Legal Ethics

  • October 29, 2026

    Fla. Court Dismisses Ex-School GC Grand Jury Secrecy Case

    A Florida state court Thursday tossed an indictment alleging a former school general counsel unlawfully violated the secrecy of a grand jury convened after the 2018 Parkland school shooting after the state's highest court declined to hear prosecutors' appeal to reinstate criminal charges earlier this week. 

  • October 29, 2026

    SEC Reopens $200M Debt Box Case After Sanctions

    The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has reopened a $200 million crypto Ponzi scheme case that landed it in hot water two years ago, saying that the individuals behind the company known as Debt Box misled investors into believing that they were spending on real-world projects.

  • October 29, 2026

    Pa. Justices Undo Contempt Over Vulgar Insult To Judge

    The Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled Thursday that a courtroom observer who called a Philadelphia judge a vulgar name as he left his friend's evidence-suppression hearing should not have been held in contempt and sentenced to 30 days in jail, since his insult had not significantly disrupted the proceedings.

  • October 29, 2026

    6th Circ. Upholds Prefiling Curbs On Vexatious Litigant

    An Ohio federal court was justified in designating a local probate attorney as a vexatious litigant and dismissing her suit with prejudice, a Sixth Circuit panel ruled Tuesday, upholding the district court's decision to saddle the attorney with prefiling restrictions.

  • October 29, 2026

    Morgan & Morgan Seeks To Block Celebrity Ad Ban In Florida

    Personal injury giant Morgan & Morgan PA has asked a Florida federal court for a preliminary injunction to block a Sunshine State bar rule that forbids celebrity endorsements in attorney advertisements.

  • October 29, 2026

    Telecom Shareholders Claim Arbitrator Was Biased

    Majority shareholders of a Central and South American telecommunications tower business fighting a $300 million arbitration award they were ordered to pay to the minority shareholders of that business have told the Second Circuit that the arbitrator was biased against them.

  • October 29, 2026

    McCarter Can Keep ABA Report Quotes In Loan Suit Brief

    A Connecticut state judge will not order McCarter & English LLP to file a new post-trial reply brief in a $21.3 million malpractice case over collapsed loan transactions, despite two insurers' arguments that the firm improperly quoted a treatise that was never admitted into evidence.

  • October 29, 2026

    NJ Justices Uphold Atty's Privacy Expectation In Email Advice

    The New Jersey Supreme Court ruled Thursday in a split decision that the name of the attorney who emailed legal advice to a municipal prosecutor in a traffic dispute should not be disclosed under the state's public records law, finding the sender's reasonable expectation of privacy outweighs any interest in disclosure.

  • October 29, 2026

    Ex-Philly Prosecutors Open Firm After Clash With DA Krasner

    Two former prosecutors in the Philadelphia District Attorney's Office have launched their own firm after resigning from the office following a clash with District Attorney Larry Krasner in a habeas corpus case.

  • October 29, 2026

    Fla. High Court Finds No Atty Misconduct Over PACER Snafu

    The Florida Supreme Court on Thursday entered a judgment in favor of an attorney accused of knowingly making false statements when explaining why he missed a client's hearing, finding that he may have been "sincerely confused" over why he wasn't notified through the federal PACER filing system.

  • October 29, 2026

    Tax Prep Biz Owner, Workers Charged In $177M Fraud Scheme

    An Alabama tax preparation business owner and several of her employees participated in a scheme to submit false tax returns to the IRS seeking more than $177 million in fraudulent federal tax refunds, federal prosecutors said.

  • October 29, 2026

    Gov't Urges 11th Circ. To Lift Sanctions Over Trump-IRS Deal

    A federal judge's order barring President Donald Trump, the IRS and the U.S. Treasury Department from citing the agreement made to settle his $10 billion suit against the tax agency is unsupportable and should be reversed, the government told the Eleventh Circuit.

  • October 28, 2026

    Abbott Scores Freeze On State Rep's Access To Musk Emails

    A Texas appellate court froze a lower court's order giving state Rep. Gina Hinojosa access to unredacted correspondence between Gov. Greg Abbott's office and the sometime trillionaire Elon Musk.

  • October 28, 2026

    Cannabis Event Founders Accused Of $750K Fraud

    A Los Angeles attorney and his business partner are accused in a California state lawsuit of diverting investor money to pay for private jet flights, bar dues and other personal expenses instead of funding business-to-consumer cannabis trade shows, including the failed 2022 Green Street Festival.

