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.
Typically, courts redo their Web sites and it’s not for the best. They don’t display right on a mobile device and I end up not being able to find anything regardless of where I am. But credit where it’s due.
I have been derelict in updating this blog most of this summer, despite the promise to myself that I’d have fresh and exciting new content every 10-14 days and quick hits in between. Of course, when I made that promise to myself it was October 2019.
And I do have a bunch of half-written entries and prompts floating around, ranging from a February piece-in progress on the illusion of work-life balance (which, to be fair is still an illusion now, except I’m not writing about those weird feet-on-the-beach pictures or Bar events anymore) to three lines in an entry titled: “So It’s Come To This: The Ethics of Using Mail in 2020.” But it’s been hard to see things to completion and publication.
That’s because everything is hard, and it’s been hard.
Under normal circumstances I'd be in Chicago right now, checked into the Hotel Palomar, hanging out with my nerd friends from the Association of Professional Responsibility Lawyers at the Annual Meeting. This blog would be quiet but I’d be annoying everyone on Facebook with out-of-context giddy snippets from the conference.
Instead, it's Yet Another Zoom.
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.
Todd Banks’ valiant attempt to invalidate Al Johnson’s Restaurant’s Goats on the Roof trade dress as “demeaning to goats” (chronicled here in December) has ended not with a bang, or a whimper, or even with a fish fry, but with a denial of a cert petition.
I don’t think you need to be an ethics attorney or an attorney at all to know you generally need your client to be a client and to know that they’re a client before filing a lawsuit on their behalf and then litigating it for two years and then having it dismissed with a petition for attorney’s fees made against you.
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.
Guidance for ethical use of social media is evolving for both lawyers and judges. Right now, the advice I tend to give to lawyers regarding social media is, if you can’t do it offline, don’t do it online. You’re not allowed to misrepresent your services on a billboard, so don’t misrepresent them on your Facebook page.
I write about lawyers behaving badly a lot (at least, not when I’m not neglecting this blog-hi everyone, I hope you’ve been well) but one thing I don’t do is comment on Wisconsin lawyers with potential or pending matters. I’ll cite published opinions regarding Wisconsin lawyers, but only in rare cases will I discuss a case in any other context (and then, onl if it’s very publicly clear that I am not their lawyer).
In my ethics nerd friend circles, we often discuss “those cases.” “Those cases” either involve attorney discipline or judges admonishing attorneys for allegedly bad behavior outside of the disciplinary cases; they’re not of great importance or precedential value by themselves. But they act as cautionary tales and generate extra publicity and discussion (at least in my ethics nerd friend circles) because they involve some combination of vulgarity, sex, “really, you have a law license and thought this was a good idea?” and/or general silliness.
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).
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?
I routinely counsel others on how to prepare for emergencies we don’t like to talk about—our ethical duties to our clients continue even if we become disabled, or die (though Wisconsin’s Office of Lawyer Regulation does not routinely prosecute violations posthumously, and we can be grateful for those small favors). I’ve handled more than one call from someone who ended up in the no-good-deed-goes-unpunished scenario of having a bunch of files dumped in their office from a grieving and panicked spouse with little more than a “now what?”
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 was in law school and applying for bar membership, there were a number of character and fitness questions seeking information about substance abuse and mental health. I (somewhat shockingly, I’m a pack rat) don’t have the questionnaire anymore so I don’t remember the exact questions, but I do remember the Board of Bar Examiners asking if applicants had sought counseling or other mental health treatment. I do not recall whether the above caveats were present (though I believe we were told we did not need to disclose stress/domestic/eating disorder counseling). I remember that it felt intrusive and stigmatizing, even though I have been fortunate and I didn’t have much to disclose.
