Not that a fee dispute between a lawyer and his client is anything new. All the same, I couldn’t help but recall that classic movie and particularly, Vichy Captain Louis Renault’s quip about how disingenuously shocked he was to discover gaming going on in nightclub owner Rick Blaine’s “Rick’s Café Américain.”
“I’m shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here,”Captain Renault said as a croupier hands him a pile of money. “Oh thank you, very much.”
Interestingly, in the original play upon which the film was based, “Everybody Comes to Rick’s,” nightclub owner Rick Blaine was a lawyer. Always — with the lawyer.
But when it comes to love and virtue, and specifically love of money and virtue over fees — what to make of seeing lawyers again in a bad light?
So much, too, for embarrassment or for thinking of Philip Dormer Stanhope Chesterfield’s rejoinder against the Lord Shaftesbury’s “ridicule is the best test of truth; for that it will not stick where it is not just.”
“Churn that bill, baby!”
When the world’s largest law firm, DLA Piper, sued their client over $675,000 in unpaid legal bills, Adam Victor did what all clients do when pressed. He countered. In his case, he accused the firm of the “sweeping practice of overbilling.”
And thanks to pretrial discovery, disadvantageous exasperations happen. Once the firm turned over internal communications to Victor’s lawyers — the Bandinihit the fan.
Take DLA Piper lawyer Christopher Thomson’s email, which said of a colleague working on Victor’s bill, “Now Vince has random people working full time on random research projects in standard ‘churn that bill, baby!’ mode. That bill shall know no limits.” Oy vey!
Overripe mackerels.
When it comes lawyers and their billing practices, something previously explained at “more art than science,” the topic is overripe — indeed, redolent of that proverbial mackerel stinking in the moonlight.
To avoid such astonishments, then, clients would do well to heed what Mae Westonce observed, “Those who are easily shocked should be shocked more often.”
Or in a more serious-minded vein, to note longtime lawyer blogger Carolyn Elefant’s remonstrationson the matter of lawyer overbilling — “so long as lawyers are driven by a desire to maximize revenue, without regard to the client’s best interest, then clients will suffer.”
To which the DLA Piper/Victor fee dispute unsurprisingly leads, it’s the question begged by Forrest Wickman, a.k.a. theExplainer at Slate Magazine, who asks, “When did lawyers get such a bad reputation?”
Looking chronologically, culturally and humorously at what underpins the practice known as“Churn That Bill, Baby!”, Wickman provides his answers.
But if Wickman’s explanations still don’t suffice, there’s always this:
“A man phones a lawyer and asks, “How much would you charge for just answering three simple questions?” The lawyer replies, “A thousand dollars.” “A thousand dollars!” exclaims the man. “That’s very expensive isn’t it?” “It certainly is,” says the lawyer. “Now, what’s your third question?”
Almost 10 years ago, probate lawyer Gerald Curry was chased around a tree by gunman William Strier who was intent on killing him. At the time, Curry didn’t even know who he was. According to news accounts, Curry said he was headed to a parking garage when an older man he didn’t recognize approached him and asked his name. “And then he just shot me,” he said.
Although wounded in his neck and arm, Curry miraculously survived. Moreover, not only did he fully recover from his wounds but he was able to continue his estate planning and probate law practice — albeit with more cautiousness. This past May, Curry passed away.
According to court documents from news reports at the time, Strier had been fighting a court-appointed trustee over money Strier claimed the trustee was withholding from his injury settlement trust fund. Curry represented the trustee in the litigation. For more, also see Then & Now: Gerald Curry- CNN.
As any experienced litigator will tell you, during the course of a representation, there will be times where prudence ought to dictate thoughts about personal safety as the practice of a law can sometimes be dangerous.
Thankfully, for most lawyers, those times are infrequent. Even so, when crimes are committed against members of the legal profession, they shock and appall. And they catch you up short. This past week was one of those instances. Within 24 hours, two lawyers were murdered at work.
And also on Thursday morning but 1100 miles away in Kaufman, Texas, assistant district attorney Mark Hasse, was shot multiple times and killed in the parking lot of the Kaufman County Courthouse. Police are searching for two suspects.
Hazardous litigation.
Litigators know that emotions can run high during often contentious dealings between parties. Things can get bad — even hazardous and sometimes perilous and not only in family law cases. Truth be known, though, along with criminal law, family law remains one of the more dangerous practice areas.
In 2011, for example, and tragically — on the same day he had planned to retire, 62-year old Yuma, Arizona criminal defense and family law attorney Jerrold “Jerry” Shelley lost his life in his own office at the hands of a client’s ex-husband. Police said Shelley’s killer was also responsible for five other fatal shootings in and around the city the same day.
