Legal Ethics Forum

Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justice Criticizes the Resources Used by Federal Public Defender in Collateral Attack in Death Penalty Case

Interesting post, with interesting quotes from concurrence by Pennsylvania Supreme Court justice, at Sentencing Law & Policy blog.  The justice criticizes the level of resources the FPD brought to bear in a capital defense case dealing with ineffective assistance of counsel.

Working from home and misleading advertising?

This hadn't occurred to me, but did to My Law License: if you're a lawyer working from home, wouldn't it be misleading to have a picture of an office building on your website?  (h/t and related thoughts: My Shingle)

Gender stats at elite schools

State Bar of Michigan Blog ran stats, from US News, on gender breakdown at elite law schools, most of which are below 50%.  I don't want to discuss stats in an impressionistic way, but the numbers did surprise me a little.  Does anyone know of a good recent treatment of the trends on law school enrollment and gender?

Fred Zacharias Memorial Prize

Submissions and nominations of articles are now being accepted for the second annual Fred C. Zacharias Memorial Prize for Scholarship in Professional Responsibility.  To honor Fred's memory, the committee will select from among articles in the field of Professional Responsibility with a publication date of 2011.  The prize will be awarded at the 2012 AALS Annual Meeting in Washington, DC.  Please send submissions and nominations to Professor Samuel Levine at Touro Law Center: [email protected].  The deadline for submissions and nominations is September 1, 2011.

GAO advises DOJ to resolve intra-agency conflicts more efficiently

Main Justice carries the news. 

One of the more interesting comments in this semester's class on ethics for government lawyers came from a lawyer working for the City Attorney of San Francisco.  He said that organiztional clients that participate directly in markets tend to have clear lines of authority and responsibility, whereas many governmental organizations are designed to have "checks and balances"  or 'overlapping jurisdiction."  In a market setting, where the principal motivations are profit, revenue, and efficieincy, if there is an intra-client dispute, you typically move up one level within the organization and get clear direction.  But it can be a lot more complicated in the government setting, where the principal movtivators include turf, seniority, and priority and you may lack a clear chain of authority.

The Economist on the Legal Profession

The New York Times has had its share of recent stories about legal education and the legal profession.  This week, the Economist entered the mix. 

There is nothing especially new in the article for those of us who study the legal profession and legal education, but it offers an excellent overview of some criticial legal industry trends, including globalization and advances in technology.  The article is worth assigning to students in Legal Profession and Professional Responsibility courses this fall.  Here are a few notable paragraphs:

Trends that were not part of the recession will not disappear with the recovery. Some will even strengthen. William Henderson of Indiana University points out just how good and how long a run lawyers had. Spending on legal services grew from 0.4% of America’s GDP in 1978 to 1.8% in 2003. The legal business grew four times faster than the economy. Now, Mr Henderson says, a “hundred-year flood” is hitting the profession. Job growth had begun well before 2008, he points out, so that the labour market was already out of balance when recession struck. Not all firms will survive, and those that do will not all prosper equally. . . .

Mr Leite suggests one way lawyers can guarantee themselves work: by becoming experts in other industries, not just areas of legal practice. Young lawyers can learn from being seconded to clients. And American law schools are slowly trying to instil some business acumen into future lawyers, though in Europe and elsewhere law remains distressingly academic.

Another much-discussed solution for teaching lawyers to be businesspeople is the creation of all-in-one professional-service firms, combining lawyers, management consultants and accountants. But this looks unlikely to succeed for many; the three professions are simply too different in their traditions, training and incentives. A liberalisation of the legal market in England and Wales will allow more non-lawyers to own parts of firms or offer certain services, but at first this is likely to affect mainly the cheaper end of the market, not the richest pickings of corporate work. . . .

Monica Goodling reprimanded for DOJ behavior

Main Justice.  It's a blast from the past.  Does anyone know if this is one of those situations where the DOJ's OPR lacks jurisdiction once the lawyer leaves federal service?  

Biglaw's worst nightmare—Bankruptcy Trustees?

ABA Journal notes that a few recent big profile claims against biglaw arise from bankruptcy or insolvency.  BK Trustees are scary creatures to biglaw, because the Trustee's job is to look for whatever sources of money might plausibly be asked to contribute to the debtor's estate.

Legal ethics odds and ends (May 6, 2011)

• OC Register: "Lawyers for young Muslim students charged with disrupting a speech by an Israeli diplomat at UC Irvine last year have filed a motion asking that prosecutors be barred from making any more public statements about the emotionally charged case."

• The Local (Sweden): Nearly a third of Swedish lawyers agree with criticisms leveled by Wikileaks founder Julian Assange against the Swedish legal system, including against the use of politician lay judges in some trials.

• Thomson Reuters: "Quest Diagnostic Wins Dismissal of Former Counsel's Whistle-Blower Suit."

• New York Law Journal: "Lawyers as Whistle-Blowers"

 

ACC to speak on proposed conflicts rules for sophisticated clients

Law Firm Risk Management Blog has a post reporting that ACC will be asking the ABA to modernize the rules' treatment of sophisticated clients.  The ACC's upcoming postion will be broadly aligned with the recent presentation from big firm GC's and risk managers -- although it's not clear that the GC's and the ACC will offer 100% identical positions. 

A statement by the ACC should have a huge impact.  The rules are supposed to protect clients and if the ACC -- whose members are the core of the biglaw clients -- asks for modernization, then one would hope the rules-writers would get the point.  On a number of issues, including advance waivers, prospectively limiting professional liability, disaggregation, and MDP, the current rules structure forbids clients from making choices that give them access to counsel and that hold down costs.  (One major rationale for those expensive rules is that we need them to protect unsophisticated clients and that, supposedly, there is no way to write rules to distinguish between the two kinds of clients.  One suspects that there is also a touch of resentment directed at big firms for wanting to receive "special treatment."  That comes through in the article linked above.)