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Legal Ethics
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October 18, 2024
Law360 MVP Awards Go To Top Attys From 74 Firms
The attorneys chosen as Law360's 2024 MVPs have distinguished themselves from their peers by securing hard-earned successes in high-stakes litigation, complex global matters and record-breaking deals.
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October 18, 2024
Texas Federal Judge Owned Tesla Stock After Taking X Suit
A Texas federal judge overseeing a high-profile case between X Corp. and a media watchdog bought and sold shares of Elon Musk's automotive company Tesla the same year that X filed the suit, according to financial disclosure reports.
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October 18, 2024
9th Circ. Judge Doubts AI 'Robot Judges' Can Replace Jurists
Ninth Circuit Judge William Fletcher expressed skepticism Friday that artificially intelligent "robot judges" should replace jurists, saying during a conference on complex litigation ethics that judges understand how to creatively apply the law to best serve justice, and "I don't trust the AI system to break the law when it should."
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October 18, 2024
Jan. 6 Witness Said Trump Speech May Have Been 'Political'
Donald Trump's speech at a rally before the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol may have been "political" rather than in his official capacity as president, witness testimony unsealed Friday in his D.C. election interference case said.
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October 18, 2024
Judge Slams 'Lazy Lawyering' In Amazon Biometric Data Suit
The judge overseeing a proposed biometric privacy class action against Amazon Web Services Inc. in Delaware federal court chastised the plaintiffs' counsel for identically repleading a previously dismissed claim, calling the move "lazy lawyering" and warning of potential ramifications for "lying to the court."
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October 18, 2024
DC Firms Look To Exit Suit Over $120M Iraq Award
Pierson Ferdinand LLP and another boutique firm have urged the D.C. Circuit to let them withdraw as counsel for Iraq as the country looks to overturn an order allowing a construction firm permission to go after Iraqi assets to satisfy a $120 million judgment, saying the country owes some $25,000 in legal fees and has stopped responding to the firms' inquiries on the litigation.
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October 18, 2024
Fla. Atty Accused Of Trust Violations Faced Losing Her Home
The Florida Supreme Court on Friday gave an Orlando attorney accused of misusing client funds — which she said kept her out of homelessness — extra time to comply with a suspension order after she said hurricanes Helene and Milton displaced her from her home and her law office, complicating her ability to communicate with clients and access records.
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October 18, 2024
Blank Rome Attys Want Win In Corporate Client Ex-Atty Suit
A trio of Blank Rome LLP attorneys have asked a federal judge in Pennsylvania for an early win in a lawsuit from another attorney alleging they improperly helped her former client retaliate against her after she switched to the plaintiffs bar.
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October 18, 2024
Narrow Ga. Ruling On Atty-Client Privilege Draws Concerns
A recent divided Georgia Supreme Court decision found that jailhouse calls between a man convicted of assault and his then-attorney weren't off-limits to prosecutors, drawing concerns from some legal experts that the narrow reading of attorney-client privilege sets a "dangerous" precedent.
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October 18, 2024
Verbose BigLaw Attys Irk Judge: 'Not Serving You Well'
A Boston federal judge on Friday laid into attorneys for Boies Schiller Flexner LLP, Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan LLP, and Ropes & Gray LLP for what she called needlessly aggressive and voluminous court filings in heated fraud litigation involving the sale of a Mexican funeral business.
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October 18, 2024
57 Scholars, Former Judges Call For High Court Term Limits
A group of 57 constitutional scholars and retired federal and state judges wrote a letter to the leaders of Congress on Wednesday urging them to establish term limits for U.S. Supreme Court justices, proposing guardrails that they said are "urgently needed at a time of plummeting confidence" in the nation's highest court.
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October 18, 2024
Fla. Judge Reprimanded For Opining In DQ Approvals
The Florida Supreme Court has reprimanded a state judge who admitted to making improper comments in orders of recusal that he granted in two separate criminal cases.
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October 18, 2024
Seton Hall Fights Moving Ex-Prez's Suit Over Law Clerk Ties
Seton Hall University has urged a New Jersey Superior Court judge to undo an order transferring a whistleblower suit by its former president out of Essex County because of a supposed conflict of interest involving the law clerk daughter of one of the defendants.
