Legal Ethics

  • May 20, 2024

    Mich. Judges Claim Immunity In Defender's Retaliation Suit

    A Detroit-area court and two of its judges say a public defender's retaliation suit should be dismissed because they have immunity from claims that her cases were moved because she complained about court staff behavior, saying that even if the allegations were true, the judges have a right to manage their courtrooms.  

  • May 20, 2024

    Girardi Wants To Probe Jurors' 'Real Housewives' Exposure

    Public defenders for Tom Girardi want to ask prospective jurors in his upcoming fraud trial whether they have seen his wife's reality television show and news reporting about his law firm's massive scandal, according to a recent motion in Los Angeles federal court.

  • May 20, 2024

    McElroy Deutsch Says Ex-Exec's Guilt Boosts Home Claim

    McElroy Deutsch Mulvaney & Carpenter LLP doubled down on its attempt to seize the home of two former firm executives following a guilty plea on criminal embezzlement charges earlier this month by one of them, the firm's former chief financial officer.

  • May 20, 2024

    Atty Wants In On Ch. 11 Pause In Fraud Suit Against Law Firm

    A Houston attorney being sued for alleged misconduct in soliciting hurricane victims has asked a federal court to include him in a bankruptcy-triggered pause in the proceedings against his law firm, arguing that any judgment against him would effectively be against the law firm.

  • May 20, 2024

    Menendez Texts With Wife A Legislative Promise, Judge Says

    Emoji-laden texts between Sen. Robert Menendez and his wife about an arms sale constitute a legislative promise, a Manhattan federal judge reiterated Monday, as the government seeks to prove the power couple had a corrupt agreement with a New Jersey businessman.

  • May 17, 2024

    Calif. OKs Rule For Judges To Work Remotely In Civil Cases

    California's Judicial Council on Friday approved a new rule of court to allow judges to preside remotely under limited circumstances over civil proceedings from a location other than a courtroom.

  • May 17, 2024

    Jenner & Block Sued For Firing Worker Over Vax Refusal

    A former Jenner & Block LLP employee filed a discrimination suit against the law firm on May 17, claiming she was fired after the firm refused to provide a religious exemption from its COVID-19 vaccine mandate despite her belief that taking the vaccine would make her complicit in abortion.

  • May 17, 2024

    Calif.'s Top Judge Launches Task Force To Probe AI Uses

    California Supreme Court Chief Justice Patricia Guerrero has created a new task force to look into how generative artificial intelligence could benefit the court system and its users, while also evaluating its potential risks, the court announced Friday.

  • May 17, 2024

    DC Circ. Affirms Ex-HUD Official's Conviction For False Docs

    The D.C. Circuit on Friday upheld the documents falsification conviction of a former high-ranking staffer within the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development's Office of the Inspector General, rejecting his arguments that prosecutors had diverged at trial from the charges laid out in an indictment.

  • May 17, 2024

    Philly Surgeon Settles Sex Bias Case With Jefferson Hospital

    An orthopedic surgeon who sued Thomas Jefferson University Hospital for gender discrimination over its handling of sexual assault allegations has settled his case with the hospital after a $15 million award in his favor was erased.

  • May 17, 2024

    Baldwin Wants 'Rust' Case Tossed, Says Grand Jury Was Duped

    Alec Baldwin's attorneys urged a New Mexico state judge during a hearing Friday to throw out involuntary manslaughter charges against the actor in the "Rust" movie shooting, arguing prosecutors misled the grand jury in the case.

  • May 17, 2024

    Dozens Of Pro Bono Attys Back 3rd Circ. Nominee Mangi

    Forty-nine pro bono partners, counsel and chairs from major law firms and organizations wrote to Senate leadership on Friday with concerns that the staunch opposition against Third Circuit nominee Adeel Mangi over his pro bono work will have a chilling effect on future attorneys seeking judgeships, according to a letter shared with Law360.

  • May 17, 2024

    NJ Panel Cites Bad Expert Opinion In Tossing Malpractice Suit

    A New Jersey appellate court upheld Thursday the dismissal of a legal malpractice dispute accusing an attorney of botching a woman's suit over a restaurant attack where she ended up recovering the minimum award.