Ethical rule exception.
In the face of such dangers, lawyer ethical rules carve out exceptions to the well-established strict lawyer-mandate that requires lawyers to preserve client confidences until death.
Under ABA Model Rule of Professional Conduct 1.6: Confidentiality of Information, disclosure is permitted by paragraph (b), which states. “A lawyer may reveal information relating to the representation of a client to the extent the lawyer reasonably believes necessary: (1) to prevent reasonably certain death or substantial bodily harm.”
Rule 1.6 Comment [6] explains the underlying rationale for Rule 1.6(b)(1) and that is, it “Paragraph (b)(1) recognizes the overriding value of life and physical integrity and permits disclosure reasonably necessary to prevent reasonably certain death or substantial bodily harm. Such harm is reasonably certain to occur if it will be suffered imminently or if there is a present and substantial threat that a person will suffer such harm at a later date if the lawyer fails to take action necessary to eliminate the threat.”
Arizona differs materially from the ABA Model Rule, going a couple of important steps further, Comment [6] to AZ-ER 1.6(b) states “the reasonably foreseen death need not be “imminent,” as required by ABA Model Rule 1.6(b)(1). Subject to the caveats for disclosure set out by AZ-ER 1.6(b), disclosure by the lawyer of otherwise protected information is mandatory, rather than discretionary as under ABA Model Rule 1.6(b)(1).
Sadly, one can only now wonder whether or not it might have made a difference if suspected shooter Arthur Harmon hadnot been self-represented. What if he’d had a lawyer to represent him?
Could a lawyer have contained a high conflict client? Or at least — foreseen the possibility of a substantial threat and alerted authorities “to take action necessary to eliminate the threat”?
Photo Credits: “White Lily,” by Wylie-Young at Flickr, via Creative Commons-licensed content requiring attribution; “Bite the Bullet,” by Richard Elzey at Flickr, via Creative Commons-licensed content requiring attribution.
We live in a time where scandals are routine — chattered about and even celebrated. Larger-than-life ‘heroes’ so much as devolve into what the belatedly contrite Lance Armstrong calls himself — “that arrogant prick.” Or they’re molded into the stuff of deified delusional fabulists as apparently the case of Notre Dame star linebacker Manti Te’o and his made-up girlfriend who ‘died.’
So what if our ‘heroes’ have“no spur to prick the sides of [their] intent.”What they do have in abundance is ego and “vaulting ambition” along with the corresponding feet and hearts of clay.
It wasn’t that long ago when an unrelated Minneapolis, Minnesota law firm, Nilan Johnson Lewis, posed the question, “How many lawyers does it take to change a light bulb? It was a query which, unfortunately for the law firm’s marketeers, also recalled a bad old joke, “How many lawyers does it take to screw in a light bulb? To which the answer was, “Lawyers don’t screw in light bulbs; they screw their clients.”
In Lowe’s case, it was literal. Or so says an Order signed January 10, 2013 concerning “In re Petition for Disciplinary Action against Thomas P. Lowe, a Minnesota Attorney,” and wherein the Minnesota Supreme Court ordered that Thomas Lowe be suspended for a minimum of 15 months.
Lowe unconditionally admitted to committing “professional misconduct, namely, engaging in a sexual relationship with a vulnerable client and billing the client for meetings in which they engaged in sexual relations . . . .” Lowe’s actions violated Minnesota Rule of Professional Conduct 1.5 concerning reasonableness of fees as well as two rules governing conflicts of interest, Rule 1.7 and Rule 1.8.
That’s not to say, however, that even in Texas, there still mightn’t have been a conflict of interest or an argument that a lawyer Lothario’s fees were unreasonable.
Photo Credits:”Lance Armstrong in Yellow – Nevada City Bike Race,” by John Trefethen, Trefethen, at Flickr via Creative Commons-licensed content requiring attribution;”Chinese Art,” byIvanWalsh.com at Flickr via Creative Commons-licensed content requiring attribution; “Thomas P. Lowe,” at Facebook, via Gawker.
Given the abysmal job market for lawyers, the smart money advice remains the same. To maximize chances at post-graduation law firm employment, get your glutes into one of the nation’s top-ranked law schools and then work like hell to graduate in the top 10%.
But it should also go without saying that while you’re doing that, you need to keep your head down, your nose clean and your proboscis proverbially burnished wholly by the curricular grindstone. In other words, don’t screw around, which means most of all, don’t do anything criminal so as to jeopardize your hard-won matriculation — let alone the state bar’s moral character requirement for admission to practice law.
