The Goodson Blogson

On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court will open its annual October Term, with its first oral argument scheduled for 10 am. The "First Monday in October" has marked the start of the Supreme Court’s year since 1916. The first case of the new Term, Williams v. Washington , concerns state court claims under section 1983; a live-stream of oral argument audio will be provided on the Court’s website. To learn more about individual cases on the Court's docket this year, SCOTUSblog offers quick access to case information and filings on its October Term 2024 page , organized by argument date. Oyez provides a similar overview of OT2024 cases, and will link to oral argument audio and opinions when they become available for each case. The ABA also publishes a regular Preview of United States Supreme Court Cases ( available in HeinOnline ; Duke NetID required) that provides an overview as well as legal analysis of each featured case. ( Williams is featured in the latest Preview issue...

Last week, a federal magistrate judge in Colorado sanctioned two attorneys for their filing in an election dispute lawsuit, citing "a woeful lack of investigation into the law" and "patently frivolous arguments." The judge's order directed the attorneys to pay opposing counsels' fees for filing motions in the suit. Other attorneys who filed challenges to the 2020 election results have experienced similar professional consequences: Rudolph Giuliani currently faces a D.C. bar ethics investigation , following the June suspension of his law license in New York, and earlier this summer former Trump attorneys Sidney Powell and Lin Wood weathered a high-profile hearing over potential sanctions in Michigan. These cases have been a very public reminder of the importance of attorneys keeping up to date with their ethical duties and obligations. Every day, lawyers across the country face sanctions or other disciplinary action for failures to uphold the rules of thei...

Legal ethics should always be a matter of paramount concern for practicing attorneys. Failure to abide by ethics rules and opinions can spell disaster – including malpractice suits by clients and disciplinary action by the bar. Unfortunately, many key publications are locked behind premium legal research services like Bloomberg Law (online home of the ABA/BNA Lawyer's Manual on Professional Conduct ), Westlaw , and Lexis Advance – sometimes out of reach for solo practitioners and the general public. However, it is possible to conduct some legal ethics research without premium research tools. The University of Texas's Tarlton Law Library recently unveiled a new free resource for legal ethics research, the Thomas Woodward Houghton 50 State Ethics Guide . This new guide links to free options for state codes of attorney and judicial conduct, legal ethics opinions from state and local bars, and selected print and online resources from the American Bar Association. For addition...

As reported in the ABA Journal this week , the North Carolina State Bar has proposed an amendment to its annual requirements for continuing legal education (CLE) . Attorneys in North Carolina are already required to complete 12 credit hours of approved CLE each year; the proposal, if approved, would mandate that one of those hours be focused on "technology training" topics. (As outlined in the State Bar website , some of those hours must already focus on professional responsibility topics, including substance abuse awareness.) Back in 2012, the American Bar Association amended Model Rule of Professional Responsibility 1.1 on competent representation, in order to include an understanding of technology within its scope. Comment 8 to the rule now reads, "To maintain the requisite knowledge and skill, a lawyer should keep abreast of changes in the law and its practice, including the benefits and risks associated with relevant technology , engage in continuing study and e...

Over the holiday weekend, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump spent 12 minutes of an hour-long speech in San Diego criticizing a sitting federal judge. Gonzalo Curiel ( biography ) of the Southern District of California is presiding over a fraud lawsuit against the candidate's now-defunct Trump University, filed in 2010 and scheduled for trial in late November. The Wall Street Journal published excerpts of Trump's speech , which is also available at C-SPAN in video and full transcript : "I have a judge who is a hater of Donald Trump, a hater. He's a hater. His name is Gonzalo Curiel […] He is not doing the right thing. [...] The judge was appointed by Barack Obama, federal judge. Frankly, he should recuse himself because he's given us ruling after ruling after ruling, negative, negative, negative. […] I'm telling you, this court system, judges in this court system, federal court, they ought to look into Judge Curiel. Because what Judge Curiel is...

This week, the Goodson Law Library added the new looseleaf Social Media and the Law (2013) to its collection. This Practising Law Institute treatise, edited by information technology lawyer Kathryn L. Ossian, can also be accessed electronically with current Duke University NetID via PLI Discover Plus (campus-wide trial until February 2014) and to current Law School students, faculty and staff on Bloomberg Law . The Ossian treatise is part of a developing literature outlining how these emerging technologies have affected the legal system. Information from social networks like Facebook and Twitter has created new opportunities (and challenges) for electronic discovery , as well as new ethical headaches for attorneys and judges. Jury instructions have been redrafted to specifically prohibit jurors from discussing pending cases on social networks on Twitter. Attorneys have faced discipline for deceptively "friending" potential witnesses on Facebook. Some recent criminal tri...

On Wednesday, a Georgia judge ordered the state Bureau of Investigation to prevent public dissemination of gruesome crime scene photographs from a high-profile murder case . A journalist from Hustler magazine had sought the release of police photographs of 24-year-old victim Meredith Emerson, whose body was found nude and decapitated along a Georgia hiking trail in 2008 who disappeared from a Georgia hiking trail in 2008 and was later found nude and decapitated [corrected after comments below]. Emerson’s family requested and received a temporary restraining order which would block the photographs from public release. (Similar restrictions were already in place for autopsy photographs under the state’s open records law, but the status of crime scene photographs in Georgia is murkier.) The court order came as members of the Georgia state legislature simultaneously worked to pass the Meredith Emerson Memorial Privacy Act , which would require permission of the victim’s next of kin for t...

The Multistate Professional Responsibility Examination (MPRE) is a multiple-choice test of legal ethics, which is required for admission to the bars of most U.S. jurisdictions. (Feel like skipping it? You’ll be limited to practicing law in Maryland, Washington, Wisconsin, or Puerto Rico. See 2009 Comprehensive Guide to Bar Admission Requirements for more information.) The good news is that the MPRE can be taken at any time during law school, giving students a chance to get it out of the way long before the rest of the bar exam. The test is offered three times per year (March, August, and November). Judging by the increasing amount of questions at the Goodson Law Library about resources to study for the MPRE, we could tell that the next test is quickly approaching. A search of the libraries’ online catalog for mpre reveals only one title, Kimm Walton’s Strategies and Tactics for the MPRE 2009 edition . The catalog record notes that the title is still “On Order”, and not yet publishe...