{"id":135923,"date":"2025-10-27T15:07:10","date_gmt":"2025-10-27T23:07:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/2025\/10\/27\/legal-ethics-roundup-judges-critique-lawyer-lies-ca-wont-expunge-discipline-ag-attacks-on-esg-as-ethics-violations-ai-keeps-hallucinating-legal-opinions-more\/"},"modified":"2025-10-27T15:07:10","modified_gmt":"2025-10-27T23:07:10","slug":"legal-ethics-roundup-judges-critique-lawyer-lies-ca-wont-expunge-discipline-ag-attacks-on-esg-as-ethics-violations-ai-keeps-hallucinating-legal-opinions-more","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/2025\/10\/27\/legal-ethics-roundup-judges-critique-lawyer-lies-ca-wont-expunge-discipline-ag-attacks-on-esg-as-ethics-violations-ai-keeps-hallucinating-legal-opinions-more\/","title":{"rendered":"Legal Ethics Roundup: Judges Critique Lawyer Lies, CA Won\u2019t Expunge Discipline, AG Attacks On ESG As Ethics Violations, AI Keeps Hallucinating Legal Opinions & More"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ed. note<\/u>: Please welcome Renee Knake Jefferson back to the pages of Above the Law. Subscribe to her Substack, Legal Ethics Roundup,\u00a0<\/strong>here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Welcome to what captivates, haunts, inspires, and surprises me every week in the world of legal ethics.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Hot off the press from West Academic!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Happy Monday!<\/h3>\n

Over the past eighteen months, I\u2019ve been immersed in multiple collaborative endeavors with more than a dozen different coauthors. Some are updates to older casebooks and treatises, but two projects are new casebooks, one which hit the shelves last week.\u00a0Rocky Rhodes<\/strong>\u00a0(Missouri) and I are thrilled to release into the world our casebook\u00a0Constitutional Law: Foundations, Interpretations, and Commentaries<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0<\/a>(West Academic). We are especially grateful to our publisher\u00a0Louis Higgins<\/strong>, who suggested we work together.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Stay tuned for more publication reveals from my coauthors and me in the coming weeks and months!<\/p>\n

For now, let\u2019s turn to the headlines.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Highlights from Last Week\u00a0\u2013 Top Ten Headlines<\/h3>\n

#1 \u201cDOJ Lawyers\u2019 Courtroom Lies Challenge Judiciary, Ex-Judges Say.\u201d\u00a0<\/strong>From\u00a0Bloomberg Law:\u00a0<\/strong>\u201cFormer federal judges are lamenting a new challenge their colleagues on the bench face: government lawyers making false statements in court. Federal prosecutors and lawyers \u2018are lying to the federal courts,\u2019 and\u00a0President Donald Trump<\/strong>\u00a0and top officials are \u2018trashing individual judges,\u2019 retired\u00a0Judge J. Michael Luttig<\/strong>, a\u00a0George H. W. Bush<\/strong>appointee to the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, said at a Wednesday event in Washington. In some cases, \u2018you are wondering whether or not the information being given by the component of the action is accurate, and you\u2019re asking for details to follow up, and getting gibberish,\u2019 said former\u00a0Judge Paul Grimm<\/strong>, director of Duke Law School\u2019s Bolch Judicial Institute. The judges made their remarks at a panel hosted by the Society for the Rule of Law, a conservative legal group that\u2019s been critical of Trump\u2019s policies. A\u00a0study published this month<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0by nonpartisan legal journal Just Security found over 40 cases where federal courts have found \u2018serious defects\u2019 in the government\u2019s representations in court, including false statements and contradictions.\u201d Read more\u00a0here<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