So with the obligatory caveat of granting the accused their day in court and their presumption of innocence, here come Eric Cuellar and Justin Teixeira — two students at the University of California–Berkeley Law School, the country’s seventh highest ranked law school. The two 24-year-olds have been charged in Las Vegas, Nevada with beheading an exotic bird in a Las Vegas Casino. To be precise, the hapless fowl in question, which police say the two men killed and decapitated, was a helmeted guineafowl minding its own business at the Flamingo Hotel Casino’s Wildlife Habitat. So once again, what happens in Vegas, doesn’t always stay in Vegas, especially when police say they also have the alleged perps caught on tape.
Cooney was a 3-year-old shelter dog who was horribly tortured and killed by her owner, a monster named Raymond Rios, in a Reno motel room in October 2010. The tragedy galvanized animal advocates and legislators to toughen Nevada’s previously weak law, which according to the Animal Legal Defense Fund,“Before “Cooney’s Law,” Nevada was the only state in the country where someone could torture an animal to death on three separate occasions before they would face a felony animal cruelty charge.”
Nevada’s tardiness in making malicious and willful animal cruelty a felony punishable by a maximum five-year prison sentence and a $10,000 fine, was too late to sufficiently punish Raymond Rios for killing Cooney — but it will be just in time to mete out justice if Cuellar and Teixwira are convicted. See NRS 574.100.
Perched on high in air so rarefied the real economy doesn’t incongruously offend the pure oxygenated respiration provided by his laissez-faire advocating employer, the Goldwater Institute’sClint Bolick looks down his chin at the lawyer polloi and gushes how he “would love to see the entire UPL regime disappear.”
Bolick believes in doing away with any pesky remaining impositions on the unauthorized practice of law so that non-lawyers can dispense even more legal services in Arizona. Libertarian free-marketer and all that, he believes it would be a good thing. And unlike Oliver Twist, he’s neither shy or unabashed about wanting more of it.
And why shouldn’t Bolick want more legal services deregulation? When you’ve insulated yourself as he has from the concerns of solos and small firms who make up the majority of Arizona’s lawyers, it’s easy to overlook their entrepreneurial worries over such trifles as making expenses; facing competition; overcoming business downturns and generating revenues. Paraphrasing François de La Rochefoucauld’s famous maxim about having “strength enough to endure the misfortunes of others,”[i] in Bolick’s world, the easiest pain to bear is another lawyer’s.
So now that the Goldwater Institute has cornered the well-heeled and well-funded niche that purports to defend the economic freedoms of those they deem oppressed from those they deem accursed, Bolick pines for more deregulation of legal services while at the same time declaring how happy he is “to live in a state that recognizes that more choices lead to greater access to legal services.”
But has greater access translated into the delivery of “enormously valuable legal services to ordinary people at low cost” as Bolick maintains? Well, it might also depend on what you mean by “low cost”since some of the non-lawyers charge upwards of $100 per hour for their services. But I guess if you’re comparing yourself to one of those $1,000 per hour guys, then charging 1/10th of that must be a bargain — even if those high-priced swells did go to law school.
Solo lawyers, however, are a different subject. They’re not knocking down those kinds of bucks — not even close. In fact, I know some solos, for instance, who draft simple wills for about the same price as the document preparers who never saw the inside of a law school.
So without empirical data in support, Bolick’s argument that “the market is able to provide low-cost, high-quality paraprofessional services”serves only to recall what Mark Twain once wrote, “I am not one of those who in expressing opinions confine themselves to facts.”[ii]
Mama mia!
Deregulate the practice of law and lower consumer costs by increasing competition from non-lawyers? Who says? Have consumer costs really been lowered? And where are the empirical assurances that minimum competency requirements have been met and are continuing to be met?
Deregulation is not a new idea. But if taken to its logical consummation, it would undercut the legal academy and legal cartel’s raison d’être. Indeed, last year, two like-minded think tankers while opining about how more jobs and lower prices would be the end result from deregulating the provision of legal services,[iii] belittled the need for law schools and bar exams.[iv] “Every other U.S. industry that has been deregulated, from trucking to telephones, has lowered prices for consumers without sacrificing quality,”[v] they further proclaimed.
But unfortunately for their argument, we already know how well deregulation has worked before — for air transportation and electric utility customers, for example. And of course we’re still bent over the chair suffering the burdens visited upon us by the “Mama Mia” of all screw-ups, the deregulated financial markets that triggered the worst global financial crisis since the Great Depression.
No, the truth is that the facts on the ground are much different. Never mind that Bolick scoffs at the “hundreds of bar complaints”against legal document preparers — because they came from his peers — as though a lawyer’s ethical duty of candor and truthfulness is trumped by informing against a competitor.[vi]
Or is a lawyer’s action in compliance with Arizona Ethical Rule 8.3’s duty to report professional misconduct involving other lawyers or judges[vii] also to be accorded similar discredit?
