By Charles Berwanger The reader is asked to picture a fictional settlement conference of a lawsuit. Present is the client representative, defendant Ajax Corporation’s General Counsel, and Ajax’s Defense Counsel. They are in a...
By Katie Parker As noted in a recent Ethics in Brief column (here), an attorney’s persistent lack of civility can have concrete financial consequences. In the case at issue there, the California Court of Appeal affirmed...
By Valerie Silverman Massey Scenario: As a senior or supervising attorney, you are preparing to file a document with a court. A more junior attorney prepares the document using prior office writings/research or conducting...
By Edward McIntyre Macbeth turned to Sara and Duncan “Pete Moore, a friend, and my go-to AI guru, asked if we could meet. Said it was urgent. I told him to come right over....
Legal Ethics for New Attorneys: Trump’s Attorneys’ Fiasco Time for a Review of an Attorney’s Ethical Duties to Tell the Truth, Show Candor Toward the Tribunal, Provide Counsel Only on Legal or Just Matters,...
A potential client comes to a lawyer with a case against his or her former employer. The catch: the lawyer worked for the same company before passing the bar.
By Edward McIntyre A recent State Bar Court discipline opinion underscores that we, lawyers, should take a court’s order seriously — very seriously — at our peril.[1] The facts of the case drive the...
By Gary W. Schons You are a young prosecutor preparing for your first domestic violence trial. Fortunately it’s “only” a misdemeanor charge—domestic battery—Penal Code § 243 (c)(1)—because the injuries to your victim, a young...
By Andrew A. Servais As most know, on November 1, 2018, 69 new California Rules of Professional Conduct replaced 46 current Rules of Professional Conduct in an effort to bring the California Rules in...
By David C. Carr The California Rules of Professional Conduct (Rules) are intended to provide standards for the imposition of professional discipline on lawyers in California (Rule 1.0.1.) But in practice the Rules are applied in other...