February 12, 2021 at 9:55 AM
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The State Bar of California disciplinary system deserves scrutiny: does it drop the hammer on more small-firm lawyers and solos than larger-firm lawyers? Does it drop the hammer on minority lawyers more than majority lawyers? The answer to both questions is yes, and I am not the only one who thinks that. It’s all well and good for the State Bar to encourage people to become lawyers, but drop-kicking them once they passed the bar is not so helpful as discipline can range from private reproval to disbarment.
One of the things (among many) that has griped attorneys here in California (and I would guess elsewhere as well) is the apparent predilection of the disciplinary system to go after solo and small practitioners, leaving attorneys in Biglaw and other large firms to go scot-free when they violate the State Bar Act or the Rules of Professional Conduct. Solos and small firm lawyers are pretty much left to their own devices once in the grip of t
February 11, 2021 at 1:00 PM
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I like Carrie Underwood’s
Before He Cheats as much as anyone, but digging your key into the side of someone’s pretty little souped-up four-wheel drive isn’t actually a great plan for revenge. Particularly not when you’re a judge and supposed to be a paragon of good civic behavior.
But that’s allegedly exactly what Judge Gregory Burker, a justice of Watson Town Court in Lewis County, New York did. As reported by Law360, a complaint was filed with New York State Commission on Judicial Conduct on October 29, 2020, alleging he keyed a Watson town official’s car in an act of revenge for denying Burker health insurance. Told you, Medicare for All really is a great idea. Anyway, Burker pleaded guilty to criminal mischief and resigned his position in exchange for the Commission dropping their investigation and also promised not to seek another judicial office.
February 8, 2021 at 3:54 PM
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Your Honor, please don’t sanction me because I never read that thing I signed my name to. I was just a conduit for these crazy people to get their case before your court. Also, it was kinda your fault, if you think about it, for not holding an evidentiary hearing. Further affiant sayeth not.
Or words to that effect.
Thus reads the affidavit filed by Michigan attorney Gregory J. Rohl in response to Governor Gretchen Whitmer and Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson’s motion for sanctions in the Michigan Kraken case. See, the counselor was just home fixing Thanksgiving dinner on November 25 when he got a call at 6:30 p.m. from “an associate who asked Rohl if he would assist in litigation involving election fraud in Michigan which was being spearheaded by Sidney Powell and Lin Wood.”
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Georgetown Journal of Legal Ethics, Nick Robinson explores two case studies outside the United States the United Kingdom and Australia where reforms aimed at improving access to justice, among other things, have opened the market for legal services to the ownership, investment, and management of individuals without legal training. Robinson examines the ethical dimensions of these changes as well as the limitations on our ability to draw definitive conclusions from these case studies based on what data is and is not available (for more on tracking the impacts of regulatory reform, see “Quality Metrics for Regulatory Reform”). Notwithstanding these qualifications, Robinson explores some significant implications of these reforms, such as their capacity to improve access to and affordability of legal services. Below, we briefly review the cases of regulatory reform in the United Kingdom and Australia and highlight Robinson’s observations on their impact on access. For a comp