The reality is that lawyers who have tried to repair the incompetent delivery of services provided by legal document preparers don’t have to conjure up a parade of horribles to make the case that consumers aren’t being protected “by choice, competition, transparency, and the enforcement of fiduciary relationships.”
Crisis in the profession.
Moreover, the legal environment is in the throes of radical transformation, thanks in large part to the economic recession; globalized outsourcing of legal services; and the increased digital delivery of online legal services via such providers as LegalZoom, RocketLawyer, JustAnswer, LawBidding, Law Pivot and MyLawyer.com. Not to mention the job-eliminating efficiencies of predictive coding used to perform technology-assisted document review in complex litigation.[viii]
The other reality is that there is a glut of lawyers and that there are fewer jobs for them. And so there is a fundamental restructuring taking place in the delivery of legal services. Adapt or perish. The landscape is being transformed. And with the bankruptcy, for example, of the storied firm of Dewey & LeBoeuf, the end of the old law firm business model is also nigh.
Irrespective of the crisis-deniers in the legal academy, the story is out. This past March, for instance, even the ABA Journal featured a Paradigm Shift Series, to show “how traditional U.S. legal education paradigms, driven by federal loan underwriting, are not responding to the market forces as law schools continue to add students and raise tuition rates in a mature legal services industry.”[ix]
Indeed, facing external pressures over allegations of having supposedly condoned misleading law school post-graduation employment numbers, this past summer, the American Bar Association finally clarified the grim nationwide post-graduation employment picture for law school graduates. It is worse than previously thought.
Jobless and indebted.
Only 55% of the class of 2011 had full-time, long-term jobs that required a law degree nine months after graduation. This past July, the New York Timeseditorialized, “These numbers are far worse than jobs data going back a generation and should be a deep embarrassment to law schools, which have been churning out more graduates than the economy can employ, indulging themselves in copious revenues that higher tuitions and bigger classes bring in. A growing list of deans acknowledge that legal education is facing an existential crisis . . . .”[x]
Back breaking tuition increases, which over the past 20 years have outstripped the inflation rate[xi], have escalated so much at both private and public law schools that according to a recent Pew Research Study reported by the Los Angeles Times,“the share of American households affected by student debt has more than doubled in the last two decades, soaring from 9% in 1989 to a record of nearly one in five in 2010.”[xii]
And according to the previously mentioned New York Times Op-ed, “As tuition has soared, so has student debt. Nearly 9 out of 10 graduates have sizable debt, with $98,500 the average for the class of 2010, about $1,200 a month in loan payments over 10 years. Most schools and many students have banked on students’ being able to pay back enormous loans with ample salaries, but that flawed model is irretrievably broken.”[xiii]
A ‘Golden Age’ for consumers?
So here’s the rub, Bolick’s unsupported paean to deregulation Utopia notwithstanding, with so many underemployed and unemployed lawyers, the excess capacity ought to be driving down prices and increasing competition — without opening the non-lawyer floodgates further. We should be on the brink of a golden age for consumers even now.
The laws of supply and demand should be operative in the face of a glut of supply; of ascendant multi-jurisdictional practice; and of relentless advances in technology. But that’s not the case — not when jobless young lawyers are saddled with six-figure nondischargeable tuition debtand lack the timely ability to pay it back.
So at the intersection of Bolick’s deregulation fantasy, the more reasonable debate ought to be not about how to allow even more “paraprofessionals” to engage in what for all intents and purposes, (mandatory disclaimers notwithstanding), looks like, swims like, and quacks like a law-practicing duck.
No, the better debate should be — what to do about all those trained, credentialed and available young lawyers. And parenthetically, we should be asking how to lead the transformation occurring in the practice of law. Will it require, as law professor Paul Campos suggests, fewer law schools and the “return to the faculty student ratios and faculty compensation structures of three decades ago”?
Or will it mean an even more radical revolution in the way lawyers are educated; in how they finance and pay for a legal education; and finally by a legal establishment that at long last decides to truly adopt and not dodge a model definition of the practice of law?
And instead of more deregulatory pipe dreams, how about a model definition of the practice of law based on a narrow definition that provides greater assurances of competence in the delivery of legal services to consumers.[xiv]
[i] François, duc de La Rochefoucauld. The Moral Maxims and Reflections of the Duke de la Rochefoucauld, 2nd ed. London: Methuen & Co. Ltd., 1912.
[ii] Mark Twain, What Is Man?, The Complete Essays of Mark Twain. Ed. Charles Neider. New York: Da Capo Press, 1991. But even more on point may be the other famous quote long attributed to Twain, “Never let the facts get in the way of a good story.”
