Ed. word: Please welcome Renee Knake Jefferson again to the pages of Above the Legislation. Subscribe to her Substack, Authorized Ethics Roundup, here.
Welcome to what captivates, haunts, evokes, and surprises me each week on this planet of authorized ethics.
Joyful Monday!
Over the previous eighteen months, I’ve been immersed in a number of collaborative endeavors with greater than a dozen totally different coauthors. Some are updates to older casebooks and treatises, however two initiatives are new casebooks, one which hit the cabinets final week. Rocky Rhodes (Missouri) and I are thrilled to launch into the world our casebook Constitutional Law: Foundations, Interpretations, and Commentaries (West Tutorial). We’re particularly grateful to our writer Louis Higgins, who prompt we work collectively.
Keep tuned for extra publication reveals from my coauthors and me within the coming weeks and months!
For now, let’s flip to the headlines.
Highlights from Final Week – High Ten Headlines
#1 “DOJ Legal professionals’ Courtroom Lies Problem Judiciary, Ex-Judges Say.” From Bloomberg Legislation: “Former federal judges are lamenting a brand new problem their colleagues on the bench face: authorities legal professionals making false statements in court docket. Federal prosecutors and legal professionals ‘are mendacity to the federal courts,’ and President Donald Trump and high officers are ‘trashing particular person judges,’ retired Decide J. Michael Luttig, a George H. W. Bushappointee to the US Court docket of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, stated at a Wednesday occasion in Washington. In some instances, ‘you’re questioning whether or not or not the knowledge being given by the element of the motion is correct, and also you’re asking for particulars to comply with up, and getting gibberish,’ stated former Decide Paul Grimm, director of Duke Legislation Faculty’s Bolch Judicial Institute. The judges made their remarks at a panel hosted by the Society for the Rule of Legislation, a conservative authorized group that’s been important of Trump’s insurance policies. A study published this month by nonpartisan authorized journal Simply Safety discovered over 40 instances the place federal courts have discovered ‘critical defects’ within the authorities’s representations in court docket, together with false statements and contradictions.” Learn extra here.
#2 “What if the Massive Legislation Corporations Hadn’t Caved to Trump?.” From The New Yorker: “It’s price contemplating how we bought right here, and whether or not we might have finished something to gradual this downward spiral. Counterfactuals are not possible to show, however it doesn’t require an enormous speculative leap to conclude that, had main U.S. regulation companies not so quickly surrendered to Trump, this spring, he would have been denied early momentum for his lawlessness. Maybe a united opposition might need even supplied the other momentum, towards a protection of the rule of regulation.” Learn extra here.
#3 “Trump’s Multi-Million Request Places DOJ Integrity to the Take a look at, Authorized Students Say.” From Axios: “Authorized students informed Axios that if the Justice Division fingers President Trump the thousands and thousands in damages he requested in previous administrative claims, it could current an egregious breach of moral safeguards.” Learn extra here.
#4 “California Supreme Court docket Rejects Plan to Expunge Legal professional Self-discipline Information.” From Reuters: “The California Supreme Court docket has rejected a proposal that might have erased data of disciplinary actions in opposition to legal professionals within the state from public view in the event that they occurred greater than eight years in the past. The court docket denied the request by the State Bar of California on Wednesday, which implies the older data will proceed to seem on legal professionals’ public bar profiles. The court docket additionally rejected the bar’s proposal to decrease fines for disbarred legal professionals from $5,000 to $1,000 and to remove a $2,500 wonderful on suspended attorneys.” Learn extra here (present hyperlink).
#5 “State AGs Attacking ESG Are Flirting With Ethics Violations.” From Victor Flatt (Case Western) in Bloomberg Legislation: “The rise of environmental, social, and governance elements in personal sector shareholder, financing, and client choices has spurred a conservative backlash that’s accelerating within the second Trump administration. This response has mutated from being unhealthy coverage of questionable legality to probably violating authorized ethics, together with by some state attorneys normal. Such moral issues merely can’t be ignored or glossed over and in the end could present a test on authorities efforts to stamp out ESG fully.” Learn extra here.
#6 “The Division of Justice’s Damaged Accountability System.” From the Brennan Middle for Justice: “Attorneys within the U.S. Division of Justice (DOJ) should adjust to the skilled and moral requirements set forth in division rules and insurance policies, state bar guidelines, and federal regulation. Since January 20, nonetheless, the second Trump administration has systematically dismantled the DOJ’s inner controls that assist guarantee compliance with these requirements. This paper explains what these inner accountability programs have been, how the administration has damaged them, and the way courts are grappling with the implications as they confront a DOJ presenting questionable authorized positions and assertions of reality, evading court docket orders, and overstepping its prosecutorial authority.” Learn extra here.
