All in Current Events
First, this is a pro-vaccine blog. If you are able to get the vaccine, get the vaccine. I understand you may be worried about side effects; talk to your doctor about that.
Aside from that, though, do lawyers have an obligation under the Rules of Professional Responsibility to get the vaccine if they are able?
Yes, I am running out of puns, and this is information isn’t breaking news anymore, but 110-page opinions have bad habits of dropping while I’m on vacation.
Anyway, while I was gone, Hon. Linda Parker of the Eastern District of Michigan sanctioned several attorneys, including Sidney Powell and Lin Wood and a few less famous, but all associated with the post-election “Kraken” litigation. My nerd friend Don Campbell did his best with exceedingly bad facts, but.
This is a remarkable opinion. It is also 110 pages, so it’s not a beach read (well, maybe it is, I won’t judge), but if this interests you at all you should read it.
Over the weekend, mythical sea creature /(probably) soon-to-be-sanctioned lawyer Sidney Powell announced that she was joining a legal team to aid who she termed “political prisoners” (people who are accused of participating in the January 6 insurrection and are now in jail).
While, okay, everyone deserves a defense, what caught my eye was that this announcement was, of course, attached to a request for donations to Powell’s 501(c)(4). It is not clear whether donations would actually go to some sort of legal defense fund, some other project of the organization, or anywhere else.
This blog isn’t about politics so I’m not going to dive down that rabbit hole (except to remind Ms. Powell that 8.4(c) is a 24/7 law and misleading donors can get her sanctioned just as readily as misleading clients). So instead I’ll talk about crowdfunding legal fees.
Well, well, well. It seems that the attorney for the former president, landscaping company press conference aficionado, and frequent target of ridicule Rudy Giuliani needs to take an indefinite time out in New York, as his license to practice law there has been suspended on an interim basis pending investigation.
Mike Lindell may have once been known only as the “MyPillow" Guy,” but recently he’s traded polyurethane foam for horsefeathers.
I learned quickly that there is a difference between actually redacting something and just plunking a black box over something you don’t want other people to see. The problem is, not everyone has learned that lesson.
Over the last couple of days, friends have forwarded articles containing interviews with members of the ex-president’s impeachment trial team, asking if they really should be spilling the tea like that?
This is a question I do get generally, so let’s call this a FAQ: Aren’t these things supposed to be confidential? Are lawyers really supposed to talk to media other than to say “no comment”?
By now, just about every lawyer has received multiple forwards of the Lawyer Zoom Cat video. For those of you not so lucky, a Texas lawyer accidentally appeared at Zoom court with a filter activated that turned him into a talking cat.
This happens frequently when lawyers are in the news—social media lights up with calls to disbar them for doing whatever the posters believe was out of line. Now, as someone with an increasingly public practice, I wait with bated breath to see if and when the virtual torches and pitchforks come for my license. I’d like to say I’d see it as a badge of honor, but probably in action I would not be as amused.
This post is not about whether any lawyer currently in the news deserves discipline, but about the process.
We all procrastinate. Even you—yes you, with your wall calendar and your daily planner in your briefcase and your Outlook calendar synched to your phone and Siri shouting reminders at you weeks, days, hours, and minutes before each important deadline. It’s part of the human condition, and not dependent on time management skills. Most of us know how to manage our time; we just don’t follow through. Lawyers do it for more than an hour a day.
Three years ago, aspiring 1Ls at the other 235 or so law schools in the United States started their first year and assumed they’d be sitting for the bar exam this summer, in person, in a stuffy hotel ballroom (Virginia test-takers in full court dress, no really).
Now, those same new graduates are wondering what, if anything, is going to happen, given that we are still in the middle of a raging pandemic and putting hundreds of panting, coughing, sweaty people in a room together, even six feet apart, is the opposite of social distancing.
I know a couple of lawyers who have presumed or confirmed cases of COVID-19. Happily, all of them are doing well, even if it was bumpy for awhile. None of them have posed this question to me, but I’ve seen it elsewhere as a hypothetical—what are lawyers’ duties if they have become ill with COVID-19?
Pop culture makes it seem like lawyers are constantly in court, or at the very least, catching up with our attorney friends while briskly walking down courthouse steps. It really looks more like the graphic accompanying this blog entry, but with a coffee cup balanced precariously in there (and in my case, more paper despite being promised a paperless office by the year 2000, a comfortable new office chair just sitting in the box, taunting me while waiting to be assembled, and a room in dire need of new paint).
All of this tech means that most of my job, like most of most lawyers’ jobs, can be done from home.
First, I will caveat this with, dammit Jim, I’m a lawyer, not a doctor or an economist, so I’m not going to make any predictions or grand pronouncements, except, please be safe and careful and wash your hands (you can use this handy procrastination tool to make posters for your bathroom mirror). Take this seriously. We are in exceedingly uncharted territory.
When I launched this site back in October I intended it to be a site for discussion of legal ethics. I mean, it’s right there in the title (sort of; perhaps I should add getting “ethicking” added to the dictionary to my bucket list). Disciplinary decisions, new rules, general nerdery. Some current events but “it’s not about politics, and it’s not going to be about politics,” or so I told my employer when making the pitch.
With all due respect to my judge friends, I think most of us who litigate have been tempted to ask, “are you serious, judge?” in court at one point or another. But (I would hope) most of us know better than to actually say it out loud.
Enter Todd Banks of Queens, New York, who seems to have a problem with a lot of things.
