E mail problems seem to have been solved

It seems that the e mail update service is functioning properly again. If you signed up yesterday (Tuesday, 7/10) you should have received an update by email already. If you did, you are all set and you should continue to get the updates regularly. If you didn't get an update this morning, please check to see if you missed the confirmation e mail that went out to you when you entered your email address. You need to follow the instructions in it to complete the process. If all else fails, please go to the blog and try signing up again, wait for the email and hit the link in it. Everything should be up and running without problems now.

 

As usual, you will only get one message in the morning with the posts posted the previous day. If you notice that you have not received updates in more than a week, please go to the blog itself and check if there are new posts you have missed. If so, please let me know there is a problem.

 

Thanks again for your patience and your support for the blog.

 

E-mail problems part II

Thank you to all the readers who have signed up again for e-mail updates. Unfortunately, I did not get an update this morning either so I am still trying to figure out what the problem is. Thank you very much for your patience!

 

New Jersey Supreme Court fails again

I have complained in the past about New Jersey's repeated failures to properly sanction unethical conduct.  See here and here, for example.  Today's example adds to the state's reputation for lax standards.  In this case, the attorney was disbarred in New York in 2011 for commingling and record keeping violations that were deemed not small nor isolated.  The attorney was  later was also disbarred in Colorado, Pennsylvania and in Connecticut.  But when it came to New Jersey, the New Jersey Supreme Court ordered a three-month suspension.  The Legal Profession blog has more here.

Sanctions for lawyers of witness who perjures himself?

Eric Turkewitz continues his coverage of a developing story in New York, where a judge recently found a physician who has made a career testifying for defendants in personal injury cases in New York has been found to have committed perjury.  Go here for the first installment on the story. Go here for the latest.  Should the lawyers who brought the witness to testify be sanctioned?   The judge initially imposed sanctions but then eliminated them. 

The case also involves an attorney surreptitiously obtaining evidence to expose the perjury.  Should that evidence have been turned over as part of discovery?

Problems with e-mail subscriptions

Something happened to the blog yesterday and the e-mail subscriptions function stopped working. I fixed the problem, but unfortunately, if you had an e-mail subscription and prefer to continue to get updates by e-mail, you will need to subscribe again. Please do so by entering your e-mail address in the box on the right hand side panel.  You will have to then follow the prompts to complete the process (typing some random letters and replying to a confirmation email).  It is a three step process but should not take you more than a minute to complete.  I just went through it myself.

I apologize for the inconvenience! If you have any questions or concerns please email me directly.

Witness commits perjury, then blames the judge because judge had told him he had to tell the truth...

Eric Turkewitz continues his coverage of a developing story in New York, where a judge recently found a physician who has made a career testifying for defendants in personal injury cases in New York has been found to have committed perjury.  Go here for the full story.

Book review and discussion of lawyers' roles

JOTWELL has a good book review of W. Bradley Wendel's Lawyers and Fidelity to Law (Princeton University Press, 2010).  I have not read the book, but enjoyed the short review which summarizes the philosophical debate about the justification of the duties of lawyers toward their clients.  As the review explains, "several moral philosophers, and a few lawyers, characterized legal representation as comprising two overarching principles.  The principle of neutrality, they said, demanded that lawyers represent clients or causes they may disagree with morally. The principle of partisanship demanded that they fulfill their client’s wishes to the limits of the law. Provided they fulfill these tasks faithfully, they were morally absolved on the grounds that the role they perform is itself good. . . . Despite some spirited justifications, and more nuanced rejoinders, the balance of debate moved on to the consequences of such a conclusion and the steps that should follow."  

Wendel's book revises the issue of the standard conception of the lawyer’s role.  According to the review, his position is that the message that lawyers are slaves to clients’ wishes is not one that anyone concerned with the integrity of professional values wants to convey, while admitting that the profession's underlying rationale has to be the autonomy of clients.  To reconcile the conflicting views, Wendel argues the proposition that it is not fidelity to clients that is the underlying justification of the lawyer’s role, but fidelity to law itself.

Go here to read the full review.

Court affirms disqualification of Covington & Burling

Last year I posted a few comments about a case in which 3M Corporation sued the law firm Covington and Burling arguing that the law firm violated its duties to the client by operating under a conflict of interest.  See my initial post on the case here.  The lawsuit alleged that the firm had decided to represent the State of Minnesota against 3M in a case that was substantially related to the representation of 3M in another case.  3M also filed to disqualify the firm from representing the state in that case.  I commented on the allegations here and here.  Eventually, the court granted the motion to disqualify and the firm and the state appealed.  That appeal was decided last week when the Court of Appeals affirmed.  You can read the opinion here.  (Thanks to the Legal Ethics Forum for the link).  You can read a comment on the case here.

What to do if attorney discovers child pornography in a computer that belongs to a member of a corporate client

Prof. Monroe Freedman has posted this interesting question at the Legal Ethics Forum:  A lawyer who represents both civil and criminal clients is at the offices of a corporate client he is representing in a civil matter.  While he is there, the lawyer gets permission from a VP of the company to use the VP’s computer  (which belongs to the corporate client) to check the lawyer’s email.  In using the computer, the lawyer inadvertently discovers that it contains pornographic pictures of sexual abuse of children.  The VP is not the lawyer’s client, and the VP has no reason to believe that he is.  The pornography is unrelated to the client’s business.  What should the lawyer do?  Go here for the discussion.

Unbundling legal services: not as easy as it sounds

Last February, I reported that the ABA approved a resolution encouraging lawyers to consider providing unbundled legal services when appropriate.  See here.  According to a report accompanying the resolution, such representation can increase access to legal services. 

I have expressed my doubts about the concept of unbundling of legal services and I am not sure what all the brouhaha is about (see here).  Likewise, here is a comment on why unbundling is not as easy as it sounds.