I am not an IP attorney and my knowledge of fair use is minimal. So I won’t comment on the merits of Craig v. Pop Matters Media Inc. in the Southern District of New York which involves publication of a photograph. But I don’t think you need to be an ethics attorney or an attorney at all to know you generally need your client to be a client and to know that they’re a client…

I graduated from Marquette University Law School and aside from a couple of federal court admissions, I practice exclusively in Wisconsin. (I’ve applied to Illinois, but that’s still pending; I guess I’ll need to update my blog tagline eventually..) Wisconsin is the only state in the country to offer diploma privilege to graduates of its law schools (though New Hampshire has a limited honors-style program)—that means, by virtue of graduating here, we get to practice…

Facebook has been available to the general public for more than a decade; before that it was MySpace and after that it was Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram, and a bunch of apps my 9-year-old who doesn’t even have a phone seems to know about but I don’t. Lawyers have been using these platforms to varying degrees since their inception, both personally and professionally. Judges, too—here in Wisconsin judges are elected and use social media for campaigning…

Sometimes, lawyers do stupid things that get them in the news. I know this is not a novel concept to anyone who has read this blog or for that matter has existed on the planet for long enough to understand what a lawyer is and what sort of stupid things they may do. And when lawyers make the news, I am often asked directly or via social media for my thoughts. I write about lawyers…

(This blog is about ridiculousness so I am using a stately stock gavel as the accompanying image.) In my ethics nerd friend circles, we often discuss “those cases.” “Those cases” either involve attorney discipline or judges admonishing attorneys for allegedly bad behavior outside of the disciplinary cases; they’re not of great importance or precedential value by themselves. But they act as cautionary tales and generate extra publicity and discussion (at least in my ethics nerd…

There’s been a bit of a discussion on #legalethicsTwitter (yes it’s a thing) about what lawyers are allowed to call themselves, professionally. I was surprised to learn that in Texas, lawyers are not allowed to use trade names for their law firms. They can use their own names and those of active, retired, or deceased partners, and can use entity designations such as “LLC.” Married women can use their maiden names (gee thanks for expressly…

(Someday, I will get back to writing about things other than coronavirus. Today is not that day. And someday I will find better pictures to accompany these posts. Today is also not that day.) I know a couple of lawyers who have presumed or confirmed cases of COVID-19. Happily, all of them are doing well, even if it was bumpy for awhile. None of them have posed this question to me, but I’ve seen it…