  • May 17, 2024

    NJ Atty Escapes Malpractice Suit Over UPS Bias Suit

    A New Jersey state appeals court on Friday refused to revive a legal malpractice lawsuit from a UPS driver alleging his ex-lawyer did not disclose his working relationship with Day Pitney LLP, the firm that represented the delivery company in the driver's underlying racial discrimination suit.

  • May 17, 2024

    Trump Hush Money Judge Warned For Biden Donation

    The judge presiding over Donald Trump's criminal hush money trial was quietly cautioned after making a political campaign contribution to President Joe Biden and a Democratic group, disposing of an ethics investigation into the donation, it was confirmed Friday.

  • May 17, 2024

    Judge Bias Claim Can't Sink Mayo Clinic Ariz. Malpractice Win

    An Arizona appellate court has affirmed a lower court bench ruling that let the Mayo Clinic in Arizona off the hook on malpractice claims lodged by a man who suffered serious complications after an abdominal procedure, in part ruling that he didn't show judicial bias requiring recusal.

  • May 17, 2024

    Alito Flag Report Fuels Ethics Debate, But Likely No Recusal

    Responses to a report that an upside-down American flag flew outside U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito's home following the 2020 presidential election broke along partisan lines Friday, with conservatives decrying it as a smear campaign and liberals calling for his recusal from pending election-related cases and for general court ethics reform.

  • May 17, 2024

    Menendez Bribery Trial: 5 Things To Know About Week 1

    Explosive opening statements, closed-door jury questioning and an FBI agent's recount of the moment he found a treasure trove of gold bars and cash highlighted the first week of trial in the government's second corruption case against U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez.

  • May 17, 2024

    Texas Justices Let Fen-Phen Atty Malpractice Fight Roll On

    The Texas Supreme Court ruled Friday that roughly 4,000 former clients of a Houston mass tort lawyer can continue pressing their claims that the lawyer improperly kept millions of dollars in fen-phen diet drug settlement money.

  • May 17, 2024

    Calif. Bar Approves Plan To Expunge Nondisbarment Records

    The State Bar of California approved a plan to automatically expunge records of attorney disciplinary actions after eight years, so long as there was no disbarment and the lawyer stayed out of trouble — a move designed to bring greater fairness to the state's attorney disciplinary system.

  • May 17, 2024

    1st Circ. Rejects Ex-Immigration Judges' Bid For Asylum Redo

    The First Circuit's full bench refused to reopen a Salvadoran woman's case seeking asylum, despite former immigration judges weighing in to say that the judge who denied her asylum didn't follow a legal requirement to ensure her record was complete.

  • May 17, 2024

    Ex-Baltimore State's Atty Says 20-Month Sentence Too Harsh

    Former Baltimore State's Attorney Marilyn Mosby has asked a federal judge to cut down prosecutors' requested 20-month prison sentence after she was convicted of abusing a COVID-19-era program to obtain money from a retirement fund and conning a lender to obtain a vacation home, arguing the proposal "stray[s] from the reality of this case."

  • May 17, 2024

    Trump's Potential Witness Could Be Defense 'Dynamite'

    As Donald Trump's hush money trial in Manhattan nears its end, experts say criminal defense attorney Robert Costello, who once advised the former president's ex-fixer and key prosecution witness Michael Cohen, has surfaced as a potentially bombshell witness for the defense.

  • May 17, 2024

    AG Garland Held In Contempt By House Committees

    Two House committees voted late Thursday to hold Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt for not turning over audio recordings of the president and his ghostwriter speaking with special counsel Robert Hur for his investigation into President Joe Biden's handling of classified documents.

  • May 16, 2024

    $2B Default Recommended For Making Fair Trial 'Impossible'

    Years of lies should put a pair of Chinese electronics companies on the hook for over $2 billion in default judgment, a special master told a California federal judge, adding that their yearslong no-show and disregard of U.S. counsel advice to retain documents have rendered a fair trial "impossible."

Expert Analysis

  • Dispute Prevention Strategies To Halt Strife Before It Starts

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    With geopolitical turbulence presenting increased risks of business disputes amid court backlogs and ballooning costs, companies should consider building mechanisms for dispute prevention into newly established partnerships to constructively resolve conflicts before they do costly damage, say Ellen Waldman and Allen Waxman at the International Institute for Conflict Prevention and Resolution.

