Kids on civics

In this month's ABA Journal, there is an article titled, "Flunking Civics: Why America's Kids know so little."

I found this to be interesting timing, considering that Honorable Wallace B. Jefferson of the Texas Supreme Court spoke at my law school graduation on May 13th about this very subject. I found his remarks regarding the need to educate the youth and laypeople to be riveting. This is a topic I often discuss amongst my friends and family, and a topic that requires attention.



**Please note that this blog will undergo some revamping, and I am considering starting a new blog to cover a more general discussion of law.

JD.

Congrats to all my fellow 3Ls from Michigan State University College of Law, and those at other law schools! We made it!

Chicago Bar Association Ethics event May 13th.

I know I sais I was going to be absent, but it's hard to stay away when there are so many important things happening in legal ethics land.

This event is right on point for what I have been researching for the past 4 months. Sadly, it is being held on the day I am graduating from law school. If anyone attends, I would love to hear the talking points of the presentation.

Blog thanks

So my blogging about legal ethics is "officially" done. But that doesn't mean I'm going anywhere. It just means I'll be blogging about all topics related to law, including legal ethics. This blog began as a project for a class (fun right?)

Who would have thought you could take such a fun class in law school? Well, you can at MSU Law and I did. The class is called "Topics in Professional Responsibility: The First Amendment and Regulation of Lawyers' Speech."

Frankly, I registered for this class because a) I needed a "paper" class to lighten my last semester 3L exam schedule, b) PR is interesting to me, and c) This same professor taught me PR and I felt in sync with her teaching-style.

But when I prepared for the first day of class, I noticed that the professor indicated on the syllabus that if you'd already completed your Upper Level Writing Requirement (I had), you could be a little more creative with your final paper than the standard 20-something page paper, with 200-something end notes, 12 point, Times New Roman font.

So I just wanted to take a moment to thank Professor Knake for allowing me to be more creative with my project. In addition, I would highly highly recommend that if you attend MSU Law to take Professor Knake for PR or any other class she may offer, because besides really having a passion for teaching, she treats students not as students but future lawyers, and colleagues. I can honestly say that I enjoyed taking both of her classes. (By the way-her Legal Ethics Blog can be found here).

I learned a great deal from this project. Aside from the substantive knowledge regarding lawyer regulation, I learned alot about networking and ALOT about blogging. Also, I feel as though this is a blog I can be proud of and fully intend on using it in future discussions with employers on what sort of impact law school had on me.

Absence

Please excuse my absence, while I try to get through my last 3 law school finals ever. (and by the way, this cartoon could not be more accurate. I lay out the factors of the Zelman Formal Neutrality test in my sleep. Including the proper usage of the Lemon test and Lemon-Agostini test as applied to government aid in religion. *yawn*)

Twitter is the future of America

Unrelated to the topic of legal ethics, but this article intrigued me. Social media is powerful. While twitter lags behind Facebook in users, it is my prediction that within the next 5 years, it will be the main source of news for Americans.

I have a personal twitter account, mostly for the networking potential. Last night, I was studying for law school finals when people started tweeting about how the president was going to address the nation at 10:30pm. Before I even had a chance to turn the television on (and, uh, find CNN on the channel lineup), people were already tweeting about how Osama was dead. There you go. Granted, I still turned on the television to watch the actual presidential address. However, while the tweeting was happening, I kept thinking about how if I had not been on twitter I would have missed a big important event in America.

Then this morning when I read the above article about the man who was live tweeting about the attack, it sealed the deal for me: For those that don't "get" twitter, this is it in a nutshell. It's what is going on each person's corner of the world, 140 characters at a time.

ABA Commission seeks comments on changes to MR 5.4 and 5.5

The ABA Commission on Ethics 20/20 seeks input on possible amendments to the alternative business structures rule (best known as Model Rule 5.4), and the practice of lawyers across borders (thus requiring a possible amendment to Model Rule 5.5).

Interestingly enough, Model Rule 5.4 is one that has been discussed often as having a strange result in the business context. It will be interesting to see what sort of comments are sent into the ABA. However, I have strong concerns for increasing conflict of interest under this rule.

The #1 rule of professional responsibility in the news

This lawyer broke the #1 rule of professional conduct: Don't have sex with your client.

*It is actually Model Rule 1.8, but, even a law student who sleeps through Professional Responsibility remembers this rule. It's also the rule that law students cite when attempting to explain to their family over Fall Break, that yes, lawyers are ethical, and yes, we have rules that we have to follow.

Apple customer sues over location

Today, in internet privacy news: Apple Customer sues over location.

