How should you behave during court appearance

A few basic tips here.  My students will appreciate the first rule under "school rules."

San Jose mercury news article on Stephen Glass oral argument

Earlier I posted the video of the oral argument in the Stephen Glass case and a link to the briefs in the case. My take on the oral argument was that it did not go well for Glass. Apparently, the San Jose Mercury News agrees with me, concluding that "The California Supreme Court on Wednesday showed no signs of sympathy regarding Glass' bid for a license to practice law." You can read the article here.

Thanks to the Legal Ethics Forum for the link.

Pennsylvania Supreme Court announces revisions to rules of professional conduct.

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has announced revisions to its Rules of Professional Conduct.  The Legal Profession blog has more information here.

Briefs in the Stephen Glass case

Earlier tonight I posted the video of the oral argument in the Stephen Glass case.  Here is a link to an article where you can find the briefs filed in the case. 

Thanks to the Legal Ethics Forum for the link.

California Supreme Court oral argument on Stephen Glass admission petition case

Earlier today, the California Supreme Court heard oral arguments on the petition for admission of Stephen Glass. The video appears below.

Stephen Glass was once thought of as one of “the most sought-after young reporter in the nation’s capital.” He was later exposed for having falsified many of the stories he wrote for important national magazines including some he wrote while attending law school. See my original comment on the case here.

Glass graduated and passed the bar exam in California but was denied admission. His application in California was denied by the Committee of Bar Examiners (CBE).This decision, however, was overruled by both a State Bar Court hearing judge and a split review panel. The CBE appealed the decision and the California Supreme Court granted review.

The argument of the CBE is essentially that Glass' conduct shows disregard for honesty and trust and that he “has not established the requisite showing of rehabilitation." There is a lot of information on this case out there. If you want to read more before watching the oral argument, take a look at my previous posts where I wrote on the case and provided links to many comments about it here, here and here.

Here is the video of the oral argument. It is about an hour long. (The video should start right when the argument begins, but I noticed that in some browsers it starts earlier. If your version does not start when the argument starts, fast forward to about the 13 minute mark.)

As always, it is difficult to predict the result of a case from the oral argument, but if I had to guess, my guess is that the Court was not too sympathetic. The appellant's argument was not perfect and it did have some weaknesses - particularly the rebuttal - but I think the judges seemed more critical of Glass' attorney's argument.

ABA issues formal opinion on whether attorneys can participate in "deal of the day" programs like Groupon

Bar associations and other state authorities have been issuing opinions on whether it is permissible for lawyers to use pre-paid discount services like Groupon to advertise legal services and attract clients. The NY Bar Association has approved participating in Groupon (see here), as have North Carolina, South Carolina and Maryland (see here).  On the other hand, the Alabama State Disciplinary Commission has ruled attorneys can't use Groupon (see here).  The Indiana State Bar Association has ruled it is probably unethical (here).

The ABA Standing Committee on Ethics and Professional Responsibility had been working on an opinion on the subject for some time and it was finally released.  It is available here.  The summary reads, in part, as follows:

Deal-of-the-day or group-coupon marketing programs offer an alternative way to sell goods and services. Lawyers hoping to market legal services using these programs must comply with various Rules of Professional Conduct, including, but not limited to, rules governing fee sharing, advertising, competence, diligence, and the proper handling of legal fees. It is also incumbent upon the lawyer to determine whether conflicts of interest exist.

The opinion explains there are two different ways in which attorneys could try to use deal of the day services:

For a lawyer, the two options described above might be illustrated as follows. Assume a lawyer charges $200 per hour for legal services. The lawyer could sell a coupon for $25 that would entitle the bearer to buy up to five hours of legal services at a fifty-percent discount; in other words, the $25 would allow the bearer to pay only $100 per hour for up to five hours of legal services, potentially saving up to $500. This first option requires the coupon bearer to make additional payment to the lawyer commensurate with the number of hours actually used. Alternatively, the lawyer could sell a deal for $500 that would entitle the buyer to receive up to five hours of legal service (with a value of up to $1,000), but all of the money would be collected by the marketing organization, with no additional payment collected by the lawyer no matter how many of the five hours of legal services were actually used. For ease of reference, this opinion will refer to option one as a coupon deal and to option two as a prepaid deal.

With these two models in mind, the opinion concludes that coupon deals can be structured to comply with the Model Rules.  However, the opinion concludes there are numerous difficult issues associated with prepaid deals and, therefore, the Committee is less certain that prepaid deals can be structured to comply with all ethical and professional obligations under the Model Rules.

For comments on the opinion you can check out Lawyer Ethics Alert Blogs.

Is it misconduct for a lawyer to ignore rule against including a claim for a specific dollar amount in a complaint?

Eearlier this week the New York Daily News reported on a recently filed claim alleging that energy drink Red Bull contributed to the death of a 33 year old man.  The story's headline read: “Brooklyn man killed by drinking Red Bull, $85 million lawsuit alleges.”    Claims that energy drinks can contribute to someone's death have been circulating for some time now, so the allegation is not new.  (For more on that go here.)
 
What is interesting (for the purposes of this blog) is the fact that the complaint specifically asks for $85 million in compensation.  This is interesting because the practice of asking for a specific dollar amount in a complaint has been banned in New York (where the case was filed) for 23 years.  And yet, as NY blogger Eric Turkewitz adds, "some lawyers still put that clause in. Why? There are only two possible reasons . . . : Either the lawyer is ignorant of the law or the lawyer is deliberately violating it in the hunt for headlines. It’s your call as to which is worse, ignorance or a potential ethics issue." 

Eric's post is worth reading here.  He goes one to argue, correctly in my view, that the emphasis on the amount of the claim detracts from the seriousness of the issue.  The story now becomes one about how much money the plaintiff's lawyer wants instead of one about whether a product is in fact dangerous or whether the defendant should change the way it markets the product.

What lawyers put in online profiles versus what clients want in profiles

This chart was created by Matt Homman and there is a comment about it in Real Lawyers Have Blogs

So you want to be a prosecutor?

Go here for some good advice.

The "meet and greet" practice of law?

The "a public defender blog" has posted a story on the reality of practice of criminal defense in some courts.  In fact, this is (obviously) not an isolated incident -remember the story that the Miami public defender's office was rejecting cases because they did not have time to manage them?   In any case, the public defender story is about a case in which the defendant was assigned a public defender who met with the client for the first time the morning of his trial, which was going to be the attorney's first criminal trial in seven years. The attorney had about 12 hours to prepare for trial.  A public defender argues that a conviction under those circumstances violates the constitution.  And he has some strong words for the lawyer who claimed he was ready for the trial under those circumstances. You can read the full post here.