[vi] Ironically, notwithstanding Bolick’s implication that lawyers ought to be disqualified from complaining about nonlawyer document preparers, his hymn to a deregulated Eden finds possible support thanks to an apparent absence of consumer complaints in Arizona. The American Bar Association, Standing Committee on Client Protection, 2012 SURVEY OF UNLICENSED PRACTICE OF LAW COMMITTEES, Chart III, was blank for Arizona’s response to the survey query: “Has Your jurisdiction received complaints re: nonlawyer providers? (Describe).” But before popping the champagne cork, also see List of Revoked and Suspended Certifications.
[vii]Rules of Professional Conduct, Arizona State Bar Website, 8. Maintaining the Integrity of the Profession, ER 8.3. Reporting Professional Misconduct, (a) A lawyer who knows that another lawyer has committed a violation of the Rules of Professional Conduct that raises a substantial question as to that lawyer’s honesty, trustworthiness or fitness as a lawyer in other respects, shall inform the appropriate professional authority, except as otherwise provided in these Rules or by law. (b) A lawyer who knows that a judge has committed a violation of applicable rules of judicial conduct that raises a substantial question as to the judge’s fitness for office shall inform the appropriate authority. http://www.azbar.org/Ethics/RulesofProfessionalConduct/ViewRule?id=60 (last visited October 1, 2012).
Photo Credits: “Mark Twain,” in public domain via Wikipedia; “Possible plumber,” by Tony Alter, Tobyotter, at Flickr via Creative Commons-licensed content requiring attribution; Illustration de ma mère l’Oye, par Gustave Doré, public domain via Wikipedia; Kongen av eventyrland / The King of Fairy Tale Land, by National Library of Norway at Flickr via Creative Commons-licensed content requiring attribution.
My irreverent contribution to the Albany Law Review, however, was merely an extended riff on what I’ve blogged about before as I critiqued among other things, the smug triumphalism of judicial retention elections and the below-the-radar judicial job security known as “lifetime tenure-light.”
‘Cracking’ wise.
So as I note in my article how the ideal of judicial independence remains preferentially ascendant with the legal establishment, it’s a good thing that every once in a while — the other equally important but oft-subordinated virtue — judicial accountability — finds a momentary albeit informal expression in the hoi polloi’s public eye.
First among the week’s judicial smackdowns was that involving Northern California U.S. District Court Judge Lucy H. Koh who is unquestionably familiar with the Code of Conduct for United States Judges and how it’s probably not O.K. to verbally ball-peen counsel for one of the litigants with the following caustic slapdown: “I mean, come on. Seventy-five pages! Seventy-five pages! You want me to do an order on 75 pages, (and) unless you’re smoking crack, you know these witnesses aren’t going to be called when you have less than four hours.”
But then it does seem that, of late, that a certain part of the Code is sometimes overlooked — the section that urges judges to “be patient, dignified, respectful, and courteous to litigants, jurors, witnesses, lawyers, and others with whom the judge deals in an official capacity.”
Yet doubtless, for every trial lawyer frustrated by the antics of opposing counsel, Judge Koh’s reproach was savored with approval. There was blogger Robert Farley at Lawyers, Guns & Money who sardonically asked “You mean this morning, or generally?” and insinuated atta-girl approval writing “When judges stop being polite and start getting real.” For the record, the Apple lawyer at the receiving end of the judicial outburst denied he was smoking crack.
More specifically, the good judge said that if reelected, President Obama was “going to try to hand over the sovereignty of the United States to the U.N. Okay, what’s going to happen when that happens? I’m thinking worst case scenario here. Civil unrest, civil disobedience, civil war maybe. We’re not just talking a few riots here and demonstrations. We’re talking Lexington-Concord take up arms and get rid of the guy.” Now there’s a jurist willing to go that extra injudicious mile farther than Montana U.S. District Chief Judge Richard Cebullwhen it comes to demeaning the current occupant of the Oval Office.
And then there was that other judge, coincidentally also from Texas, Brazos County Precinct 1 Justice of the Peace Michael McCleary. Judge McCleary got into his own hot water for his angry remarks made to the local press about Thomas Caffall III and his family. Caffall was involved in a deadly shootout near Texas A&M campus that left 3 dead and 4 injured. He died Aug. 13 after being shot several times by authorities responding to the shooting.
With respect to the post-autopsy remains, Judge McCleary said, “I’m not going to let the county be out the expense of going and picking up his nasty-ass body. If it cost us $200 to go pick him up, I’m not going to pay for it. The family can take care of that. I have no sympathy for him or the family.”
