There are various ways in which lawyers can run into legal-related problems or issues of legal ethics including civil lawsuits, legal malpractice, and breach of fiduciary duty or lawyer criminality and its consequences for discipline.
Topics: legal malpractice, legal ethics, civil lawsuits, fiduciary duty, lawyer criminality, and discipline.
Complaint About the Firm “FindLaw”
DREADFUL FAILURES OF FINDLAW Michael Sean Quinn* Don't get me wrong. I am a great and faithful friend and customer of WestLaw and WestLawNext: Invariably helpful, creative, and even learned. However. the company WestLaw belongs to Thompson Reuters, and it has...
LAWYERS SHOULD DISCOURAGE SOME CLIENTS SOMETIMES
"DON'T DO IT, DEAR CLIENT!" Michael Sean Quinn* I often tell "ordinary" clients and potential clients that litigation is a rich man’s game. It is not meant for regular people, absent serious bodily injury or property damage, and perhaps not then if a class action can...
HAPPY LAWYERS AND LAWYER PERFORMANCE: A PARADOX?
DUTIES OF LAWYERS TO CLIENTS Michael Sean Quinn* Suppose happy people do better work than those that are unhappy. Suppose that this difference is substantial. If this general proposition is true, i.e., applies to all workers, then lawyers perform...
AGING LAWYERS AND THEIR PROBLEMS
TWO PROBLEMS + AN UNLIKELY THIRD I spend a fair amount of time these days considering, pondering and counseling counsel as to the professional-vocational problems of aging lawyers (Ls). Two problems are particularly pressing, and a third is sometimes lurking the the...
THE REBUTTABLE PRESUMPTION AND THE LAW OF EVIDENCE
AN OBVIOUS POINT? Michael Sean Quinn* I realized the other day, that there was a simple, and upon momentary reflection, an obvious point about litigation, something I have used in practice for 35 years and about which I have been continually lecturing, writing, and...
LAWYER AS PROFESSIONAL SERVICE PROVIDER
LAWYER AS THERAPIST? Michael Sean Quinn* John G. Balestriere recently published some excellent--or at least mostly excellent--advice: Lawyers "have to be unemotional in our work, but we can't expect that our clients. We serve them better when we remember...
LAWYER DISBARRED FOR SKULDUGGERY
OVERZEALOUS REPRESENTATION *Michael Sean Quinn L represented C. The case was less than perfect. L therefore decided to "impeach" opposing counsel We'll call him "OpL" L knew that OpL was a drinker and knew where he often imbibed. Perhaps he also knew that OpL...
CRIMES JUDGE (SMALL BUT SERIOUS) + SUPPLEMENT (3/16/15)
PARADIGMATIC JUDICIAL UNFITNESS Michael Sean Quinn* Acts demonstrating a judges unfitness to serve, need not be outrageous in the sense of being in the first order of magnitude. Some are quite harmless though in appropriate, e.g., email a mistress while on the bench,...
CRIME BY LAWYER
Client Extortion: Unusual Facts, Strange Result Michael Sean Quinn* Suppose there are two lawyers, L-1 and L-2, and they are in the same law firm. B represents C in a criminal matter. It seems that C has been involved in a drive-by shooting at or near the house of...
ON THE DEFENSE OF DEBTORS
THE JOYS OF DEFENDING DEBTORS, Part I Michael Sean Quinn* Until recently I had never defended a debtor and hadn't done bankruptcy work in many years, though I have done a couple of collection cases, I confess, connected to law firms. (I have consistently advised...
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