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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

Making Matters Worse

Posted on June 29, 2010
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court accepted a consent two-year suspension in a disciplinary matter that arose in the wake of a six-month suspension imposed in 2008. The attorney agreed that he had accepted a new matter shortly before the effective date...

"Obvious Disdain" Leads To Suspension With Fitness

Posted on June 29, 2010
The Illinois Review Board rejected a First Amendment defense to charges of making disparaging remarks about judicial officers and recommended a six-month suspension with reinstatement conditioned on further court order. The attorney represented a client in a custody matter...

Reprimand For Attempt To Embarrass

Posted on June 27, 2010
The web page of the Massachusetts Board of Bar Examiners has a summary of a recent public reprimand of an attorney for misconduct in course of civil litigation. The attorney represented the defendant. After judgment had been entered against her...

Default Disbarment Proposed

Posted on June 27, 2010
The California Bar Journal reports proposed rule changes governing, among other things, attorneys who fail to participate in the disciplinary process: Attorneys who do not participate in disciplinary proceedings against them could be subject to automatic disbarment under a proposal...

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No Malpractice

Posted on June 25, 2010
The New York Appellate Division for the First Judicial Department affirmed the dismissal of a legal malpractice claim against Chadbourne & Parke LLP: Plaintiffs, Creditanstalt Investment Bank AG and its affiliates (collectively, CAIB), allege that, due to Chadbourne's negligent failure...

Suspended Attorney Had Fiduciary Obligation

Posted on June 25, 2010
The Wisconsin Supreme Court affirmed the recission of a real estate contract between an attorney and his clients in a chapter 13 bankruptcy. The court did not accept the attorney's "defense" that he had been suspnded prior to the sale:...

"Laptop Incident"

Posted on June 24, 2010
The Florida Supreme Court rejected a referee's proposed discipline of at least a two-year suspension in favor of a sixty day suspension and two years probation. The attorney had no prior discipline. During the course of a five day deposition,...

Camille Nelson Appointed Dean of Suffolk University Law School

Posted on June 24, 2010
Posted by Jeff Lipshaw Camille Nelson is our new dean. Here's President David Sargent's message to the law school community: I am pleased to announce the appointment of distinguished legal scholar Camille A. Nelson as the 12th dean of Suffolk...

In-House Whistleblower Claims Dismissed

Posted on June 24, 2010
A plurality of the Minnesota Supreme Court held that the former (and fired) in-house general counsel for Sybaritic, Inc. had failed to establish a whistleblower claim that he had been terminated from his position based on his advice that the...

Disqualification Ordered

Posted on June 24, 2010
An order denying the disqualification of Buchanan Ingersoll based on a former client conflict was reversed by the West Virginia Supreme Court, which granted a writ of prohibition. The court recited the following facts:Bluestone Coal and Bluestone Coal Sales, the...

Home Insecurity

Posted on June 23, 2010
An Arizona Hearing Officer has recommended a censure with probation for two years of an attorney whose bar problems started when police responded to the ringing of his home security alarm. No one was home but the garage door was...

Just A Mistake, Not An Ethical Violation

Posted on June 23, 2010
The Indiana Supreme Court has issued a published judgment in favor of an attorney accused of knowinglt making a false statement to a tribunal. The attorney had cited a Court of Appeals decision at a suppression hearing that had been...

Findings Of Billing Misconduct Against Contract Attorney Overturned

Posted on June 23, 2010
The Illinois Review Board has concluded that a hearing's board's findings of misconduct were based on inadmissible evidence and that billing misconduct charges against a former Mayer Brown contract attorney were not proven. The review board explained: The Administrator presumably...

Welcome To The Tea Party

Posted on June 22, 2010
A candidate for judicial office may address two Tea Party Patriots groups in some circumstances, according to a recent opinion of the Florida Judicial Ethics Advisory Committee: ...the Committee first notes that the website materials provided by the candidate suggest...

Reprimand For Former Corporation Counsel In Kilpatrick Affair

Posted on June 21, 2010
A Michigan Tri-County Hearing Panel has imposed a reprimand of the former Detroit Corporation Counsel based on findings of misconduct in the Kwame Kilpatrick affair. The panel found that suspension was not necessary to protect the public. The misconduct in...