Photo Credits: “Snap Suplex,” by Hugo Fernandes, at Flickr via Creative Commons-licensed content requiring attribution; “Stirling Fair 2010_3037,” by Robert Taylor, Bobolink, at Flickr via Creative Commons-licensed content requiring attribution.
“Once more unto the breach” — even at the risk of boring non-lawyer readers. An updated post of free online continuing legal education follows.
And for the uninitiated, I will keep posting free online CLE resources so long as it remains my sardonic opinion that the real reason some if not all bar associations continue mandating continuing legal education is to ensure cash cow money-making revenue. And oh yes, there is that pretextual public relations reason to protect consumers from incompetent lawyers. (Kudos Kentucky Bar Association for offering every member the opportunity to meet their annual CLE requirement, including ethics, close to home and with no registration fee through their “Kentucky Law Update” program).
Any wonder that so many lawyers, especially those young legions of the heavily-indebted and the out-of-work keep hunting for free CLE? “Free” always trumps $150 for a webcast hour.
But beware of that other CLE: the “Career Limiting Event.”
But before getting to that updated online freebie list, it’s worthwhile mentioning that the acronym, “CLE,” every now and then means something else, as in “Career Limiting Event.”
As an ethical refresher for every lawyer at a live continuing legal education class who zones out in the midst of pompous prattle or who checks fantasy football scores on their smartphone during sleep-inducing Powerpoint, Ethical Rule 8.4: Misconduct says it’s “professional misconduct for a lawyer to:“(c) engage in conduct involving dishonesty, fraud, deceit or misrepresentation” and “(d) engage in conduct that is prejudicial to the administration of justice.”Said another way, if you’re going to certify you took a course, it may be “misrepresentation” to claim you took part — if you didn’t pay attention.
More specifically, according to the Illinois State Bar Association, the longtime lawyer “falsely reported to the Minimum Continuing Legal Education Board of the Supreme Court of Illinois that he had completed 20 hours of continuing legal education activity during the 2007 to 2009 reporting period. In fact, he had enrolled to take only 19.25 hours of CLE work and his secretary . . . completed some of the online CLE classes [the lawyer] claimed to have completed.”
Forewarned.
Sure that’s a noteworthy cautionary tale but I doubt any of the perspicacious lawyers reading this blog and accessing free online CLE would ever deign to leave laptops unattended and walk away in the middle of a still playing online program.
Nor is it easy to believe these astute lawyers would dare relinquish ethical responsibilities to anyone else. Still, better forewarned and forearmed.
The updated online free continuing legal education list follows along with the usual disclaimers concerning continued accessibility, content or whether your jurisdiction accepts any of these programs for credit.
I also mean no reproaches on the philanthropic providers of these freebie programs. However, I will again cast a disparaging word upon a certain ungrateful lawyer with the stones to complain about something for nothing.
Future of Primary Care: The Changing Role of the Primary Care Provider -20111117 1800-1
Listen to and watch this webinar held November 17, 2011 for an introduction of “evidence on the role of nurse practitioners as primary care providers . . . issues of quality, cost and access . . . the current differences of related state laws. You may qualify for CLE credit.”
~ The Supreme Court’s Decision on the Constitutionality of the ACA-20120719 1650-1
Listen to and watch the webinar held July 19, 2012 concerning the Supreme Court’s decision and its implications for the Affordable Care Act’s reforms to the individual insurance market, the Medicaid expansion, and the future of the ACA’s public health-related provisions and accompanying federal funding. Depending on jurisdiction, may qualify for CLE credit.
~ Data Surveillance and Data Exchange: A Tool for Comparative Effectiveness-20120517 1659-1
Listen to and watch the webinar held May 17, 2012 providing an overview of “recent developments regarding data exchange and surveillance, explore the inherent privacy issues associated with data exchange and data surveillance and discuss using data exchange and data surveillance as a tool for comparative effectiveness.”
From Attorneys Dell & Schaefer, Chartered, “We invite you to sign up for our free online CLE course. This CLE course was created by Disability Attorneys Dell & Schaefer and is titled ‘Introduction to Disability Insurance Claims and ERISA Law.’ The course is comprised of multiple videos totaling 255 minutes (between 4.25 to 5 CLE credits depending on your state).”
From the University of Minnesota’s Consortium on Law and Values in Health, Environment & the Life Sciences. View Video Online. “Continuing Legal Education credit (CLE) has been approved (1.5 hours).“
Along with several other jurisdictions, the Florida Bar has accredited up to 8.5 hours of CLE for “Treating the Invisible Wounds of War” (IWW) online training course. Go to “New Users” tab at www.aheconnect.com/citizensoldier to access the course and the registration form on the site.
“This course provides attorneys with a basic and pragmatic understanding of the requirements of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and how it relates to working with deaf, hard of hearing and deaf/blind clients.”
