Thursday, July 26, 2018

Ghostwriting for clients?

The June edition of the ABA Journal has a short article on whether it is ethical for an attorney to "ghostwrite" a document for a client to be filed in court.  You can read the article here.

As you may know, there are a few ethics opinions available on the subject and they vary on a few details particularly whether the attorney must disclose the fact that the document was prepared with the aid of an attorney.

And just as this article was hitting the press, a Committee of the Mississippi bar issued the latest opinion on the question holding that ghostwriting is OK on “discrete aspects in a matter” without the need to disclose either the name of the attorney who prepared the document or that the document was prepared by a lawyer.   As the opinion states, the Committee was concerned that lawyers would be dissuaded from providing limited representation if required to disclose their involvement. You can read the opinion here.

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