Happy Monday!

Friday’s questions are here. The answers follow today’s Honor Roll.

I received many great responses to the question of which animals we’d hire to defend against a grizzly attack.  I’ll add those to the blog later today.

Honor Roll

  • Karen Allen, Karen Allen Law
  • Alberto Bernabe, Law Professor, University of Illinois – Chicago
  • Beth DeBernardi, Administrative Law Judge, Vermont Department of Labor
  • Rick Fadden, CGI
  • Benjamin Gould, Paul Frank + Collins
  • Bob Grundstein
  • Glenn Jarrett, Jarrett/Hoyt
  • Doug Keehn, Assistant Attorney General, Medicaid Fraud & Residential Abuse Unit
  • Jeanne B. Kennedy, JB Kennedy Associates, Mother of the Blogger
  • John T. Leddy, McNeil Leddy & Sheehan
  • Jack McCullough, Vermont Legal Aid, Project Director, Mental Health Law Project
  • Patrick Olmstead, Patrick Olmstead Law
  • Jim Remsen, Instrumart
  • Keith Roberts, Darby Kolter & Roberts
  • Justin St. James, Vermont State Treasurer, Office of General Counsel
  • Brandy Sickles, Administrative Coordinator, Vermont Professional Responsibility Program
  • Amelia Silver, Harding Mazzotti
  • Jonathan Teller-Elsberg, Staff Attorney, New Hampshire Legal Assistance
  • Jason Warfield, Family Law & Mediation

ANSWERS

Question 1

Speaking of a lack of motivation, a comment to one of Vermont’s rules states that “perhaps no professional shortcoming is more widely represented than procrastination.”  The duty that the rule addresses is one word.  Believe it or not, the word does NOT begin with the letter “C.”  What is this blog coming to?!?!?

What’s the duty?

DILIGENCE. See, V.R.Pr.C. 1.3.

Question 2

Andrew Manitsky, former VBA President and Vermont’s newest member of the Association of Professional Responsibility Lawyers, shared a great diagram with me yesterday. It looked sort of like this:

The diagram that Andrew shared included two phrases: “Rule 1.6 and the duty of confidentiality” and “Attorney-Client Privilege.”

Indeed, assume that one of the circles represents all the information that is confidential pursuant to Rule 1.6 of the Vermont Rules of Professional Conduct.  Assume that the other circle surrounds all the information that is covered by the attorney-client privilege.  Which is which?

  • A.    Small circle is 1.6 & the duty of confidentiality. Large circle is the privilege.
  • B.    Large circle is 1.6 & the duty of confidentiality.  Small circle is privilege.
  • C.    Trick question. It’d be more accurate if both circles were the exact same size.
  • D.    Trick question. It’d be more accurate if the smaller circle extended outside the larger.

Question 3

Whan a lawyer knows that a person is represented in a matter, Rule 4.2 of the Vermont Rules of Professional Conduct prohibits a lawyer from communicating with the represented person on the subject of the representation without the consent of the represented person’s lawyer.

Does the rule include an exception to confirm that opposing counsel has conveyed an offer to the represented person?

  • A.           No.   See, this post.
  • B.           Yes.
  • C.           Yes, but only if the communication is in writing and is copied to opposing counsel.
  • D.           Yes, but only if circumstances “clearly and convincingly demonstrate” that opposing counsel has not conveyed the offer to their client.

Question 4

Lawyer represents Client.  Third Person is paying Lawyer to represent Client.  Is the following statement true or false?

  • “Because Third Person is paying Lawyer to represent Client, by rule, Client has impliedly consented to Lawyer sharing all confidential information related to the representation with Third Person.”

FALSE.  See V.R.Pr.C. 1.8(f) and this post.

Question 5

Regular readers are likely aware that I’m infatuated with the Karen Read case.  Indeed, I spent much of my recent ennui binging a documentary that recaps Read’s first trial.  Juror selection in her re-trial began last week.

For the re-trial, Read’s defense team includes a lawyer who was involved with the first trial, but not as part of the defense team.  The fact that the lawyer joined the defense team generated headlines last month. It also caused a few of my nonlawyer friends who are following the Read case – (s/o to the McGillicudy’s crowd!) — to ask me if I’ve heard of it happening before. I haven’t.

Anyhow, here’s a quote that lawyer gave to WBZ-TV in March.  Your task, should you choose to accept it, is to fill in the blank.

  • “I was a fair-minded ______ who left [the first] trial questioning the integrity of the system long before the defense filed a motion to dismiss with allegations of jury tampering,” she told the TV station. “It is the Read case itself — and the fact that it is still being brought — that has left many in Massachusetts wary, distrustful, and scared of our system. As a lawyer, this reality saddens me even more because I remember how much faith I had in our system as an optimistic law student.”

Now part of the defense team, what was the lawyer’s role in the first trial?  In other words, what word correctly completes the quote?

“Juror.”

Attorney Victoria George recently joined Read’s defense team for the re-trial after serving as an alternate juror in the first trial. An article that includes the quote above is here.