Public Defender Contempt Reversed; Prosecution Lacked Imagination

Posted on June 21, 2010
The Kansas Supreme Court reversed a finding of criminal contempt against a county chief public defender who had refused to testify in response to the prosecutor's subpoena. The public defender had represented a defendant in a first degree murder case...

Home Alone

Posted on June 21, 2010
An Arizona Hearing Officer has recommended a two-year suspension followed by probation if reinstatement is obtained in a matter that was initiated when the attorney left his live-in girlfriend's son at home while he gambled at a nearby casino. The...

Threats To Judge Lead To Revoked Probation

Posted on June 21, 2010
The Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals held that a trial judge had properly revoked the probation of a defendant who pled guilty to child abuse. The probationer had been arrested for felony retaliation against a different judge who was considering...

My "Dean Speech" on the Future of the Legal Academy

Posted on June 19, 2010
Posted by Jeff Lipshaw The always insightful and interesting Howard Wasserman (FIU, left) provoked a discussion over at PrawfsBlawg on "student centered" teaching that, in the comment thread, turned into that ancient debate about all those theorist law professors at...

Judicial Ethics Spat In New York

Posted on June 18, 2010
In a rather unusual letter, the Administrator and Counsel to the New York State Commission on Judicial conduct commented on behalf of the Commission on an Advisory Opinion of the Advisory Committee on Judicial Ethics. The letter states that ...the...

Dismissed For Cause

Posted on June 18, 2010
The New York Appellate Division for the First Judicial Department affirmed the dismissal of claims brought by a former partner against his law firm: The Partner alleged in the first action, inter alia, that his former employer, KBTF, defamed him...

The Meaning Of Remorse

Posted on June 18, 2010
A Louisiana Hearing Committee has recommended the reinstatement of an attorney suspended in January 2005: The Committee believes Petitioner shows sincere remorse in his previous misdeeds. Though there was initially some language problem at the hearing, the Committee is convinced...

Out Of The Warehouse

Posted on June 18, 2010
The Louisiana Supreme Court ordered that a Orleans Parish juvenile court judge be disqualified from any judicial function during the pendancy of proceedings in connection with the Judiciary commission. the judge must stay "completely out" of the court and "any...

Insufficient Evidence Of Mitigation

Posted on June 18, 2010
The West Virginia Supreme Court imposed a three-year suspension and restitution of an attorney who had submitted false payment claims to the public defender office. The court rejected the claim that the sanction should be mitigated by mental health issues:...

ABF Research Professor

Posted on June 16, 2010
[Posted by Bill Henderson] Pending budgetary approval, the American Bar Foundation (ABF) invites applications to join its Residential Research Faculty as Research Professors beginning in the 2011-12 academic year. We seek candidates with distinguished records of scholarship in law and...

Attorney Discloses Confidences To Obtain Custody Of Client's Child

Posted on June 15, 2010
An Arizona hearing officer has recommended a six-month suspension retroactive to the date the attorney was place on voluntary inactive status and one year of probation for misconduct that took place in somewhat unique circumstances. As we often have seen,...

"Girl, Don't You Know..."

Posted on June 15, 2010
An Assistant District Attorney for Orleans Parish, Louisiana is the subject of a proposed reprimand by a disciplinary hearing committee. The matter arose out of a check bounced off a lifelong friend of the ADA. She agreed to help the...

The Enforcer

Posted on June 14, 2010
An Arizona hearing officer has recommended an informal reprimand of a New York attorney in connection with matters before the United States immigration court in Arizona. The hearing officer rejected the attorney's jurisictional challenge and would have favored probation but...

Less Than Best Judgment

Posted on June 14, 2010
The Maine Supreme Judicial Court has imposed its sanction in a matter that we previously reported involving an attorney who "failed to provide reasonable skill and care or apply his best judgment when he propositioned the client to engage in...

An Unexpected Interruption

Posted on June 14, 2010
The West Virginia Supreme Court rejected proposed lesser discipline and annulled the law license of an attorney for misconduct in a prison visit. The court found that the attorney had a prior sexual relationship with an inmate. Then: On October...

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