Ok, this is for the lawyers, law students and soon to be law students out there. Or anyone else who cares enought to read this and comment.
Lawyer represents scumbag in divorce from ms. scumbag. Lawyer handles/gets sucked into or learns about scumbags being fired for sexual harrassment, stalking of Ms. scumbag, drug and alcohol use and large porn collection of fetish type stuff. Finally lawyer fires scumbag as a client for continuing to stalk ms. scumbag. It was bad enough that lawyer changes his retainer agreement to ad clauses about domestic violence and stalking being grounds for lawyer to cease all representation in domestic cases.
Flash forward about 2 years. Lawyer and wife are having issues and things get worse. Lawyer learns that wife is having an affair with scumbag. A divorce is filed on the grounds of adultery and full custody is sought by lawyer. Wife denies affair until she is confronted with photographs and the like.
The question is this - what, if anything, can lawyer tell his attorney about scumbag? Does the child custody issue change anything? what if the crimes were more serious? What if scumbag was living in the home with the child after lawyer moved out?
This was a real question about legal ethics faced by our bar. See the lawyer is a cigar smoking, beer drinking lawyer.
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2 comments:
Maybe the more pertinent question is, "How do you keep yourself from carving his heart out with a sharpened spoon?"
Try to keep yourself out of the news. Seems like if the child could be at risk, the gloves come off...I'd tell your attorney. Consequences be damned, as long as the kid's safe in the end.
No wonder you drink beer!
The issues boiled down to “when can a lawyer violate privilege?” The answer is malpractice suits and fee disputes. Both of which are to protect the lawyer’s interest. The bar ethics opinion was being drafted when my divorce finalized and the request for an opinion was withdrawn. I have it on pretty good authority I would have been allowed to violate privilege. But the back up was a suit on unpaid fees where privilege is waived – he screwed me on that too.
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