  • October 28, 2026

    'Lessons Learned': 9th Circ. Judge Doubts Uber Clawback Bid

    A Ninth Circuit judge doubted Uber's request Wednesday to claw back 42 documents inadvertently produced in sexual assault multidistrict litigation during its attorney-client privilege rereview, telling counsel, "At a certain point, we have to say stop, put your pencils down," and asking why this shouldn't be "an example of lessons learned."

  • October 28, 2026

    Ill. Judge Sets Evidence Hearing In Amazon TM Fund Fight

    A Chicago federal judge on Wednesday set an evidentiary hearing for December to investigate whether a trademark lawsuit against 100 online sellers was used to obtain a court order directing Amazon to transfer more than $711,000 in frozen seller funds, some of which the company says were already subject to unrelated restraints.

  • October 28, 2026

    Proskauer, Reddit Attys Called To Testify In Data-Scraping Suit

    A New York federal judge on Wednesday called for live testimony from two Proskauer Rose LLP attorneys and Reddit's deputy general counsel as he weighs the law firm's bid to represent Perplexity AI in a lawsuit from Reddit, the firm's former client, over alleged data scraping.

  • October 28, 2026

    BigLaw Tip Middleman To Admit Role In $3.5M Trading Scheme

    An alleged middleman in a sweeping scheme to trade off of deal information stolen from major law firms has agreed to plead guilty and potentially faces a prison term of nearly a decade, according to a plea agreement filed Wednesday in Massachusetts federal court.

  • October 28, 2026

    Mining Cos. Sanctioned Over Discovery In Peru Lead Case

    A Missouri federal judge has issued sanctions against mining companies, including one run by billionaire Ira Rennert, in a lawsuit by Peruvians alleging the defendants exposed children to toxins, finding that the companies filed two separate actions in Florida to get around discovery orders in the present case.

  • October 28, 2026

    NJ Atty Mishandled Property Damage Dispute, Court Told

    A man told a New Jersey federal court that he was forced to pay excessive and avoidable fees to an attorney hired to represent him in a property damage dispute after the attorney mishandled the case by failing to advise him to tender the claim to his homeowners insurer.

  • October 28, 2026

    NJ Municipal Judge Admonished Over Palestinian Attire

    A New Jersey municipal judge was admonished Wednesday by the state supreme court after he admitted his decision to wear pro-Palestine clothing to a judicial training conference fell short of the standards and expectations of his position.

  • October 28, 2026

    BakerHostetler Malpractice Case To Expand With RICO Claim

    A Georgia federal judge has allowed a trustee who has accused BakerHostetler and an Atlanta-based attorney of legal malpractice to file an amended complaint after the trustee asked to add claims of Georgia RICO Act violations.

  • October 28, 2026

    Wood Smith Beats Suit Over Nixed Atty Defamation Claims

    Wood Smith Henning & Berman LLP has escaped a malpractice suit stemming from an allegedly improperly drafted settlement agreement in an employment dispute, with a California appeals court finding that the agreement did not shield an opposing attorney from an ex-Wood Smith client's defamation claims.

  • October 28, 2026

    LA's Top Federal Prosecutor 'Unlawfully Serving,' Judge Finds

    A federal judge has ruled that Los Angeles' top federal prosecutor isn't legally serving in the role and that he is disqualified from participating in or supervising two criminal prosecutions.

  • October 28, 2026

    Texan Claims Austin Firm Hasn't Alerted Him To Data Breach

    Linebarger Goggan Blair & Sampson LLP, an Austin, Texas-based law firm focused on collecting debts and taxes for public-sector clients, failed to protect its clients' personal information from a data breach, the plaintiff in a proposed class action claimed in Texas federal court Tuesday.

Expert Analysis

  • Series

    Being A Singer Makes Me A Better Lawyer

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    Before law school, I spent seven years trying to make it as a professional singer in Los Angeles, and nearly everything I learned about preparation, humility, confidence and more has followed me into my legal practice, says Jessica Caterina at Moses & Singer.

  • JPMorgan Ruling Shows Courts' Limited Role In Fee Fights

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    The Delaware Chancery Court's recent decision that JPMorgan Chase must cover more than $21 million in disputed legal fees for two former executives of the startup Frank illustrates the reality that companies, not the courts, are responsible for ongoing supervision of legal spending, says Theodore Edelman at GCE Advisors.

