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Ethics
December 2005
Ethics and Technology 2006: How NOT to Commit Malpractice With Your Computer
Audio CD Package
The right technology properly implemented can do wonders for any law practice. But the opposite is equally true—misused or misunderstood technology can cause you to commit malpractice and ethical violations at the speed of light. This teleconference and live audio webcast, with updated content for 2006, will explore the head-on collision between substantive law and technology use. Learn more »
ABA Center for Professional Responsibility – easily the most feature-laden site of the bunch, the CPR is the home to the ABA’s Model Rules of Professional Conduct. In addition to rules regulating lawyers, you’ll also find codes of judicial conduct and client protection, as well as ETHICSearch, a feature that allows you to ask ethics questions, many times for free. The site also offers links on multidisciplinary and multijurisdictional practice. Some resources require you to be a member of the Center; subscribers have access to all ABA formal ethics opinions, the member directory, and two quarterly publications.
ABA Standing Committee on Lawyers' Professional Liability – The Committee provides information on legal malpractice claims statistics, insurance for lawyers, and malpractice prevention information and help – issues that go hand-in-hand with any discussion of legal ethics. It offers a number of useful resources and a newsletter.
American Legal Ethics Library – this terrific site provides links to most of the professional responsibility codes in the country. You can use the Listing by Jurisdiction to get right to the rules of any particular state; 18 of them (17 states plus the District of Columbia) have narratives on their professional conduct law. Even better, the Topical Overview allows you to see the differences between specific code provisions in these eighteen jurisdictions.
Boundaries of Legal Marketing -- Will Hornsby is one of the leading authorities on legal ethics, especially on how the rules apply to Internet activities. He's recently started a blog that will cover legal ethics topics. Highly recommended.
Freivogel on Conflicts -- Bill Freivogel keeps this very simple site, designed as a "practical online guide to conflicts of interest for lawyers with sophisticated business and litigation practices." There aren't any outbound links to other ethics sites, but there's no need for that; the information provided here stands quite well on its own. The site is regularly updated with new case law and other information.
LegalEthics.com -- billing itself as "The Intersection of Ethics and the Law," this site is maintained by Mercer Law professor David Hricik and Peter Krakaur. Just select a category and a topic, and you're off. Many of the resources deal with "cyber-ethics," or how not to commit malpractice by using technology. Like the other sites, you'll also be able to access ethics materials by state. David Hricik also has his own Legal Ethics and Risk Management Page that provides other articles, links and discussions on the subject.
Legal Ethics Forum -- three law school educators from different parts of the country have joined together to create a terrific weblog featuring constantly-updated materials on issues in legal ethics. Recent topics include interviewing jurors, conflict checks, disciplinary review, and lawyer advertising. The sidebar also contains some great ethics resources, especially the academic sites and journals.
LegalEthicsBlog -- Kentucky lawyer Ben Cowgill served as Kentucky bar counsel, and now he's blogging about legal ethics and the laws governing lawyers. He already has 1,500 pages of reference material, and you can also find other links of interest. [Interestingly, Ben’s blog has been relatively silent since this article first appeared; he has been involved in discussions with the Kentucky Bar regarding the regulation of law-related weblogs.
Legal Ethics Opinion Summaries -- McGuire Woods attorney Tim Spahn has prepared summaries of Virginia and ABA Legal Ethics Opinions, and made them available free of charge. You can search the summaries by topic, date, or by keyword.
Neoethics -- is a “new word for the new world of legal and corporate ethics -- the combination of legal rules and moral philosophy.” It’s a great collection of articles on a wide variety of legal ethics issues. The Neoethics column, edited by Leonard Bucklin, is found on eDicta.org - a collection of law and insurance resources produced by the ABA's Tort Trial & Insurance Practice Section.
State Ethics Links – this site from David Hricik provides links to ethics opinions, rules of professional conduct, and other ethics resources from all fifty states.
sunEthics -- although this site is primarily geared to Florida lawyers (and the Florida resources are great!), there's also a page of state-by-state ethics links, as well as national ethics sites.
Virtual Chase Legal Ethics Guide -- Genie Tyburski's wonderful Virtual Chase site is the host for this research guide on legal ethics. This pathfinder will lead you to federal agencies, state ethics sites, and other top resources in legal ethics.
WEX - Legal Ethics - WEX is Cornell's version of a legal Wikipedia. It's an online legal encyclopedia created by a volunteer group of contributing authors. It's relatively new and we're very interested to see how it grows and evolves.
Compare it to the entry on legal ethics on the Wikipedia from time to time to get an idea about how the different approaches taken by Wikipedia and WEX will work over the long term.
The ethics resources currently available on the Internet are somewhat limited, but are undeniably useful and important. The sites mentioned here should definitely be kept handy whenever you have a question in your own practice.
About the Author
Tom Mighell is Senior Counsel and Litigation Technology Support Coordinator a Cowles & Thompson in Dallas. He publishes the Internet legal research and technology weblog Inter Alia , and is the current Chair of ABA TECHSHOW 2008. He and Dennis Kennedy talk about legal technology, with a focus on the Internet, in The Kennedy-Mighell Report .
About the Author
Dennis Kennedy is a technology lawyer, legal technology consultant, and well-known blogger based in St. Louis, Missouri. An award-winning author and frequent speaker, Dennis has written extensively on the technology of electronic discovery and co-authors the "Thinking E-Discovery" column at DiscoveryResources.org. His website and blog are well-regarded resources on legal technology and electronic discovery topics. He is a member of the Council of the ABA's Law Practice Management Section and the Webzine Board. He podcasts with Tom Mighell about legal technology, with a focus on the Internet, in The Kennedy-Mighell Report.