Politicians' Free Speech rights and conflicts of interest rules

In First Amendment news:

Supreme Court considers whether First Amendment protects Politicians from ethics regulations. This is the second time that the United States Supreme Court has considered a Nevada Rule of Ethics.

Facebook used as a tool to collect evidence

Bank robber caught after posting on Facebook

Lawyers, where we're going we don't need lawyers....

At the ABA Techshow 2011, lawyers from across the country came together to discuss, among other things, the future of law practice as related to technology. Please go over to the ABA Journal to read a full article on the discussion. One area I wish to highlight, however, is Carolyn Elefant's discussion of websites such as lawpivot, which allow a person with a legal question to request information from attorneys over the internet.

The running theme under the umbrella of law and technology is that no one is really sure what rules of ethics apply over the internet. Lawpivot is just one more sight that opens up a large can of worms of questions: Is a lawyer client relationship created with each lawyer response? Are conflicts checks being run before the attorney opens the email? The "=How it works" section of the site does not contain disclaimers regarding lawyer-client relationships.

Putting aside the issues of relationship forming and client confidences, isn't crowdsourcing a legal question a very very bad pond to dip our feet in? Confession: I am currently a 3L about to graduate from law school, so my knowledge of the practice of law is limited to my classroom internship/externship/clerking experience. However, I can say with certainty that the practice of law is not an exact science. Isn't this technology forcing the (prospective?) client to decide what attorney he or she believes has the "right" answer? Therefore, isn't it the attorney's best interest to search for the answer that will undoubtedly win the client the most money? Isn't this perpetuating a more litigious society, rather than one that wishes to only bring suit when it is prudent to do so?

Just so we are keeping track, we now have potential violations of the following Model Rules:
1.6 (client confidences), 1.7 (Conflicts of interest: current clients), 1.9 (Conflicts of interest: Former clients), 3.1 (Meritorious Claims and Contentions)

It is my opinion that this is one example of how technology is hurting, rather than helping, the practice of law. (This leads me to a famous quote in Back to the Future, Part II: ‎"The justice system works swiftly in the future now that they've abolished all lawyers." What is the purpose of going to law school for 3 years, taking and passing the bar exam, being sworn in, and paying bar dues only to be a 'crowdsourcing' lawyer? Why even bother with licensing when you can crowdsource?)

Big government's influence on freedom of speech

At this year's ABA Techshow the subjects of the growing use of technology in the legal field was at forefront of the conference.

Here is an interesting video on the effects of the regulation of the Internet. The "effects" which hover over this regulation, of course, are First Amendment free speech issues. For the presenter, the

biggest policy problem concerning Internet regulation—whether it's music-sharing or the dissemination of diplomatic cables via Wiki Leaks—resides in the reality that wealthy campaign financiers, including record labels and copyright holders, can influence the government far greater than the average citizen.

Peeps in Law

Fun contest run by the ABA Vote for your favorite Peep diorama. Who said that lawyers are boring?

Lawyers who ignore social media=cavemen who refuse to hunt

The ABA Techshow was held on Monday, where co-presenters Robert Ambrogi and Reid Trautz shared tips on lawyers’ use of social media as a marketing tool. They also advised the audience to not “overreact about ethics rules. Follow the same etiquette for sharing (and common sense) that you would at a professional cocktail party.” I thought this was an interesting statement, seeing as there is great disagreement over the Internet on the role of ethical rules as applied to blogs. While new lawyers may, presumably, understand the inner-workings of social media better than those that have been in the profession for a substantial amount of time, it is still clear that no one knows what rules apply and what rules don’t apply. I will discuss later this week what changes I deem necessary to the ABA Model Rules.

US District Court says Kentucky Bar can restrict attorney speech

US District Court says Kentucky Bar can restrict attorney speech

Update on self-policing of lawyers

Here is a follow-up to this post. This entire debacle presents a further argument that attorney advertising on social media requires further regulation. However, based upon the blogger response, a lawyer blogger might argue that attorney regulation is not necessary due to the sort of ‘self-policing’ that takes place amongst the lawyer community.

Social media requires further self-policing of the profession

Brian Tannebaum's blog presents an interesting angle on lawyers and the use of social media. In this entry of his blog he calls out another lawyer blogger for being “naïve” when the lawyer blogger commented that it is rare for lawyer bloggers to represent themselves.

He also discusses how “futile and paternalistic” it is to call lawyer bloggers out on the inaccuracies of their statements. There are many things to discuss about Mr. Tannebaum’s statements.