#2 \u201cWhat if the Big Law Firms Hadn\u2019t Caved to Trump?.\u201d\u00a0<\/strong>From\u00a0The New Yorker:\u00a0<\/strong>\u201cIt is worth considering how we got here, and whether we could have done anything to slow this downward spiral. Counterfactuals are impossible to prove, but it doesn\u2019t require a giant speculative leap to conclude that, had major U.S. law firms not\u00a0so quickly surrendered<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0to Trump, this spring, he would have been denied early momentum for his lawlessness. Perhaps a united opposition might have even provided the opposite momentum, toward a defense of the rule of law.\u201d Read more\u00a0here<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

#3 \u201cTrump\u2019s Multi-Million Request Puts DOJ Integrity to the Test, Legal Scholars Say.\u201d\u00a0<\/strong>From\u00a0Axios:\u00a0<\/strong>\u201cLegal scholars told Axios that if the Justice Department hands\u00a0President Trump<\/strong>\u00a0the millions in damages he requested in past administrative claims, it would present an egregious breach of ethical safeguards.\u201d Read more\u00a0here<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

#4 \u201cCalifornia Supreme Court Rejects Plan to Expunge Attorney Discipline Records.\u201d\u00a0<\/strong>From\u00a0Reuters:\u00a0<\/strong>\u201cThe California Supreme Court has rejected a\u00a0proposal<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0that would have erased records of disciplinary actions against lawyers in the state from public view if they occurred more than eight years ago. The court denied the request by the State Bar of California on Wednesday, which means the older records will continue to appear on lawyers\u2019 public bar profiles. The court also rejected the bar\u2019s proposal to lower fines for disbarred lawyers from $5,000 to $1,000 and to eliminate a $2,500 fine on suspended attorneys.\u201d Read more\u00a0here<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0(gift link).<\/p>\n

#5 \u201cState AGs Attacking ESG Are Flirting With Ethics Violations.\u201d\u00a0<\/strong>From\u00a0Victor Flatt\u00a0<\/strong>(Case Western) in\u00a0Bloomberg Law:\u00a0<\/strong>\u201cThe rise of environmental, social, and governance factors in private sector shareholder, financing, and consumer decisions has spurred a conservative backlash that\u2019s accelerating in the second Trump administration. This response has mutated from being bad policy of questionable legality to possibly violating legal ethics, including by some state attorneys general. Such ethical concerns simply can\u2019t be ignored or glossed over and ultimately may provide a check on government efforts to stamp out ESG completely.\u201d Read more\u00a0here<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

#6 \u201cThe Department of Justice\u2019s Broken Accountability System.\u201d\u00a0<\/strong>From the\u00a0Brennan Center for Justice:\u00a0<\/strong>\u201cAttorneys in the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) must comply with the professional and ethical standards set forth in department regulations and policies, state bar rules, and federal law. Since January 20, however, the second Trump administration has systematically dismantled the DOJ\u2019s internal controls that help ensure compliance with these standards. This paper explains what those internal accountability systems were, how the administration has broken them, and how courts are grappling with the consequences as they confront a DOJ presenting questionable legal positions and assertions of fact, evading court orders, and overstepping its prosecutorial authority.\u201d Read more\u00a0here<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

#7 \u201cMore AI-Using Litigants Getting Caught Hallucinating.\u201d\u00a0<\/strong>From\u00a0Bloomberg Law:\u00a0<\/strong>\u201cLitigants\u2019 usage of AI-hallucinated cases, quotes, and citations in briefs and other case filings is becoming increasingly common, based on a Bloomberg Law analysis of court opinions and other judicial orders. In 2025, instances in which lawyers and pro se litigants were caught misusing generative AI have increased sevenfold. As tech-savvy litigants swiftly adopt artificial intelligence tools, they take on the risk associated with relying on a generative AI chatbot to conduct legal research, often failing to verify hallucinated case law before building their legal briefs. The results of the data analysis bolster the perception that AI misuse is expanding.\u201d Read more\u00a0here<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

