Professional conduct

A little about the way that the bar ethics committee in Florida uses rules to selectively dismiss complaints.
  It appears when an action is active it is up to the courts to critic lawyers.  That does not happen. The result is that the RPC  rules of professional conduct  are frequently not enforced.  the bar gave me advice... see a lawyer....:)  It appears to me that the Florida Bar is not doing their job.  They are not protecting the public.  When one wants to sue a lawyer, most lawyers will not take this type of action.
  Most lawyers would not take this type of action because there is not cost-benefit.

Every semester, law students and professors struggle with the situation presented in the Texas Supreme Court case of Bohatch v. Butler & Binion.  There, Colette Bohatch, pursuant to her ethical duties, reported within the firm of Butler & Binion another partner suspected of overbilling.  The law firm then expelled her, and while the Supreme Court held that Bohatch needed to follow her ethical duties, the firm could properly expel her for doing so.  The reasoning was that, among other things, the trust and confidence needed for a partnership trumped any purported policy protecting law firm whistleblowers, and Bohatch had lost the trust of the partnership. 

The Catch-22 of the Bohatch scenario troubles many.  However, as further consideration of this case shows, this Catch-22 can be solved by moving the starting point of the analysis of the scenario to when an attorney freely chooses to become partners with other attorneys.  When an attorney signs an at-will agreement that allows for no-cause expulsion, she exposes herself to expulsion that is in the purported best interest of the partnership, as occurred in Bohatch.  If considered through this lens, it becomes clear that the Texas Supreme Court in Bohatch reached the correct result, and that any court that faces the same situation should reach the same conclusion.

Over the last decade in Nigeria, societal interest in the ethical aspect of the legal profession has been on the increase.  The question of protection of the individual client, fellow professional lawyers, courts and the legal profession itself have become paramount.  There has been lately, a significant increase in the frequency with which litigants have written petitions against lawyers and judges and in the case of lawyers, with a view to suing them. Professional misconduct tends to have profound effect upon the way in which law is practiced in Nigeria. It is in the execution of this responsibility that Chief Bayo Ojo – the then Honourable Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice/ Chairman, General Council of the Bar carried out in the year 2007 a comprehensive review of the Rules of Professional Conduct for legal Practitioners in Nigeria. This paper examines the Ethics, Rules of Professional Conduct and Discipline of Lawyers in Nigeria and concludes that the 2007 Rules have succeeded in embodying the ideal human conduct required of a legal practitioner.  What remains is in trying to enforce the observance of these rules which had largely been curtailed by the “brother’s keeper syndrome” as much breaches of the rules of professional conduct are not reported to the appropriate authority.  This has largely being the reason why there have very limited erring legal practitioners been punished for contravening the rules of professional conduct.

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Two camps have begun to emerge from the rich ferment in legal ethics teaching and scholarship over the last twenty years.  The first group, whose members might be termed “law-givers,” consists of those who view legal ethics as chiefly concerned with the identification, transmission, and enforcement of uniform standards governing the conduct of lawyers.  The second group—considerably smaller, but increasingly well-defined—might be called the “story-tellers.”  The story-tellers place a higher value on persons and context than on principles and procedures, and on the cultivation of a deeper, less mechanical sense of professionalism than detailed rules can provide.

Larry Dubin’s most recent educational videotape, Legal Heroes, brings him more firmly into the ranks of the legal ethics master story-tellers.  Reasonably short and fast-moving, the videotape is exceptionally well-planned, and it refreshes the spirit and nourishes the soul in the best tradition of story-telling.  The film focuses on three lawyers who elected to chart altruistic courses, and in the process secured not only important results but the admiration of their peers.  Often, attempting to reinforce positive professional images is not an easy sell; idealism is passe.  Nevertheless, Professor Dubin produces an effective and useful product.  Legal Heroes is a very positive film, designed to make lawyers and, more importantly, law students feel comfortable, even proud, of their choice of career, and reminds them that there can be much more to law practice than the law alone.