Professional Responsibility Blog

LawSites has just published a detailed summary of a new report by Stanford Law School’s Deborah L. Rhode Center on the Legal Profession on t...

 If you are a long time reader of this blog you will have noticed that I have not posted anything in almost six months and that I posted les...

Professor Stacie Strong recently posted an article on SSRN which may be of interest to some of you.  It is called Pro Bono Publico Versus Pr...

 In a highly anticipated decision, the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit recently ruled that the plaintiffs-lawyers have standing to c...

 Cases involving discipline for attorneys engaged in tax evasion or tax fraud are not uncommon.  However, the decisions vary considerably wh...

 Back in July I posted that the ABA had recently issued an ethics opinion on generative Ai and the practice of law. I am writing about it a...

 Read the full story here .

 Well that took longer than I expected but it is not surprising.  Rudy Giuliani's lawyers have been trying to cover for his obvious atte...

Above the Law is reporting ( here ) that the Utah Supreme Court recently released a plan to allow graduates of American Bar Association-accr...

A panel of judges on the New York Appellate Division — New York’s midlevel appeals court — ruled Thursday that Ken Chesebro is barred from p...

 Earlier this month, the Indiana Supreme Court approved funding for a regulatory sandbox program to develop alternative legal services model...

What is the worst type of (or highest level of) discipline?   If you thought "disbarment" you would be wrong.  The correct answer ...

 Do I need to explain?  I hope not.  For more on the story, go here and here . Michael Kennedy, Vermont Bar Counsel, has a comment on the s...

The Illinois Supreme Court's Commission on Professionalism has released a study on bullying within the profession.  Not surprisingly (si...

 Do you remember last year's stories about "DoNotPay," a company that claimed to have the "world's first robot lawyer...

Long time readers of this blog are familiar with the trend in some jurisdictions to allow certain legal professionals who are not admitted l...

 In a move that was very slow in coming, but that could not possible have surprised anyone, Rudy Giuliani has been officially and permanentl...

Recently, the Nevada Supreme Court approved plans to proceed with the development of an alternative pathway for attorney licensing in the st...

 A few weeks ago I discovered the ABA podcast "Ethics in 10" which features 10 minutes (or so) reviews of specific concepts in Pro...

The Washington State Bar Association and a board created by the Washington Supreme Court have presented a proposal that, if approved by the ...

 Every now and then, the ABA Center for Professional Responsibility releases a podcast called "Ethics in 10" in which a moderator ...

 Yesterday - August 23, 2024 - the ABA’s Standing Committee on Ethics and Professional Responsibility issued a new Formal Ethics Opinion (nu...

A recent article breaking Down the ABA’s guidance on using generative AI in legal practice is available here .

 Last May I wrote a comment on an ABA Formal Ethics Opinion on flat fees which concluded that flat fees paid in advance should be considered...

The Harvard Law Review has published a very short blog essay titled "Enforceable Ethics for the Supreme Court" on the recent discu...

 A couple of days ago I posted that Washington is considering a proposal to allow alternative business structures for the practice of law. ...

Back in April I reported that a disciplinary panel in Washington DC had held that Jeffrey Clark had violated the rules of professional condu...

As posted in the Washington Bar Association's website:   As proposed, the pilot program on entity regulation would allow entities to pro...

June 29, 202 4  It is never surprising to hear that a lawyer's license is suspended following a conviction, but that usually happens as ...

July 29, 2024 The ABA Standing Committee on Ethics and Professional Responsibility has issued a new formal ethics opinion (ABA Formal Ethics...

The Hill is reporting that a federal judge threatened to sanction Hunter Biden’s attorneys for making “false statements” in their motion ask...

About a month and a half ago I reported that Illinois had finally adopted a version of Model Rule 8.4.  See here .  Illinois Lawyer Now has ...

The Washington D.C. Office of Disciplinary Counsel (ODC) has accused a former federal prosecutor who oversaw more than 200 cases related to ...

 Here is an interesting fact scenario.  A criminal defense lawyer does not effectively represent a suspect during a police interview, and th...

A Trump supporter lawyer who was convicted of two counts of election fraud, based upon evidence establishing that he had voted in both Flori...

July 12, 2024 Bankruptcy Judge Sean Lane has dismissed Rudy Giuliani’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy, removing a shield that for six months froze tw...

As reported in The Guardian ( here ), "Alec Baldwin’s involuntary manslaughter trial came to a dramatic end on Friday, after a New Mexi...

 Long time readers of this blog may remember old posts about how some states have slowly approved regulation to allow “non-lawyer profession...