#8 \u201cLegal Ethics Amid Technological Change: From AI to Virtual Lawyering.\u201d\u00a0<\/strong>From\u00a0ABA\u2019s Business Law Today:\u00a0<\/strong>\u201cArtificial intelligence and digital tools are rapidly reshaping the legal landscape, but they do not eliminate the need for lawyers to comply with longstanding professional rules. The CLE program\u00a0The Great Tech Quest of 2025: Ethical Considerations in AI, Deepfakes, Social Media, Cybersecurity, and Virtual Lawyering<\/em>\u00a0at the ABA Business Law Section (\u201cBLS\u201d) 2025 Fall Meeting delivered a timely and thought-provoking exploration into the ethical, practical, and technological challenges facing today\u2019s legal professionals. The discussion, moderated by\u00a0Jasmine Smith<\/strong>, Chair of the BLS Professional Responsibility Committee and Partner at Robinson Gray Stepp Laffitte, featured helpful insights from\u00a0Amy Richardson<\/strong>, Partner at HWG LLP and Professor at Duke Law School, and\u00a0Jon Garon<\/strong>, Associate Dean for Technology and Innovation at Nova Southeastern University\u2019s Shepherd Broad College of Law. Exploring topics from deepfakes to cybersecurity, the panel reviewed the various ethical obligations that apply to lawyers in different technological contexts, including core themes of competence and client confidentiality.\u201d Read more\u00a0here<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

#9 \u201cAppeals Court Weighs Whether Alina Habba Is a Lawful U.S. Attorney.\u201d\u00a0<\/strong>From the\u00a0New York Times:\u00a0<\/strong>\u201cA federal appeals court on Monday considered whether\u00a0Alina Habba<\/strong>, a former personal attorney to\u00a0President Trump<\/strong>, is lawfully acting as New Jersey\u2019s top federal prosecutor, in a case that could help clarify the limits of a president\u2019s power to keep U.S. attorneys in office without Senate involvement. In August, a district court judge ruled that Ms. Habba had been acting as U.S. attorney unlawfully, plunging a struggling New Jersey court system into disarray and placing the work of the federal prosecutor\u2019s office there into a novel form of legal limbo. The judge,\u00a0Matthew W. Brann<\/strong>, found that Ms. Habba\u2019s interim tenure had expired in early July and that she had not lawfully become the acting U.S. attorney, despite what the Justice Department had said. The department appealed that decision, and in a Philadelphia courthouse on Monday three judges from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit bombarded one of its lawyers with questions while Ms. Habba watched from the gallery.\u201d Read more\u00a0here<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0(gift link).<\/p>\n

#10 \u201cRural Institutional Loss.\u201d\u00a0<\/strong>From\u00a0Elizabeth Chambliss\u00a0<\/strong>(South Carolina) in\u00a0Jotwell<\/strong>\u00a0reviewing\u00a0Lisa R. Pruitt, Jennifer Sherman, & Jennifer Schwartz,\u00a0<\/strong>Legal Deserts and Spatial Injustice: A Study of Criminal Legal Systems in Rural Washington<\/em>,\u00a0<\/strong>134 Yale L.J. Forum 847 (2025) and\u00a0\u00a0Michele Statz,<\/strong>\u00a0A World-Threatening Feeling: Grief, Moral Injury, and Institutional Loss in Rural Courts<\/em>, 93 Fordham L. Rev. 1257 (2025):\u00a0<\/strong>\u201cTwo recent studies of rural court systems highlight the importance of institutional investment for improving access to justice in rural communities. Rural communities not only need more individual providers, such as lawyers and community justice workers, they also need local nonprofits, community action networks, mental health treatment centers and other institutional infrastructure to support and partner with providers including\u2014critically\u2014more public investment in rural county government and courts.\u201d Read more\u00a0here<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

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Get Hired<\/h3>\n

Did you miss the 350+ job postings from previous weeks? Find them all\u00a0here<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

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Upcoming Ethics Events & Other Announcements<\/h3>\n

Did you miss an announcement from previous weeks? Find them all\u00a0here<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

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Keep in Touch<\/h3>\n