1. Model Rule 8.3 requires lawyers to report other lawyers who they know have “[c]ommitted a violation of the Rules of Professional Conduct that raises a substantial question as to the lawyer’s honesty, trustworthiness, or fitness as a lawyer. . . .” Here, though, in most cases, the lawyer who fails to report would make the argument that they did not know the potentially unethical lawyer was committing an ethical violation. Rather, they had merely a strong suspicion.

2. Mr. Tannebaum strongly suggests (if not outright states) that lawyers who use marketing services are acting unethically by doing so. This is a subject I have discussed on several occasions on this blog. In short, the lawyers’ use of marketing tools to ‘sell’ themselves is, in my opinion, one of the best arguments for why the ABA needs to create strict requirements when it comes to lawyers’ use of social media.

3. Mr. Tannebaum strongly suggest that even if there is no outright ethical violation of lawyers’ use of social media, the lawyer’s actions force their reputations to take a hit. Said another way, a lawyer who uses social media walks a tightrope between making themselves available to the public and hurting their reputation. The fine line lies where the lawyer fails to accurately paint a portrait of their professional skills on social media. Therefore, even if there is no official ethical violation reported to the state bar, those who act unethically are being ‘punished’ via the self-policing of lawyers who suspect the statements are inaccurate. This policing comes in the form of being called out on fellow lawyers’ blogs.

4. Mr. Tannebaum also makes the statement that lying is common amongst lawyers who use social media. What is the value of this statement, though? Isn’t it pretty well assumed that lawyers lie? I think that even if this statement is true, it doesn’t take away from the fact that clients trust their lawyers to tell the truth to them. This further strengthens the point that social media needs to be regulated in the same, if not stricter, manner as other sources of media.

Social media makes us better lawyers

In yesterday's ABA Journal, this article, titled, "Has Social Media Tightened Your Writing Style?" discusses how the use of social media makes us better writers. Going one step further, since the very essence of the practice of law is writing, it also suggests that social media makes us better lawyers.

I would tend to agree with this statement. Social media has forced us to constantly think about word composition, sentence verb agreement, and most importantly conciseness. What it used to take us five paragraphs now only takes us one. Twitter only allows 140 characters at a time, and a facebook status is restricted to 421 characters.

I would take this a step further though: not only has social media made us better writers in the way that we write, but also in the manner that we write. This is especially important as lawyers. What used to be a tool only used by a few elite schools, facebook has become a platform for the interaction with friends, family, and just about any other person you've ever met. Many of us have had the scenario occur where an argument resulted over something that was said on facebook or other social media. Therefore, we learn to think before we "speak (type)." I think that, in turn, this causes us as lawyers to learn how to speak professionally on arenas that would not typically be thought as professional. This in turn leads to the ability of lawyers to communicate via email in a manner that is consistently more professional. As a result, social media could thus be thought of as a tool which makes us better lawyers.

Hiring a lawyer: Too personal of a choice for the internet

This article is a follow up onLawyer blogs: Man in suit on doorstep or flyer in mailbox? However, it raises an issue that I did not consider. This article indicates that only nine percent of people use blogs as a way to find a lawyer. Many of my previous blogs suggested that blogging is the ‘hot’ new way for lawyers to market themselves. (see this post) If this is really the case, there is a disconnect between lawyers who think this is how they should market their services, and the clients they are attempting to attract.

The article suggests the following as one of the reasons for this disconnect:

“[I]t is possible that the selection of a lawyer for a personal legal matter is simply too intimate a decision to come into play in the everyday use of social media.”

This is a provocative idea, albeit one that most of us have considered: even though the Internet, in 2011, essentially makes the world go round, people just can’t be trusted on the Internet. This idea also suggests that the entire discussion regarding the allowance of blogs by the ABA as advertising is moot. Put another way, maybe it’s not worth all the trouble of even figuring out what the rules are because blogs aren’t attracting lawyers anyways. When people hire a lawyer, they want someone they can trust, and there is a stigma of the Internet as an untrustworthy source. I would question, however, why blogs are any different than the yellow pages or newspapers.

Also, if this is really the reason why people aren’t looking at blogs, then why do Fourty-Four percent of people look at lawyer websites? I would suggest that it’s not that the decision of who to hire is not a personal decision, but maybe potential clients don’t actually believe what a lawyer says in their own words. Even though a website is presumably written in the lawyer’s own words, it’s more professional. Therefore, the increase in the lack of professionalism is, perhaps, something that the clients actually would consider before they hire a lawyer.

*The comments of this article suggest that the study was biased due to the population that was surveyed.