  • Practical Skills Young Attorneys Must Master To Be Happier

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    For young lawyers, finding happiness on the job — with its competitive nature and high expectations for billable hours — is complicated, but three skills can help them gain confidence, reduce stress and demonstrate their professional value in ways they never imagined, says career counselor Susan Smith Blakely.

  • ABA Opinion Should Help Clarify Which Ethics Rules Apply

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    A recent American Bar Association opinion provides key guidance on interpreting ABA Model Rule 8.5's notoriously complex choice-of-law analysis — and should help lawyers authorized to practice in multiple jurisdictions determine which jurisdiction's ethics rules govern their conduct, say attorneys at HWG.

  • 4 Ways To Reboot Your Firm's Stalled Diversity Program

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    Law firms that have failed to see real progress despite years of diversity initiatives can move forward by committing to tackle four often-taboo obstacles that hinder diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, says Steph Maher at Jaffe.

  • DOJ's Google Sanctions Motion Shows Risks Of Auto-Deletion

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    The U.S. Department of Justice recently hit Google with a sanctions motion over its alleged failure to preserve relevant instant-messaging communications, a predicament that should be a wake-up call for counsel concerning the danger associated with automatic-deletion features and how it's been handled by the courts, say Oscar Shine and Emma Ashe at Selendy Gay.

  • What To Expect From A Litigation Finance Industry Recession

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    There's little data on how litigation finance would fare in a recession, but a look at stakeholders' incentives suggests corporate demand for litigation finance would increase in a recessionary environment, while the number of funders could shrink, says Matthew Oxman at LexShares.

  • Opinion

    SEC Needs To Support Crypto Gatekeepers

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    The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has a significant responsibility to create and maintain a regulatory environment governing the crypto industry, but currently, crypto businesses — and their lawyers — often are punished for seeking to comply, says retired Wilson Sonsini partner Rob Rosenblum.

  • Trump Docs Investigation Has Lessons For White Collar Attys

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    Several of former President Donald Trump’s attorneys have found themselves in special counsel Jack Smith’s investigatory crosshairs, thus illustrating the risks criminal investigations can pose to both clients and attorneys — but lawyers can employ several best practices to help mitigate these risks, says Kenneth Notter at MoloLamken.

  • Justices Leave Questions Open On Dual-Purpose Atty Advice

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    The U.S. Supreme Court's recent dismissal of In re: Grand Jury on grounds that certiorari was improvidently granted leaves unresolved a circuit split over the proper test for deciding when attorney-client privilege protects a lawyer's advice that has multiple purposes, say Susan Combs and Richard Kiely at Holland & Hart.

  • Steps Lawyers Can Take Following Involuntary Terminations

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    Though lawyers can struggle to recover from involuntary terminations, it's critical that they be able to step back, review any feedback given and look for opportunities for growth, say Jessica Hernandez at JLH Coaching & Consulting and Albert Tawil at Lateral Hub.

  • High Court Ax Of Atty-Client Privilege Case Deepens Split

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    The U.S. Supreme Court's recent dismissal of In re: Grand Jury as improvidently granted maintains a three-way circuit split on the application of attorney-client privilege to multipurpose communications, although the justices have at least shown a desire to address it, say Trey Bourn and Thomas DiStanislao at Butler Snow.

  • 3 Job Satisfaction Questions For Partners Considering Moves

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    The post-pandemic rise in legal turnover may cause partners to ask themselves what they really want from their workplace, how they plan to grow their practice and when it's time to make a move, says Patrick Moya at Quaero Group.

  • 4 Exercises To Quickly Build Trust On Legal Teams

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    High-performance legal teams can intentionally build trust through a rigorous approach, including open-ended conversations and personality assessments, to help attorneys bond fast, even if they are new to the firm or group, says Ben Sachs at the University of Virginia School of Law.

  • Navigating Compensation Of Special Counsel In Bankruptcy

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    With professional liability litigation and disputes over attorney fees on the rise, nonbankruptcy lawyers must know how to determine if a client or opposing party is in bankruptcy, when to make such determinations, and what to do once they have that information, says Danielle Mashburn-Myrick at Phelps Dunbar.

  • 8 Steps To Improve The Perception Of In-House Legal Counsel

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    With the pandemic paving the way for a reputational shift in favor of in-house corporate legal teams, there are proactive steps that legal departments can take to fully rebrand themselves as strong allies and generators of value, says Allison Rosner at Major Lindsey.

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