Photo Credits: “Bored,” by scragz, Jason Scragz, at Flickr via Creative Commons-licensed content requiring attribution;”Blogger at breakfast after Eglon van der Neer,” by Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com at Flickr via Creative Commons-licensed content requiring attribution; “punctelia at work,” by owlmonkey at Flickr via Creative Commons-licensed content requiring attribution.
Last December, in blogging about how to “get your money’s worth when talking to a lawyer,”I opined that “Consumers make appointments to see lawyers because they want advice about a legal issue or problem .. . not . . . because they want the lawyer to explain how the representation is going to proceed.”
In particular, I took issue with a young lawyer who viewed initial client consultations as get-acquainted sessions. And notwithstanding that clients paid $200 for this ‘greet & meet’ — the lawyer made no bones about not dispensing any legal advice at that initial meeting. One wonders how happy the still uninformed clients are after their billfolds are $200 lighter post-preliminary consultation.
Booker’s prior claim to fame had been helping delinquent utility customers avoid power disconnection by filing voluntary debt amortization plans called Chapter 128 petitions. The tactic had been successful up until last year when Milwaukee County Circuit Judge William Pocan said the utility wasn’t actually required under Chapter 128 to abstain from pulling the collective plugs on petitioners’ power. Disconnection was not an “execution, attachment or garnishment” specifically prohibited by the 50-year old Wisconsin statute. » Read Full Article
What’s instead making headlines now isn’t the matter of those petitions. It’s whether or not Booker’s so-called pre-bankruptcy ‘situation suitability analysis’ didn’t confuse some clients into thinking they had lawyered up with a full-blown representation in bankruptcy court.
In his defense, Booker says he told his ‘situation suitability analysis’ clients that his legal services were à la carte, i.e., limited. Nevertheless, the Eastern District of Wisconsin Bankruptcy Court has taken notice of the purported client confusion and has ordered hearings to further its inquiries. The Court is looking at Booker’s client representations since it appears that some of his clients have now claimed they thought they’d hired themselves a lawyer to handle the whole bankruptcy enchilada and not just a needs assessment. Client refunds may be ordered.
In Arizona, Ethical Rule 1.2 (c) says that “A lawyer may limit the scope of the representation if the limitation is reasonable under the circumstances and the client gives informed consent.”
Otherwise, if a lawyer isn’t careful, some clients will misunderstand or become confused about the nature and extent of the representation. And before you know it, presto, change-oh, you’re doing the “full Monty.”
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Credits: “The Flasher, with trenchcoat open,” by sylvar at Flickr via Creative Commons-licensed content requiring attribution.
It was hardly a lightning bolt of surprise. As anticipated by everyone who’s paid attention, save the totally delusional, the Arizona State Bar and the legal establishment got its scalps this morning when Presiding Disciplinary Judge William O’Neil handed down the Order – - – a unanimous decision of the three-member disciplinary panel – - – disbarring former Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas and his former deputy Lisa Aubuchon, both effective May 10, 2012.
The other ex-deputy, Rachel Alexander, received a suspension of 6 months plus one day, which means she will have to reapply for reinstatement. Alexander’s suspension also goes into effect May 10, 2012.
The threesome had faced allegations of having committed as many as 33 ethical violations. Thomas had been implicated in 30 of the charges, Aubuchon in 28, and Alexander in seven. But the Court did not find violations in every instance.
Concerning the most serious charges involving their purported actions directed against Judge Gary Donahoe, such as acting without sufficient probable cause, conflicts of interest and of charging the judge with crimes “solely to compel his recusal,” by clear and convincing evidence, Thomas and Aubuchon were found to have violated the ethical rules. Also see “Feud with Maricopa County Superior Court judges.”
If any of the three decide to appeal to the Arizona Supreme Court, they would have to do so within 10 days.
As the gavel fell ending the proceeding, most of the audience burst into applause.
But in any event, as in most U.S. jurisdictions, disbarment isn’t permanent – not even in Arizona. After five years, a disbarred Arizona lawyer can retake the Bar exam and apply for reinstatement assuming there’s been evidence of rehabilitation. (I last blogged about the Andrew Thomas case in October).
Casablanca — a story about a man caught between love and virtue came to mind this week after reading that law firm client Adam Victor had sued his lawyers over an allegedly inflated legal bill.
Interestingly, in the original play upon which the film was based, “Everybody Comes to Rick’s,” nightclub owner Rick Blaine was a lawyer. Always — with the lawyer.
Take DLA Piper lawyer Christopher Thomson’s email, which said of a colleague working on Victor’s bill, “Now Vince has random people working full time on random research projects in standard ‘churn that bill, baby!’ mode. That bill shall know no limits.” Oy vey!