  • Series

    Being A Magician Makes Me A Better Lawyer

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    The skills I've developed as a lifelong magician have translated directly into tangible benefits in the courtroom because performing magic and trying cases both live at the intersection of psychology, storytelling, timing and disciplined rehearsal, says Mark Dombroff at Fox Rothschild.

  • Series

    Bass Fishing Makes Me A Better Lawyer

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    Landing a trophy striped bass and closing a big deal both require cultivating the patience to finesse — not force — your way to desired outcomes, changing course when your old approach isn’t working and learning from the ones that got away, says Jon Ruiss at Alston & Bird.

  • Roundup

    The Most Talked-About Supreme Court Decisions Of 2026

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    This term, 11 U.S. Supreme Court decisions quickly became hot topics among Law360's guest writers.

  • 'Tiger King' Funeral Clip Ruling Offers Fair Use Road Map

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    The Tenth Circuit's decision in Whyte Monkee v. Netflix that the streaming service's use of another party's funeral footage in the docuseries "Tiger King" constituted fair use lays out a framework for producers to apply the four statutory fair use factors to their own projects, says Frank D’Angelo at Loeb & Loeb.

  • Series

    Choral Singing Makes Me A Better Lawyer

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    Singing in the New York City Bar Chorus — a hobby partly inspired by the late U.S. District Judge Richard Owen, who infused my clerkship year with opera music — has improved my legal career by refining my abilities to listen, exude confidence and develop emotional intelligence, says Bonnie Baker at Friedman Kaplan.

  • Attorney Mental Health Is An Ethical Obligation In The AI Era

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    As attorneys cope with the increasing unpredictability that artificial intelligence and constant policy changes have created, particularly in practice areas where they carry the emotional weight of clients’ most consequential life events, otherwise soft discussions about self-care are a matter of professional competence, says attorney Jack Jrada.

  • Leveraging AI In MDL Discovery And Case Management

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    Generative and agentic artificial intelligence tools can help teams organize and digest the vast volume of documents inherent to multidistrict litigation, but workflows must be designed to maximize the tools' strengths and maintain human control of key operational and ethical factors, say attorneys at Crowell & Moring.

  • Series

    Power To The Paralegals: Burnout As A Structural Problem

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    Law firm leadership can best retain their paralegals not by encouraging self-care, but by seeking top-down structural solutions for the quiet proliferation of responsibilities and the vicarious exposure to client trauma that particularly drive burnout in this vital role, says Erika Sneeringer at Brockstedt Mandalas.

  • Ill. Law Firm MSO Bill Clashes With Court Power, Ethics Rules

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    An Illinois bill prohibiting law firms from certain business arrangements with management service organizations, sent to the governor for signature last week, encroaches upon the courts' constitutional powers and goes beyond the Illinois Rules of Professional Conduct in regulating investment in law-related services, says Matthew O’Hara at Smith Gambrell.

  • Opinion

    State Courts Must Be Gatekeepers Of Expert Testimony

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    Based on my experience in the state judiciary, emulating federal courts' role as gatekeepers of expert witness testimony would help state court judges maintain the appearance of impartiality and assist juries, thus enhancing the overall confidence people have in their justice system, says Lorie Gildea at Greenberg Traurig.

  • Series

    Moshing Makes Me A Better Lawyer

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    Entering a mosh pit is much like entering the practice of law — it is difficult, you have to know both the written and unwritten rules, and conduct yourself according to the expectations of each community, says Christopher Deubert at Constangy Brooks.

  • Why Highly Specialized Experts May Risk Exclusion At Trial

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    Expert witnesses with highly specific areas of focus may be vulnerable to exclusion in court, making it important for attorneys to check how potential witnesses' qualifications can be bolstered by their publications and other professional activities, say Evan Weisberg and Christopher Cunio at Hunton, and Kevin Cahill at FTI Consulting.

  • DOJ Shifts Raise Ethics Questions For White Collar Defense

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    Recent shifts in U.S. Department of Justice clemency and charge-dismissal practices create ethical gray areas for white collar defense attorneys, who should follow risk-mitigating best practices while still forcefully advocating for their clients, says Kenneth Notter at MoloLamken.

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