Ed. note: Please welcome Renee Knake Jefferson back to the pages of Above the Law. Subscribe to her Substack, Legal Ethics Roundup, here.
Welcome to what captivates, haunts, inspires, and surprises me every week in the world of legal ethics.
Happy Monday!
Greetings from Spokane, WA. Here’s my view as I write this week’s LER in the gorgeous Davenport Hotel lobby, built in 1914 and incredibly restored in 2002 after sitting vacant for many years.
I spoke at Gonzaga Law School on Thursday with Scott Cummings (UCLA) and hosted by Abe Ritter (Gonzaga) where we discussed “Good Faith and Public Trust in an Erosive Era.” It was great to catch up with Gonzaga Law Dean Jacob Rooksby before he heads to Virginia to become the new Dean of Richmond Law School. Richmond Law is a special place, and the school is lucky to have him as their next leader. (The two of us have the shared connection of studying for the Virginia Bar Exam a couple of decades ago in a Richmond Law classroom taught by the infamous Wade Berryhill.)
Now for your headlines.
Highlights from Last Week – Top 10 Headlines 📰
#1 “Lawyer John Eastman Disbarred for Efforts to Overturn 2020 Election.” From The New York Times: “The California Supreme Court upheld a lower court’s decision that said Mr. Eastman, had violated the rules of professional ethics.” Read more here (gift link).
#2 “The Lawyer as Public Citizen Today.” From Kevin Lee in The Exile: “Here I want to think concretely about what the ‘public citizen’ phrase [in the ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct] might mean, not as an abstraction but as a form of practice—and specifically, as a practice of sincerity. Consider the history of the profession at its best. Constance Baker Motley did not simply file briefs; she walked into courtrooms where her presence itself was an argument about who counted as a full participant in American life. She could not hide behind procedure; her body was the argument. This required a courage that was not merely tactical but existential—a willingness to be fully present, fully seen, in spaces designed to render her invisible.” Read more here.
#3 “From Charlie Kirk’s Killing to OJ, How Courtroom Cameras Spark Debate.” From The Washington Post: “Whether cameras should be allowed has spurred perpetual disagreement between transparency advocates and defense attorneys eager to shield clients from ignominious publicity that could tilt a jury against them.” Read more here (gift link).
#4 “Supreme Court Justice Sotomayor Issues Public Apology to Kavanaugh.” From The Wall Street Journal: “Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor publicly apologized to Justice Brett Kavanaugh on Wednesday after suggesting last week that he didn’t know any blue-collar workers because he had a privileged upbringing.” Read more here (gift link).
#5 “Judicial Panel Trims Amicus Rule Change After Privacy Worries.” From Bloomberg Law: “A federal judiciary rules committee voted to drop a proposed requirement that groups disclose some new members ahead of filing amicus briefs in appeals courts. The Advisory Committee on Appellate Rules had spent years weighing a rule change to improve disclosure around funders of amicus, or ‘friend-of-the-court,’ briefs. But the proposal was pulled months before it was set to go into effect, after top members of the courts’ policy-making body—the Judicial Conference—said they had privacy concerns about a requirement that groups disclose new members who contribute more than $100 toward the briefs.” Read more here.
#6 “Law Professors Defend ABA’s Law School Diversity Rule Ahead of Elimination Vote.” From Reuters: “Hundreds of law professors, deans, students, lawyers and bar associations are urging the American Bar Association not to eliminate its longstanding diversity and inclusion requirement for law schools, which has come under fire amid the Trump administration’s widespread campaign against DEI. The arm of the ABA that oversees U.S. law schools received 47 written comments from individuals and groups asking it to retain or strengthen the law school diversity standard and two comments in support of repealing the rule during a 30-day comment period that ended on Monday.” Read more here. [Full disclosure: I am an elected member of the Accreditation Council for the ABA Section on Legal Education and Admission to the Bar.]
#7 “Ethical Ramifications of Using AI in Attorney-Client Conversations.” From JDSupra: “On December 22, 2025, the New York City Bar issued a formal opinion on the ethics for AI use in the recording, transcription, and summarization of conversations between attorneys and clients. The opinion of the Professional Ethics Committee addressed the issues that may arise if the attorney or the client is the one employing AI programs, with an emphasis on notice.” Read more here.
#8 “Takeaways From the Supreme Court’s Shadow Papers.” From The New York Times: “Confidential memos written by the justices shed light on how they came to issue emergency orders in cases about the scope of presidential power.” Read more here (gift link).
#9 “Ohio Supreme Court Tosses Longstanding Ban on Judges Endorsing Political Candidates.” From Cleveland.com: “The Ohio Supreme Court has opened the door to Ohio judges making political endorsements, overturning a decades-long ban on free-speech grounds. The Supreme Court’s 5-1 ruling, issued last week, quickly drew praise from officials like Attorney General Dave Yost, who called the decision ‘overdue.’” Read more here.
#10 “US Justice Department Should Stay out of States’ Own Ethics Investigations.” An op-ed from former Missouri Law Dean R. Lawrence Dessem in the Kansas City Star: “For decades, independent state lawyer disciplinary bodies have thoughtfully resolved attorney misconduct complaints. There is no need for, and there are major disadvantages to, centralizing the consideration of attorney complaints before the DOJ, which has a direct interest in how such complaints are resolved. The Department of Justice’s March 4 proposed rule should not be adopted.” Read more here.
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Renee Knake Jefferson holds the endowed Doherty Chair in Legal Ethics and is a Professor of Law at the University of Houston. Check out more of her writing at the Legal Ethics Roundup. Find her on X (formerly Twitter) at @reneeknake or Bluesky at legalethics.bsky.social.
The post Legal Ethics Roundup: Eastman Disbarred, Sotomayor Apologizes, Ethics Of Cameras In Courtrooms & More appeared first on Above the Law.
