Professional Responsibility Blog

Earlier this month I reported that Avvo Legal Services was shutting down; but I also stated that I was sure ALS' demise would not be th...

Bernie Burk (Campbell) offers some thoughts on the question here .

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 ...

A few days ago I reported that the company that recently bought Avvo has decided to discontinue Avvo Legal Services ("ALS").  T...

The New York State Bar has filed a resolution with the ABA House of Delegates, to be heard at the Annual Meeting, calling for regulation of ...

Last year I posted comments on a case then before the Supreme Court which I thought was important on the issue of client autonomy and alloc...

The most recent column at Verdict discusses ABA Formal Opinion 478, issued in December 2017, which warns that judges may risk violating the ...

Back in 2010 I posted a comment criticizing the practice of appointing attorneys for juveniles in delinquency proceedings to serve simultan...

Back in March I reported that Office Depot was set to start offering a pre-paid legal services plan.  Yet, when I went to check their websi...

Whether participating in Avvo Legal Services violates rules of professional conduct was one of the most debated questions in legal ethics re...

Just over a week ago, The Harvard Law Review Blog published "Disentangling the Ethical and Constitutional Regulation of Criminal Discov...

Above the law has posted a very informative article on the ethical implications of the use of artificial intelligence in the practice of law...

Here is a video of a "webinar" on how artificial intelligence is affecting and will continue to affect the practice of law.  If yo...

Long time readers of this blog know that I have posted many comments on prosecutorial misconduct, including on the fact that there is little...

As you know, in 2012 the American Bar Association amended the comment to Model Rule 1.1 (Competence) to make clear that lawyers have a duty ...

A couple of weeks ago I participated in a panel on the debate over for-profit services that help “match” potential clients with lawyers who ...

About year ago, the Advisory Committee on Professional Ethics, the Committee on Attorney Advertising, and the Committee on the Unauthorized ...

Back in October I wrote a comment on McCoy v. Louisiana , a case before the US Supreme Court in which a Louisiana death row inmate argued h...

I recently wrote about the controversy over the company TIKD ( here ) which is fighting a complaint alleging it is engaged in the unauthoriz...

Wisconsin's Public Defender's Office assigns private attorneys around 40 percent of its cases and pays them the lowest rate in the n...

A few days ago, in a comment on a different topic, I wrote something along the lines that California had not adopted the Model Rules... We...

The Standing Committee on Ethics and Professional Responsibility of the American Bar Association recently issued Formal Opinion 481, called ...

If you are reading this blog it must be because you are interested in Professional Responsibility issues; and if you are interested in that ...

After I posted a link to a story on whether attorneys can accept payment for fees in Bitcoin last night, I vaguely remembered I had seen an ...

As I have discussed before, some cases or ethics opinions have found that the ethical duty to disclose exculpatory evidence is broader than ...

Here is the latest installment in our running list of dumb things lawyers do.  In today's tale, the lawyer claimed to have missed a dead...

Over at Ethical Grounds, Michael Kennedy discusses Nebraska’s Lawyers Advisory Committee's  Ethics Advisory Opinion 17-03, which appear...

Back in 2016, I reported ( here ) that Florida became the first state to mandate technology training for lawyers by adopting a rule that req...

The Maine Supreme Court is seeking comments on a proposal to revise Rule 1.10 to allow for screening as a solution to imputed conflicts of i...

Article here .

A little over a week ago, the Tennessee Supreme Court issued a one page order formally rejecting a proposal to adopt ABA Model Rule 8.4(g)....

Faughnan on Ethics discusses seven lessons learned on confidentiality and privilege out of the "client number three" revelation i...

A few years ago, Washington state made news by approving a program to recognize licensed limited legal technicians (LLLTs) who would be all...

Trump keeps tweeting about the "special council" !  Please, somebody tell him the word is counsel.  Didn't someone say he was ...

Over at Faughnan on Ethics, Brian Faughnan has published a short but very accurate review of the basics regarding confidentiality and privil...

In a many jurisdictions, a convicted criminal defendant who wants to recover for malpractice against his or her former lawyer has to obtain ...

I have written often about prosecutorial misconduct and how rare it is to see accountability on the part of prosecutors who engage in it.  (...

The Indiana Supreme Court announced today that it will begin offering ethical guidance to Indiana lawyers and judges via the Supreme Court’s...

This is an important topic since the vast majority of lawyers will not end their careers in the same firm they start it.  Here is a recent s...

A recent ethics opinion issued in Alaska concludes that it is not necessarily unethical for attorneys to carbon-copy or blind-copy clients i...

The Legal Talk Network has posted a new podcast on ethical issues related to e-discovery.  You can listen to it by clicking on the play butt...

A recent Professional Conduct Advisory Opinion from the Illinois State Bar Association ( Opinion No. 18-01 , January 2018) joined at least t...

According to a story in the New York Times, published March 19, federal prosecutors are investigating finance companies that provide cash a...

Last month, I reported that Trump's budget proposal would eliminate all funding for the Legal Services Corp, the largest single funder ...

Back in December I wrote about ABA Standing Committee on Ethics and Professional Responsibility Ethics Opinion No. 479 ( here ) which discu...

Earlier this month the Florida Supreme Court amended the state’s lawyer referral rules to include for-profit “matching” sites and lawyer dir...

Yesterday I read a story about a man who was arrested for driving under the influence with a .316 alcohol level, when the legal limit is .0...

Lawyerist and The Legal Talk Network has posted a podcast on ethically problematic marketing strategies. You can listen to it by clicking on...

The Florida Supreme Court has adopted new rules regarding lawyer referral services concluding that the amendments "are necessary to ens...

A few weeks ago I was alerted that Office Depot had begun to advertise a new legal services plan.  You can find the announcement here .  I c...

As you probably know, more than half the states have adopted the ABA Model Rules' suggestion that lawyers must be knowledgeable about ...

Here is an interesting article on the use of digital assistants like Amazon's Alexa, Microsoft's Cortana and Google Voice in the pr...

Here are a few new entries to the ongoing series "how not to practice law." An attorney in Colorado got a three year suspension ...

3M has agreed to pay $850 million to settle a long-standing lawsuit filed by Minnesota, over the company’s disposal of perfluorochemicals us...

Long time readers of this blog will remember the debate on whether non lawyers should be licensed to provide limited legal services and how ...

As you know, the ABA is considering a series of changes to some of its rules related to advertising.  As I have commented before, the chang...

Professional Responsibility: A Contemporary Approach has published a short comment on the ABA's Formal Opinion 478 on the restrictions i...

At a time when the legal profession continues to debate how to best provide access to legal services for those who can't afford it, the ...

Last month I posted that one of the important stories to watch in 2018 was going to be an $11 million antitrust lawsuit against the Florida...