To which the DLA Piper/Victor fee dispute unsurprisingly leads, it’s the question begged by Forrest Wickman, a.k.a. the Explainer at Slate Magazine, who asks, “When did lawyers get such a bad reputation?” 
Sex and an invoice.
Given the abysmal job market for lawyers, the smart money advice remains the same. To maximize chances at post-graduation law firm employment, get your glutes into one of the nation’s top-ranked law schools and then work like hell to graduate in the top 10%.
Perched on high in air so rarefied the real economy doesn’t incongruously offend the pure oxygenated respiration provided by his laissez-faire advocating employer, the 
And why shouldn’t Bolick want more legal services deregulation? When you’ve insulated yourself as he has from the concerns of solos and small firms who make up the majority of Arizona’s lawyers, it’s easy to overlook their entrepreneurial worries over such trifles as making expenses; facing competition; overcoming business downturns and generating revenues. Paraphrasing François de La Rochefoucauld’s famous maxim about having “strength enough to endure the misfortunes of others,”
Last December, in blogging about how to “
It was hardly a 
More judicial smackdowns the week of my Albany Law Review article.
Posted in Law, Legal ethics., On Judges, tagged Code of Conduct U.S. Judges, Guns & Money, Judge Lucy H. Koh, Judge Michael McCleary, Judge Tom Head, judicial retention elections, Lawyers, lifetime tenure-light, State Constitutional Commentary - Albany Law School, Thomas Caffall on August 27, 2012 | Leave a Comment »
My irreverent contribution to the Albany Law Review, however, was merely an extended riff on what I’ve blogged about before as I critiqued among other things, the smug triumphalism of judicial retention elections and the below-the-radar judicial job security known as “lifetime tenure-light.”
‘Cracking’ wise.
So as I note in my article how the ideal of judicial independence remains preferentially ascendant with the legal establishment, it’s a good thing that every once in a while — the other equally important but oft-subordinated virtue — judicial accountability — finds a momentary albeit informal expression in the hoi polloi’s public eye.
First among the week’s judicial smackdowns was that involving Northern California U.S. District Court Judge Lucy H. Koh who is unquestionably familiar with the Code of Conduct for United States Judges and how it’s probably not O.K. to verbally ball-peen counsel for one of the litigants with the following caustic slapdown: “I mean, come on. Seventy-five pages! Seventy-five pages! You want me to do an order on 75 pages, (and) unless you’re smoking crack, you know these witnesses aren’t going to be called when you have less than four hours.”
But then it does seem that, of late, that a certain part of the Code is sometimes overlooked — the section that urges judges to “be patient, dignified, respectful, and courteous to litigants, jurors, witnesses, lawyers, and others with whom the judge deals in an official capacity.”
Lexington-Concord? Civil War?
Not to be outdone — at least at the state level, there were a couple of jurists who also gained national notoriety last week for their own intemperate utterances. One was County Judge Tom Head from Lubbock, Texas who told Fox 34 News that ‘Obama’s Re-election Could Prompt a UN Takeover, Civil War.’
More specifically, the good judge said that if reelected, President Obama was “going to try to hand over the sovereignty of the United States to the U.N. Okay, what’s going to happen when that happens? I’m thinking worst case scenario here. Civil unrest, civil disobedience, civil war maybe. We’re not just talking a few riots here and demonstrations. We’re talking Lexington-Concord take up arms and get rid of the guy.” Now there’s a jurist willing to go that extra injudicious mile farther than Montana U.S. District Chief Judge Richard Cebull when it comes to demeaning the current occupant of the Oval Office.
And then there was that other judge, coincidentally also from Texas, Brazos County Precinct 1 Justice of the Peace Michael McCleary. Judge McCleary got into his own hot water for his angry remarks made to the local press about Thomas Caffall III and his family. Caffall was involved in a deadly shootout near Texas A&M campus that left 3 dead and 4 injured. He died Aug. 13 after being shot several times by authorities responding to the shooting.
With respect to the post-autopsy remains, Judge McCleary said, “I’m not going to let the county be out the expense of going and picking up his nasty-ass body. If it cost us $200 to go pick him up, I’m not going to pay for it. The family can take care of that. I have no sympathy for him or the family.”
Later, thinking better of it and to his credit, the Justice of Peace took out a newspaper ad to apologize for his harsh words.
Yet elsewhere, I have no doubt the beat will go on.
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Photo Credits: “Snap Suplex,” by Hugo Fernandes, at Flickr via Creative Commons-licensed content requiring attribution; “Stirling Fair 2010_3037,” by Robert Taylor, Bobolink, at Flickr via Creative Commons-licensed content requiring attribution.
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