In a move that I suspect surprised no one, Rudy Giuliani was been disbarred in New York.  You can read the full order here .  It concludes, ...

 The Legal Talk Network has a new article with links to podcasts on emerging trends in legal tech  here .

Over at Jotwell, Nora Freeman Engstrom has posted a short review of a new article by Lucian Pera called Ethics, Lawyering, and Regulation in...

 As I am sure you know by now, the ABA amended the comment to Model Rule 1.1 some years ago to include a new paragraph [8] that says "T...

 Here is the latest in our "how not to practice law" series.  As reported in Law & Crime, the Colorado disciplinary board rece...

 The ABA recently posted a new podcast on issues related to Model Rule 1.9 (on duties owed to former clients.  You can listen to it  here . ...

 The last time we heard from former Trump campaign lawyer Jenna Ellis she had just been suspended for 3 years for conviction related to her ...

 Suppose Lawyer A is in litigation and, in response to a request for documents, opposing counsel (Lawyer B) sends a link to a file stored in...

Back in November 2023 I reported that the Illinois Supreme Court Rules Committee held a meeting to discuss a number of proposals, including ...

If you are a long term reader of this blog you know that I have been following the cases against many of the lawyers for the Trump administr...

 Do you remember Jenna Ellis, a relatively insignificant member of the "Kraken team" of lawyers for the Trump campaign who paraded...

 In my previous post I mentioned a couple of recent posts regarding AI and the practice of law.  Here is another one:  "Is The Legal In...

As reported by  Ethical Grounds , last month, the D.C. Bar issued Ethics Opinion 388: Attorneys’ Use of Generative Artificial Intelligence i...

 Is it justified to impose disciplinary sanctions if the lawyer has received a presidential pardon?  New Jersey thinks so.  Here is the stor...

As all of you know, the ABA's Standing Committee on Ethics and Professional Responsibility frequently issues Formal Opinions to help ans...

As reported by The Hill, the D.C. Court of Appeals has temporarily suspended the law license of former President Trump’s ex-lawyer following...

 A judge in California turned down an urgent plea Wednesday from John Eastman to allow him to keep practicing law while he fights an effort ...

 April 27. 2024 As reported in Above the Law:  Confronted with an ethics investigation zeroing in on a number of different types of conduct ...

March 20, 2024 The ABA Journal and Above the Law are reporting that the Washington Supreme Court has adopted alternative pathways to a law l...

A disciplinary panel in Washington has found that Jeffrey Clark, a former high-ranking Justice Department official, violated ethics rules fo...

1. Jenny Brobst (Memphis Law) recently posted an article offering a look at the role of technology and ethical competency rules, vis-a-vis h...

I think that issues related to the use of AI in the practice of law are the number 1 topic of the year and I see stories on it almost every ...

 A California judge has formally recommended that attorney John Eastman be disbarred for his role in Donald Trump's legal effort to rema...

 Today the ABA Standing Committee on Ethics and Professional Responsibility published Formal Opinion 510 on whether an attorney should be di...

 LawSites has the full story here .

 LawSites is reporting ( here ) that a new website that provides access to legal research called  descrybe.ai is focused on using artificia...

 The headline in Above the Law reads: "Convicted Lawyer Too Well-Connected To Face Discipline".  Elsewhere , the story was report...

 LawSites has the full story here .

 LawSites recently published two articles with commentary about the justice gap and legal tech that are worth reading. In the first one, Law...

If you are a college football fan you know about "naming rights"...  So what used to be the Fiesta Bowl suddenly became the Tostit...

 Here is a 50 minute NPR program on the right to an attorney and the role of public defenders in the criminal justice system.

 The ABA Standing Committee on Ethics and Professional Responsibility just released a new Formal Opinion (Number 509).  The title is Disqual...

 A couple of days ago I posted that I think a lawyer in good standing in a state should be allowed to practice law in any other jurisdiction...

 Should A License To Practice Law Be More Like A Driver's License?  In a word, YES!  I do think so.  I think that once admitted in one s...

 Not surprisingly, the US Supreme Court has denied review of the sanctions imposed on Trump attorneys in Michigan.  Jurist has the story her...

February 18, 2024 As reported in Courthouse News:  An appeals court in Missouri lambasted a pro se litigant for submitting multiple “fictit...

 I have blogged before about the unfortunate reality that even 60 years after Gigeon v. Wainwright , there are still deficiencies in the pro...

Two weeks ago, the Illinois Supreme Court amended a Supreme Court Rule to add “sexual harassment prevention” to the enumerated topic areas f...

 Here is another "how not to practice law" story.  The lessons from these stories always seem so obvious; yet here we are.  In thi...