefinite suspension in a matter involving an attorney already suspended for misconduct that had taken place during the same time period. The attorney "may have been laboring under a medical impairment which the State...

Stipulated Result Questioned

Posted on March 10, 2008
A Town Court Justice who is not a lawyer received an admonition from the New York State Commission on Judicial Conduct. "Without a trial or guilty plea, he convicted the defendants and imposed two consecutive fines and a one-year conditional...

Trouble Brewing for D. Colo.'s Chief Judge: Strip Clubs, Prostitution, and Parking in a Handicapped Spot

Posted on March 08, 2008
Posted by Alan Childress Here is the TV news story of a federal court investigation out of Denver, re Chief Judge Edward Nottingham of the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado, for hiring prostitutes. He was already controversial...

Legal History Panel in D.C. Mar. 18, at GW Law's Institute for Constitutional Studies

Posted on March 07, 2008
Posted by Alan Childress Here is a link to a public-is-welcome panel in Washington, D.C., of "author meets critics" on Charles Lane's new book The Day Freedom Died: The Colfax Massacre, the Supreme Court, and the Betrayal of Reconstruction. Lane...

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