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!
This week I head to Spokane, WA, to speak at Gonzaga Law School’s Clarke Prize in Legal Ethics CLE. I’ll be joined by Scott Cummings (UCLA) where we will discuss “Good Faith and Public Trust in an Erosive Era.” If you happen to be in the area, join us Thursday evening! Register here.
Last week I published an op-ed in the Lansing State Journal not on legal ethics, but on a topic close to my heart, equality in women’s sports, in particular high school girls varsity tennis. You can read it here.
Now for your headlines.
Highlights from Last Week – Top 10 Headlines 📰
#1 “Lawyers Obliged to Disclose Judicial Recusal Grounds, ABA Says.” From Bloomberg Law: “Lawyers who possess information that they know is ‘reasonably likely’ to cause a judge to be disqualified from a case must disclose what they know, the American Bar Association says in a new ethics opinion. Yet when the lawyer possesses the information only because it’s related to a client representation, their disclosure obligation is subject to the lawyer’s duty of confidentiality under the Model Rules of Professional Conduct, ABA says in its Wednesday opinion.” Read more here.
#2 “Bondi Tried to Kill Ethics Investigations. Now She’ll Face One.” From USA Today: “A broad coalition of lawyers and legal groups will once again accuse Pam Bondi of misconduct for using her former position to serve only Trump and not the Americans she swore to serve.” Read more here.
#3 “Lawyer Sued for Charging Client for 34.5 Hours of Work in 1 Day.” From the ABA Journal: “An Australian lawyer has been sued for billing a client for 34.5 hours in a single day.” Read more here.
#4 “Supreme Court Secrecy Includes Reasons for Recusal.” From The New York Times: “The Supreme Court has gotten a lot of criticism lately for deciding important questions on its emergency docket without explaining its reasoning. Something similar is going on, a recent study found, in the justices’ decisions about whether to disqualify themselves from cases in which they may have a conflict of interest. The study was prepared by Richard Lazarus, a law professor at Harvard and a keen student of the court. He founded an institute devoted to the work of the court, has published studies of its practices and has argued before it. He is also a close friend of Chief Justice John Roberts. That made his latest project, about the shortcomings in the ethics rules announced by the Supreme Court in 2023, a little tricky.” Read more here (gift link).
#5 “LDF Calls on DOJ to Reverse Course on Attempts to Sideline State Ethics Investigations, Ensure Its Lawyers Are Held Accountable for Unethical Conduct.” From the Legal Defense Fund: “The Legal Defense Fund yesterday submitted public comment to the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), calling on the agency to ensure its attorneys are held accountable when misconduct occurs. The comment comes after DOJ published a proposed rule in the Federal Register that would allow the Attorney General to intervene in state bar disciplinary investigations and demand that those investigations be suspended while DOJ conducts its own internal review. LDF highlights how the rule would weaken independent oversight of DOJ attorneys by shifting greater control over those investigations to the agency and making it harder for state bar authorities to investigate misconduct. The proposed rule also conflicts with federal law, which requires DOJ attorneys to follow the same ethical rules as other lawyers.” Read more here.
#6 “Pro Se Workers’ AI Assists Lead Courts to Warnings, Sanctions.” From Bloomberg Law: “Oscar Brownfield—with AI help—was representing himself in Oklahoma federal court when he sought sanctions against his employer’s counsel, accusing them of knowingly filing false claims in an ongoing litigation. His unsuccessful request to strike certain pleadings from the Cherokee County School District’s summary judgment motion backfired, however, when opposing counsel revealed that Brownfield’s artificial intelligence-supported motion cited fictitious cases.” Read more here.
#7 “Bills to Rein in Outside Investment in Law Firms Advance in California, Illinois.” From Reuters: “State lawmakers in two of the largest markets in the United States are moving to erect ethical firewalls between law firms and outside capital, as investors and lawyers increasingly explore back-office partnerships and other deals.” Read more here.
#8 “What It Means to Be Technology Competent in 2026.” From JDSupra: “When the ethical duty of technology competence officially arrived in 2012, courtesy of new Comment 8 to Rule 1.1 of the ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct, the expectations were relatively modest. Much has changed since then. Technology is now deeply embedded in the legal profession, bringing both new risks and new opportunities that demand the modern litigator’s attention.” Read more here.
#9 “The Number of Law-School Grads Getting Extra Time for the Bar Exam Is Surging.” From The Wall Street Journal: “More aspiring young lawyers are asking for—and getting—extra time to finish the bar exam, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis. … The development follows one already coursing through high schools and colleges: More students have diagnoses for disabilities like ADHD and receive extra time for classwork or the SAT. Now, as this generation enters the workforce, the phenomenon has reached professional licensing exams—and law firms are adapting, launching programs to support young associates with diagnoses. Perry Zirkel, a disability-law scholar and former Lehigh University dean, said the need for testing accommodations for truly disabled students is real, but he worries about unfairness. Savvy families that can pay thousands of dollars for private disability assessments, he said, gain advantages by gaming the system.” Read more here (gift link).
#10 “How Trump Purged Immigration Judges to Speed Up Deportations.” From The New York Times: “Judges are ordering an unprecedented number of people deported after coming under significant pressure from the administration to do so or risk losing their jobs.” Read more here (gift link).
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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: Billing 34.5 Hours In A Day, New ABA Recusal Opinion, Shortcomings In SCOTUS Ethics Rules, Pro Se AI Sanctions, Extra Time For Bar Exam, Purging Immigration Judges & More appeared first on Above the Law.
