Minnesota Lawyer

There is no authoritative answer, but several factors must be considered to begin formulating an answer.

For more than 50 years, the Minnesota Supreme Court has succeeded in maintaining an excellent professional responsibility system. Public participation and accountability have been essential system components.

The Office of Lawyers Responsibility (OLPR), the Minnesota Supreme Court, and the Hennepin County District Court have recently given four answers to questions about a trial lawyer acting as a witness, three of which are wrong.

The ABA has recently issued two formal opinions on when the personal relationships of judges and lawyers raise ethics issues that may require disclosure, consent, or disqualification. The opinions are in many ways instructive and in some ways flawed.

Questions about whether your law firm has ethics policies and training are timely, and indeed urgent, because of two recent discipline cases and increasing enforcement by the Office of Lawyers Professional Responsibility (OLPR).

Abolition of champerty may well increase the frequency of litigation financing. Minnesota lawyers will have to be alert to several ethics issues.

A familiar legal ethics maxim is, “We all make mistakes. What matters is what we do next.”

New ABA Formal Opinion 19-489 is titled, “Obligations Related to Notice When Lawyers Change Firms.”

The Minnesota Lawyers Professional Responsibility Board is soliciting comments on its proposal to amend Board Opinion 21.

Several aspects of a recent discipline – reversed by a Lawyers Board panel – suggest that it is time for an update on Rule 1.9, ...