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October 18, 2024
Philly Atty Suspended After Guilty Plea In Pill Mill Scheme
A Philadelphia attorney who pled guilty to filling fraudulent opioid prescriptions in his side job as a part-time pharmacist had his law license suspended for a year and a day, the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania announced.
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October 18, 2024
Atty Sanctioned For 'Indifference' In Tastykake Co. Bias Suit
An attorney's "indifference" to court orders and deadlines in a Black Muslim worker's wage and discrimination suit against the maker of Tastykake warrants $30,000 in sanctions, a Pennsylvania federal judge ruled, warning that more serious consequences might come.
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October 17, 2024
Atty's 'Groundhog Day' Motion Trims Ex-Girardi Client's Suit
A California state judge on Thursday trimmed a family's $1.8 million malpractice lawsuit against an attorney that represented it in recovering millions lost in Girardi Keese's embezzlement scandal, calling a bid to nix one of the suit's claims a "Groundhog Day" motion because she already granted a similar one from the attorney's firm.
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October 17, 2024
Burford Again Loses Fight Against Meat Price-Fixing Deal
An Illinois federal judge on Thursday refused for a second time to let a Burford Capital LLC unit unbind itself from a global settlement Pilgrim's Pride and Sysco entered to resolve chicken, pork and beef price-fixing claims.
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October 17, 2024
Engineer Wood PLC Faces Contempt Bid Amid Pipeline Spat
A contractor facing claims that it mismanaged the construction of a $22 million Colonial Pipeline Co. fuel terminal in Georgia asked a federal judge Thursday to hold multinational engineering firm John L. Wood PLC in contempt of court for playing "word games" with a recent subpoena.
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October 17, 2024
Ex-Wash. Atty Who Stalked, Stabbed Rival Lawyer Is Disbarred
The Washington Supreme Court has disbarred a former criminal defense attorney imprisoned for stalking and stabbing another lawyer against whom he held a festering grudge, writing in a self-published book that he fantasized about killing his victim "thousands of times in my head."
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October 17, 2024
Chevron, Syngenta Want 600 'Baseless' Paraquat Cases Nixed
Chevron and Syngenta urged an Illinois federal judge on Wednesday to begin the dismissal process for almost 600 paraquat plaintiffs the companies say have flouted a court order to document their alleged exposure to the pesticide.
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October 17, 2024
Colorado Judges Doubt Giuliani Shielded For 2020 Lies
Colorado appellate judges appeared skeptical Thursday of Rudy Giuliani's bid to escape a defamation lawsuit by a former executive for Dominion Voting Systems, noting that they already found Giuliani's statements weren't protected in a related appeal.
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October 17, 2024
Atty Who Repped Rodney King To Plead Guilty To Tax Evasion
An attorney who represented Rodney King in a civil case against the city of Los Angeles after King was severely beaten by police agreed Thursday to plead guilty to tax evasion in return for the government dropping other charges.
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October 17, 2024
Fla. Supreme Court Suspends Atty Over 'Punitive' Fee Hike
A Florida attorney has been suspended from practicing law for a year after he lashed out at a client by sending a new bill for $126,650 — a figure derived by retroactively jacking up his rates more than fourfold for a year of legal work, the state Supreme Court ruled Thursday.
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October 17, 2024
No Privilege For Drug Discount Co. Accused Of Faking Deal
A Colorado federal judge held Wednesday that he saw probable cause that a drug discounter hired an attorney with the intent to commit fraud, ordering that company to disclose privileged documents in a lawsuit alleging it faked an acquisition to dupe an Illinois-based pharmacy benefit company into paying higher commissions.
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October 17, 2024
Health Co. Must Face State Farm Settlement Interpretation Suit
An automobile-accident-focused healthcare company can't escape State Farm's lawsuit claiming the facility breached a settlement agreement by failing to drop hundreds of personal injury protection suits, a Florida federal court ruled.
Expert Analysis
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Series
Home Canning Makes Me A Better Lawyer
Making my own pickles and jams requires seeing a process through from start to finish, as does representing clients from the start of a dispute at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board through any appeals to the Federal Circuit, says attorney Kevin McNish.
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Use The Right Kind Of Feedback To Help Gen Z Attorneys
Generation Z associates bring unique perspectives and expectations to the workplace, so it’s imperative that supervising attorneys adapt their feedback approach in order to help young lawyers learn and grow — which is good for law firms, too, says Rachael Bosch at Fringe Professional Development.
