Lawyers Crossing Lines: Nine Stories

Lawyers Crossing Lines is a collection of true stories about lawyers who broke the rules and ended up being sued for malpractice, disbarred, or prosecuted.The book is intended as supplemental reading for students in professional responsibility classes in American law schools. Casebooks in the field typically present edited versions of appellate decisions and excerpted materials which tend to be abstract. The stories in this book come directly from the courtroom -- from the trenches -- revealing the gritty realities of lawyers in trouble -- how they got there, and what happened to them. Each story is followed by comments and questions focusing on the issues raised.Each narrative was selected based on several criteria: whether it raises significant issues of legal ethics; whether it would lend itself to good classroom discussion; and whether there was an interesting story to be drawn from the trial record. The cases selected are recent; all were decided in the 1900s.The stories present a range of ethical dilemmas confronting lawyers in different areas of practice. For example, Chapter 1, "A Liar for a Client" tells the story of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher's travails in representing a company whose officers turned out to be liars. "The Case of the Frozen Broccoli" describes the prosecution of two lawyers charged with racketeering in their representation of the Cali, Columbia cocaine cartel. Conflict-of-interest issues figure prominently in "Breaking Up is Hard to Do" and "Of Chinese Walls and Comfort Zones".Although intended primarily for law students, the stories told make fascinating reading for anyone interested in questions of legal ethics.James L. Kelley is the author of 'Lawyers Crossing Lines: Nine Stories', published 2001 under ISBN 9780890896037 and ISBN 0890896038.