Litigation crowdfunding has recently resurfaced as an issue, as lawyers for Daniel Penny, the man charged with killing Jordan Neely on a New York subway, has have raised nearly $2.5 million dollars (as of this posting) to support his defense fund.
ethicking.com
Thoughts on legal ethics and law practice. Licensed in Wisconsin and Illinois, opinionated everywhere.
Thoughts on legal ethics and law practice. Licensed in Wisconsin and Illinois, opinionated everywhere.
All in National
Happy New Year, Have A Suspension
I’d like to kick off the new year of blogging with an update. Remember Alex Jones’s lawyers? The one who belatedly turned over a bunch of his client’s text messages, but with it dumped some confidential records (including medical records) of some of the the Sandy Hook families?
In what seems like lightning speed, one of the lawyers, last week Norman Pattis, was suspended for six months from the practice of law by a Connecticut judge. (No, this was not the one in Texas who chose to close with a quote from the anti-Nazi pastor Martin Niemöller. There is a lot going on here.)
Three Pre-Holiday Short-ish Takes
I hope everyone is planning a restful and warm holiday. I may or may not be blogging more this year (that’s always a spur-of-the-moment decision), so in the meantime, I’ll leave you with a few little stocking stuffers/nuggets of coal (depending on your perspective).
Selected Thoughts From the Select Committee Summary
Yesterday, the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol held its last hearing and released the introductory report to its findings. The full report will not be released until tomorrow, but the summary material (which is 154 pages in itself) provides a robust roadmap.
I watched some of yesterday’s hearing, and, I’m sure, like any other member of the ethics bar who may have been listening, my ears perked up when Rep. Lofgren outlined efforts by lawyers to influence witnesses and disrupt the investigation.
A Stark Reminder About Confidentiality
Earlier this week, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York announced charges in four separate insider trading cases involving nine targets.
Relevant here is the case against Seth Markin (pdf), who is accused of looking through his then-girlfriend’s confidential work documents. The girlfriend, who is not named in the indictment, was an associate at a Washington DC law firm. The couple did not live together, but Markin spent significant time at her one-bedroom apartment, sometimes alone.
Play Invasion of Privacy Games, "Win" Invasion of Privacy Lawsuits
Bloomberg Law is reporting that Vrdolyak Law Group, based in Illinois, has been sued in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois for secretly recording employee phone calls and and meetings without permission, and then concealing their efforts.
Now, Illinois has some pretty stringent eavesdropping laws and is a two-party consent state, which means that absent particular circumstances, all parties to a conversation need to consent to recording it. So the particular course of action may not be available to aggrieved employees in other states, but hearing about this suit got me wondering—is it ethical to surveil your employees in such fashion?
Put a Question Out to the Universe and the Universe Responds
The folks at the Monroe H. Freedman Institute for Legal Ethics at Hofstra University’s Deane School of Law have invited me and a fantastic panel of others—including Michael Teter, the 65 Project’s executive director—to have that conversation at a Zoom event, “Holding Trump’s Lawyers Accountable.”
So, What Do We All Think About the 65 Project?
This week, we learned about a new group, the 65 Project, dedicated to seeking professional discipline for lawyers involved in President Trump’s post-election litigation. Already, complaints have been filed with several states’ regulators. The “65” refers to the number of post-election lawsuits that were filed, that, in the group’s words, were “based on lies to overturn the election and give Trump a second term.”
Responding to Internet Criticism, Re-Re-Revisited
Like most ethics lawyers, I get questions about how to respond to online criticism fairly often. Of course, lawyers have always endured criticism, but until relatively recently, the comments were made around water coolers and on the courthouse steps, and maybe in a grievance filing. Newspaper editors generally didn’t publish letters about attorneys who weren’t otherwise public figures. Now, however, everyone has a platform and anyone can post a scathing review about anyone for any reason.
"Oh I know it'll happen, but it'll never happen to me..."
When I talk to lawyers about scams, any kind of scams, most respond somewhat defensively. “How could anyone possibly fall for that? My BS detector would have picked that up.” And yes, we know that the IRS doesn’t make robocalls requesting a credit card number; that we don’t know any royalty in Nigeria who want to wire us money; and that nobody who really needs legal help in the United States starts an email with “Hello Barrister I am in need of enlisting your aid in enforcing a loan agreement in your jurisdiction” (which is why, when versions of that email come in, we quickly delete them—you do that, right?).
The problem is, the scams are getting smarter.
What's in a Name Law Firm, S.C.
There’s been a bit of a discussion on #legalethicsTwitter (yes it’s a thing) about what lawyers are allowed to call themselves, professionally.
I was surprised to learn that in Texas, lawyers are not allowed to use trade names for their law firms. They can use their own names and those of active, retired, or deceased partners, and can use entity designations such as “LLC.” Married women can use their maiden names (gee thanks for expressly enumerating that, Texas).