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Opinion
Congress Can And Must Enact A Supreme Court Ethics Code
As public confidence in the U.S. Supreme Court dips to historic lows following reports raising conflict of interest concerns, Congress must exercise its constitutional power to enact a mandatory and enforceable code of ethics for the high court, says Muhammad Faridi, president of the New York City Bar Association.
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Perspectives
Pop Culture Docket: Justice Lebovits On Gilbert And Sullivan
Characters in the 19th century comic operas of Gilbert and Sullivan break the rules of good lawyering by shamelessly throwing responsible critical thought to the wind, providing hilarious lessons for lawyers and judges on how to avoid a surfeit of traps and tribulations, say acting New York Supreme Court Justice Gerald Lebovits and law student Tara Scown.
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State Of The States' AI Legal Ethics Landscape
Over the past year, several state bar associations, as well as the American Bar Association, have released guidance on the ethical use of artificial intelligence in legal practice, all of which share overarching themes and some nuanced differences, say Eric Pacifici and Kevin Henderson at SMB Law Group.
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8 Childhood Lessons That Can Help You Be A Better Attorney
A new school year is underway, marking a fitting time for attorneys to reflect on some fundamental life lessons from early childhood that offer a framework for problems that no legal textbook can solve, say Chris Gismondi and Chris Campbell at DLA Piper.
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Opinion
This Election, We Need To Talk About Court Process
In recent decades, the U.S. Supreme Court has markedly transformed judicial processes — from summary judgment standards to notice pleadings — which has, in turn, affected individuals’ substantive rights, and we need to consider how the upcoming presidential election may continue this pattern, says Reuben Guttman at Guttman Buschner.
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Series
Playing Diplomacy Makes Us Better Lawyers
Similar to the practice of law, the rules of Diplomacy — a strategic board game set in pre-World War I Europe — are neither concise nor without ambiguity, and weekly gameplay with our colleagues has revealed the game's practical applications to our work as attorneys, say Jason Osborn and Ben Bevilacqua at Winston & Strawn.
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Mental Health First Aid: A Brief Primer For Attorneys
Amid a growing body of research finding that attorneys face higher rates of mental illness than the general population, firms should consider setting up mental health first aid training programs to help lawyers assess mental health challenges in their colleagues and intervene with compassion, say psychologists Shawn Healy and Tracey Meyers.
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Revisiting The Crime-Fraud Exception After Key Trump Cases
Evidence issues in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot and classified documents cases involving former President Donald Trump offer an opportunity to restudy elements and implications of the crime-fraud exception to attorney-client privilege and the work product doctrine, noting the courts' careful scrutiny of these matters, say Robert Hoff and Paul Tuchmann at Wiggin and Dana.
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Series
Collecting Art Makes Me A Better Lawyer
The therapeutic aspects of appreciating and collecting art improve my legal practice by enhancing my observation skills, empathy, creativity and cultural awareness, says attorney Michael McCready.
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Litigation Inspiration: Honoring Your Learned Profession
About 30,000 people who took the bar exam in July will learn they passed this fall, marking a fitting time for all attorneys to remember that they are members in a specialty club of learned professionals — and the more they can keep this in mind, the more benefits they will see, says Bennett Rawicki at Hilgers Graben.
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Opinion
AI May Limit Key Learning Opportunities For Young Attorneys
The thing that’s so powerful about artificial intelligence is also what’s most scary about it — its ability to detect patterns may curtail young attorneys’ chance to practice the lower-level work of managing cases, preventing them from ever honing the pattern recognition skills that undergird creative lawyering, says Sarah Murray at Trialcraft.
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Series
Round-Canopy Parachuting Makes Me A Better Lawyer
Similar to the practice of law, jumping from an in-flight airplane with nothing but training and a few yards of parachute silk is a demanding and stressful endeavor, and the experience has bolstered my legal practice by enhancing my focus, teamwork skills and sense of perspective, says Thomas Salerno at Stinson.
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Why Now Is The Time For Law Firms To Hire Lateral Partners
Partner and associate mobility data from the second quarter of this year suggest that there's never been a better time in recent years for law firms to hire lateral candidates, particularly experienced partners — though this necessitates an understanding of potential red flags, say Julie Henson and Greg Hamman at Decipher Investigative Intelligence.