5.27.15 The Supreme Court’s recent decision in McVey v. M.L.K. Enterprises (2015 IL 118143) lets Illinois lawyers know the order of things when it comes to disbursing settlement funds in injury cases, and the lesson is: we may call medical lienholders “third parties,” but they’re not third in line. In McVey, the plaintiff settled her […]
Tag: legal ethics
Brass Tacks Post: Known Unknowns
Illinois lawyers should be aware that the Supreme Court recently amended Rule 1.15 to address the problem of what to do with unidentifiable funds residing in an IOLTA. There has long been an answer to the question of what to do with unclaimed funds: follow the procedures outlined in the Uniform Disposition of Unclaimed Property […]
Lying in State
Prof. Ronald D. Rotunda recently wrote concerning lawyers’ duty to be truthful in negotiations: its essence and its limits. As Prof. Rotunda wrote, Rule 4.1 of the Model Rules imposes a duty on lawyers to make no false statements of material fact or law, and Illinois Rule 4.1 tracks the Model Rule. Prof. Rotunda cites […]
Client Protection, Lawyer Risk
The Illinois Supreme Court recently amended several Supreme Court Rules relating to the disciplinary system. One such change was to Rules 780 and 759, relating to the administration of the ARDC’s Client Protection Program. Most Illinois lawyers have not encountered these rules in their careers; the Client Protection Program (established under Rule 780) had previously […]
Hypothetically, I Got This Client Candor Problem
When I was at the ARDC, I used to answer phone calls to the Ethics Inquiry hotline. All attorneys there did so for one day a week. One never knew what one was going to get – the calls came in randomly, and they were supposed to be a) anonymous and b) posed as hypotheticals. […]
The Business of Business
As the ABA Journal recently reported, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court recently promulgated new rules (effective March 1) that are aimed at lawyers’ provision of investment advice to clients. I’ve been concerned about lawyers’ conduct in this arena since my involvement, early in my ARDC career, in a case involving a lawyer selling unregistered securities to […]
Brass Tacks Post: Don’t Find It Interesting
This post will cover a practical tip for responding to letters from the ARDC asking for information about a complainant’s initial request for an investigation. Such letters are facts of life (about 6,000 of which arise per year). It’s a lawyer’s duty to respond to such a letter, of course, and to take the matter […]
Benefits and Risks
(Pieter Brueghel, The Village Lawyer, 1625) (or, The World Before Spreadsheets) I’ve been very, very, very, like glacially, slow-blogging a post about lawyers’ ethical duty of competency as it ties in to the ever-expanding capabilities and complexities of tech. Andrew Perlman’s excellent summary of ethical considerations on this issue was recently published in The Professional […]
Public Reprimand: Standards and Care
A few thoughts on this public reprimand of a lawyer by a federal court for distributing a communication containing otherwise-private positive comments about the lawyer from a federal judge. This will not be one of those “WHAT was the lawyer THINKING?!?” attorney discipline posts. I want to stay away from that kind of commentary as […]
It Still Depends on How You Look At It
Not to obsess over this one case, but LPB updated its post on the Green matter with new information: the D.C. Bar filed additional charges against Green on September 25, 2013, but those charges were not reviewed and approved until October 2014. Is this the game-changer LPB thinks it is? Does it prove that the […]
ethics forward. 