Colorado Supreme Court Office of Attorney Regulation Counsel started developing its lawyer self-assessment program more than two years ago, immediately after a seminal workshop on proactive, risk-based regulation at the 41st ABA National Conference of Professional Responsibility in May 2015. The new resource is a leading facet of a larger shift toward proactive management-based regulation, which aims to…
Sending the Message: Using Technology to Support Judicial Reporting of Lawyer Misconduct to State Disciplinary Agencies
Despite the strong public interest in effectively regulating lawyers, neither state nor federal courts have developed adequate policies and practices to ensure that lawyers’ misconduct during litigation proceedings is consistently reported to state disciplinary agencies. The reasons for this inconsistency—and the extent to which it should be considered an actual inadequacy and a problem calling for a…
California continues to debate division of regulation and representation functions
The California State Bar has been investigating the potential division of regulation and representation functions over the past five years. The Governance in the Public Interest Task Force concluded in 2017, launching a five-year strategic plan to “successfully transition to the ‘new State Bar’ — an agency focused exclusively on public protection through regulating the…
High Court Sends Back Bar Membership Row
The U.S. Supreme Court sent back a case challenging a nearly 30-year-old precedent allowing mandatory bar membership. The case took aim at the county’s first mandatory bar, North Dakota’s, which required membership in the state’s bar association as a condition to practice law as early as 1921, according to the American Bar Association. Although the state…
Indiana professional rules limit lawyers’ speech about judges
The Indiana Lawyer has released an article tackling one of the legal sector’s most contentious issues – Rule of Professional Conduct 8.2(a), which governs lawyers’ speech about judges. Lawyers, it seems, don’t want to address the topic for fear of being perceived as speaking critically of the judiciary, while judges seemingly don’t want to discuss situations…
California prepares to lead US profession into non-lawyer ownership
Regulators are poised to consider radical rule changes that could decisively open the way to allowing non-lawyers into the legal profession of the US’s most populous state. The State Bar of California voted earlier this month to accept a report from legal academic Professor William D. Henderson calling for structural reforms to the way the…
Event: ABA Cross-Border Discovery Institute: The Interplay between E.U. Data Protection and U.S. Discovery
Second Annual ABA Cross-Border Discovery Institute: The Interplay between E.U. Data Protection and U.S. Discovery Brussels, Belgium 26-27 July 2018 More Information
New York City Bar Association E-Discovery Working Group publishes guide on cross-border e-Discovery
SUMMARY The New York City Bar Association’s E-Discovery Working Group issued a report examining the challenges of conducting discovery when the scope of discovery exceeds US borders. The Committee lays out the most common circumstances in which cross-border discovery would occur, including issues of personal jurisdiction over foreign parties as well as cases of US subsidiaries of…
Event: American Bar Association 2018 Annual Meeting
2018 American Bar Association Annual Meeting Chicago, IL 2-7 August 2018 More Information
Encouraging the Development of ‘Low Bono’ Law Practices
For decades, the discussion about access to justice has primarily focused on the ability of low–income individuals to obtain free representation by lawyers. Lawyer representation is the “gold star” of the legal profession and advocates of legal services for the poor have fought difficult battles to ensure the most disadvantaged in our country have access…