One scenario that’s come up many times on both the prosecution and the defense sides of the ethics fence is the attorney-client make-up. The lawyer and client don’t communicate at all, or effectively, for a while; the client has a misimpression of the status of a matter; there is a noticeable, but harmless, period of […]
5.27.15 The Supreme Court’s recent decision in McVey v. M.L.K. Enterprises (2015 IL 118143) lets Illinois lawyers know the order of things when it comes to disbursing settlement funds in injury cases, and the lesson is: we may call medical lienholders “third parties,” but they’re not third in line. In McVey, the plaintiff settled her […]
Illinois lawyers should be aware that the Supreme Court recently amended Rule 1.15 to address the problem of what to do with unidentifiable funds residing in an IOLTA. There has long been an answer to the question of what to do with unclaimed funds: follow the procedures outlined in the Uniform Disposition of Unclaimed Property […]
Prof. Ronald D. Rotunda recently wrote concerning lawyers’ duty to be truthful in negotiations: its essence and its limits. As Prof. Rotunda wrote, Rule 4.1 of the Model Rules imposes a duty on lawyers to make no false statements of material fact or law, and Illinois Rule 4.1 tracks the Model Rule. Prof. Rotunda cites […]
The Illinois Supreme Court recently amended several Supreme Court Rules relating to the disciplinary system. One such change was to Rules 780 and 759, relating to the administration of the ARDC’s Client Protection Program. Most Illinois lawyers have not encountered these rules in their careers; the Client Protection Program (established under Rule 780) had previously […]
When I was at the ARDC, I used to answer phone calls to the Ethics Inquiry hotline. All attorneys there did so for one day a week. One never knew what one was going to get – the calls came in randomly, and they were supposed to be a) anonymous and b) posed as hypotheticals. […]
As the ABA Journal recently reported, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court recently promulgated new rules (effective March 1) that are aimed at lawyers’ provision of investment advice to clients. I’ve been concerned about lawyers’ conduct in this arena since my involvement, early in my ARDC career, in a case involving a lawyer selling unregistered securities to […]
This post will cover a practical tip for responding to letters from the ARDC asking for information about a complainant’s initial request for an investigation. Such letters are facts of life (about 6,000 of which arise per year). It’s a lawyer’s duty to respond to such a letter, of course, and to take the matter […]
The District Court for the Northern District of California recently implemented new Guidelines for Professional Conduct. Regular practitioners there, or even occasional ones, will need to become familiar with the guidelines, and must recognize that their conduct in that district can be judged with the guidelines in mind. But it’s instructive for anyone to examine […]
(Pieter Brueghel, The Village Lawyer, 1625) (or, The World Before Spreadsheets) I’ve been very, very, very, like glacially, slow-blogging a post about lawyers’ ethical duty of competency as it ties in to the ever-expanding capabilities and complexities of tech. Andrew Perlman’s excellent summary of ethical considerations on this issue was recently published in The Professional […]
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