ethics

Counsel's Retention of "Wet Signatures" Overcomes Debtor's "Faulty" Memory

12/02/22

Sometimes debtors get buyer's regret after filing a bankruptcy petition. However, once a bankruptcy petition is filed, it remains on the debtor's credit for ten years. One debtor sought to throw his attorney under the bus by claiming that the bankruptcy filing had never been authorized. Fortunately the debtor's attorney had retained his client's wet signatures and text messages which protected him from the Court's Order to Show Cause. In re Wilson, 2022 Bankr. LEXIS 3378 (Bankr. D. N.J. 11/30/22).

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NCBJ 2022: Post-Pandemic Ethics

10/27/22

Besides sweeping away the competition in ballroom dancing competitions and having been a law school dean at a young age, Prof. Nancy Rapoport is known as the teacher who can make ethics interesting. She gave the keynote address for the Commercial Law League luncheon titled Brave New World--Ethics Issues That We Never Knew We Had.

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A Cautionary Tale for Zoom Depositions

12/11/21

By now, we have grown used to Zoom hearings, Zoom mediations and Zoom depositions. However, a case I heard discussed at the ABI Winter Leadership Conference points out that as ubiquitous as these technologically assisted interactions are, they can pose both challenges and perils to the unprepared.

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NCBJ 2021: CLLA Luncheon: Ethics Goes to the Movies

10/10/21

Larry Cohen, a lawyer from Vermont and adjunct faculty member at multiple law schools used movie clips to teach legal and judicial ethics. Trying to describe movie clips without being able to play them may be a fool's errand but I will do my best. I am sure that I didn't capture everything possible but at least this is some ethical food for thought.

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NCUA names first-ever chief ethics counsel

12/07/20

Elizabeth Fischmann will take on the role later this month and will oversee the regulator's compliance with federal ethics laws, among other responsibilities.

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Texas Lawyer Escapes Sanction

05/26/20

In politics, it is sometimes said, what did the president know and when did he know it. As it turns out this analysis is helpful in determining whether a lawyer should face sanctions under Rule 9011 as well. In the case of In re Dernick, No. 18-32417 (Bankr. S.D. Tex. 5/22/20), the fact that "there [we]re a fair number of complex and confusing details at play" was enough to prevent the motion in question from being objectively frivolous.

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New Media Equals New Ethical Issues

12/07/14

When I was in high school, social media consisted of my home telephone line. I could use it to access the outside world until my parents told me to get off the phone because they were expecting an important call.

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