#7 “Extra AI-Utilizing Litigants Getting Caught Hallucinating.” From Bloomberg Legislation: “Litigants’ utilization of AI-hallucinated instances, quotes, and citations in briefs and different case filings is changing into more and more frequent, based mostly on a Bloomberg Legislation evaluation of court docket opinions and different judicial orders. In 2025, cases wherein legal professionals and professional se litigants have been caught misusing generative AI have elevated sevenfold. As tech-savvy litigants swiftly undertake synthetic intelligence instruments, they tackle the chance related to counting on a generative AI chatbot to conduct authorized analysis, typically failing to confirm hallucinated case regulation earlier than constructing their authorized briefs. The outcomes of the information evaluation bolster the notion that AI misuse is increasing.” Learn extra here.
#8 “Authorized Ethics Amid Technological Change: From AI to Digital Lawyering.” From ABA’s Enterprise Legislation Right now: “Synthetic intelligence and digital instruments are quickly reshaping the authorized panorama, however they don’t remove the necessity for legal professionals to adjust to longstanding skilled guidelines. The CLE program The Nice Tech Quest of 2025: Moral Issues in AI, Deepfakes, Social Media, Cybersecurity, and Digital Lawyering on the ABA Enterprise Legislation Part (“BLS”) 2025 Fall Assembly delivered a well timed and thought-provoking exploration into the moral, sensible, and technological challenges going through immediately’s authorized professionals. The dialogue, moderated by Jasmine Smith, Chair of the BLS Skilled Accountability Committee and Associate at Robinson Grey Stepp Laffitte, featured useful insights from Amy Richardson, Associate at HWG LLP and Professor at Duke Legislation Faculty, and Jon Garon, Affiliate Dean for Expertise and Innovation at Nova Southeastern College’s Shepherd Broad Faculty of Legislation. Exploring subjects from deepfakes to cybersecurity, the panel reviewed the assorted moral obligations that apply to legal professionals in several technological contexts, together with core themes of competence and shopper confidentiality.” Learn extra here.
#9 “Appeals Court docket Weighs Whether or not Alina Habba Is a Lawful U.S. Legal professional.” From the New York Occasions: “A federal appeals court docket on Monday thought-about whether or not Alina Habba, a former private legal professional to President Trump, is lawfully performing as New Jersey’s high federal prosecutor, in a case that might assist make clear the bounds of a president’s energy to maintain U.S. attorneys in workplace with out Senate involvement. In August, a district court docket decide dominated that Ms. Habba had been performing as U.S. legal professional unlawfully, plunging a struggling New Jersey court docket system into disarray and putting the work of the federal prosecutor’s workplace there right into a novel type of authorized limbo. The decide, Matthew W. Brann, discovered that Ms. Habba’s interim tenure had expired in early July and that she had not lawfully develop into the performing U.S. legal professional, regardless of what the Justice Division had stated. The division appealed that call, and in a Philadelphia courthouse on Monday three judges from the U.S. Court docket of Appeals for the Third Circuit bombarded one in all its legal professionals with questions whereas Ms. Habba watched from the gallery.” Learn extra here (present hyperlink).
#10 “Rural Institutional Loss.” From Elizabeth Chambliss (South Carolina) in Jotwell reviewing Lisa R. Pruitt, Jennifer Sherman, & Jennifer Schwartz, Authorized Deserts and Spatial Injustice: A Research of Prison Authorized Methods in Rural Washington, 134 Yale L.J. Discussion board 847 (2025) and Michele Statz, A World-Threatening Feeling: Grief, Ethical Harm, and Institutional Loss in Rural Courts, 93 Fordham L. Rev. 1257 (2025): “Two latest research of rural court docket programs spotlight the significance of institutional funding for enhancing entry to justice in rural communities. Rural communities not solely want extra particular person suppliers, corresponding to legal professionals and group justice staff, additionally they want native nonprofits, group motion networks, psychological well being remedy facilities and different institutional infrastructure to assist and companion with suppliers together with—critically—extra public funding in rural county authorities and courts.” Learn extra here.
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Renee Knake Jefferson holds the endowed Doherty Chair in Authorized Ethics and is a Professor of Legislation on the College of Houston. Try extra of her writing on the Legal Ethics Roundup. Discover her on X (previously Twitter) at @reneeknake or Bluesky at legalethics.bsky.social.
