LER No. 62 - Lawyers & Cannabis, Judges & Social Media, Firms & Money Laundering, Liability for Third-Party Vendors, and More (10.28.24)
The Legal Ethics Roundup - your Monday morning tour of all things related to lawyer and judicial ethics with University of Houston law professor Renee Knake Jefferson
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Thank you for being here. Welcome to what captivates, haunts, inspires, and surprises me every week in the world of legal ethics.
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Highlights from Last Week - Top Ten Headlines
#1 Lawyering and the Election. From the Wall Street Journal: “Election-law veterans said it is unlikely that litigation will determine the outcome of the presidential race and other contests, but said lawyering nevertheless can play an important role.” Read more here.
#2 GA Proposed Ethics Opinion Puts Burden of Misconduct by Third-Party Vendors on Lawyers. From Law360: “A board for the State Bar of Georgia has said in a proposed ethics option that lawyers could be on the hook for the alleged misconduct of third-party vendors they use to request documents from a nonparty, such as medical records or bills.” Read more here.
#3 The Ethics of Cannabis Use by Lawyers. From Bloomberg Law: “As more states legalize cannabis for medical or adult use, more people are going to use cannabis—including lawyers. According to recent survey results by Bloomberg Law, over half of attorneys aged 25 to 34 have tried it already. Generational differences in cannabis use by attorneys reveal how quickly attitudes towards it have changed over the past 30 years, even within prestigious fields like the law.” Read more here.
#4 Lawyers Must “Color Inside the Lines.” From the Daily Montanan: “A Commission on Practice adjudication panel on Wednesday unanimously recommended that the Montana Supreme Court suspend Attorney General Austin Knudsen from practicing law for 90 days because of multiple rule violations he committed during his representation of the Legislature in 2021. The recommendation came two weeks after Knudsen faced a two-day disciplinary hearing before the commission in which the Office of Disciplinary Counsel outlined why it had charged Knudsen in a 41-count complaint alleging attorney misconduct, while his attorneys tried to show that Knudsen had made or signed off on certain statements only in his rigorous defense of the Legislature. ‘Attorneys are not engaged in trial by combat, and are constrained to “color inside the lines,”’ the five-member panel wrote in the unanimous decision. ‘To require the minimum of common professional courtesy required by the rules costs the parties nothing of substance, and preserves the integrity of the justice system which is the foundation for the Rule of Law that serves everyone.’” Read more here.
#5 Discipline for Judges on Social Media. From Newsweek: “Two judges have been suspended for social media posts as ethics panels continue to crack down on online content. On October 7, Pennsylvania's Court of Judicial Discipline ruled that the case of Judge Mark Cohen was the worst case of defiance they had ever seen after he refused to stop posting political comments. … The court referenced the previous case of Justice Michael Eakin, who resigned from the Pennsylvania Supreme Court in 2016 after sharing sexually explicit jokes with friends and lawyers through emails and texts In the same week in New Jersey, Bergen County Superior Court Judge Gary Wilcox was suspended for three months for TikTok videos in which he lip-synced songs with ‘references to violence, sex, and misogyny,’ according to an ethics complaint against him.” Read more here.
#6 Law Firm Liability For Money Laundering Non-Compliance. From the Law Society Gazette: “A UK-based law firm, Tedstone George & Tedstone Solicitors, has been fined £13,000 by the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) following an inspection that revealed widespread non-compliance with anti-money laundering (AML) regulations. The SRA team conducted a review of 11 client files at the Stafford firm last year, finding that none of the files met all AML requirements.” Read more here.
#7 ME Supreme Court Justice Sanctioned Over Conflict. From the Portland Press Herald: “In a rare move, a judicial review committee is recommending that a Maine Supreme Judicial Court justice be sanctioned after she did not recuse herself from a major foreclosure case this year that posed a conflict of interest. The state’s Committee on Judicial Conduct said Justice Catherine Connors violated the Maine Code of Judicial Conduct by participating in two cases that overturned recent precedent and weakened protections for homeowners struggling to make mortgage payments. Connors, a former attorney, has a long history of representing banks and filed briefs representing banks and banking interests in the precedent-setting cases.” Read more here.
#8 “You Give Up A Lot To Work For The Federal Judiciary.” From Aliza Shatzman (Legal Accountability Project) in Above the Law: “In most workplaces, if you are sexually harassed, your first course of action is to seek assistance from Human Resources. If that fails, you can assert your right to a safe workplace, free from discrimination and harassment, under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. But the antidiscrimination laws that apply to the rest of us, do not apply to more than 30,000 employees of the federal judiciary, including law clerks and public defenders. The judiciary would prefer you not dwell on that, since it might give some applicants pause before applying for federal clerkships.” Read more here.
#9 NC Judicial Election Ethics. From the News & Observer: “After a Republican lawmaker filed a confidential ethics complaint against Supreme Court Justice Allison Riggs, a Democrat running to keep her seat on the state’s high court, her Republican opponent began running ads saying she was ‘under investigation’ for her own ads attacking him on abortion. Now, both sides are scrutinizing the other over what they see as potential unethical behavior, ranging from breached confidentiality to improper public statements.” Read more here.
#10 “Once Again: The Complaint Against Judge Newman Should Not Be Adjudicated by Her Federal Circuit Colleagues.” From Fix the Court: “Now onto the ongoing complaint against Judge Pauline Newman of the Federal Circuit. We are now in the second year of cases not being assigned to her in large part because Newman has refused to take a medical exam conducted by a neutral medical professional prescribed by the chief judge of the circuit. Newman believes she is being targeted by the chief judge over certain judicial disagreements and that despite her age (97), she is as lucid as ever.” Read more here.
Looking for the rest of the regular Roundup? Revisit the fall “Welcome Back Edition” for an explanation of the new format. And keep an eye out for next week’s “First Monday Edition” with reading recommendations, jobs, events, and much more.
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