Ed. note: Please welcome Renee Knake Jefferson back to the pages of Above the Law. Subscribe to her Substack, Legal Ethics Roundup, here.
Welcome to what captivates, haunts, inspires, and surprises me every week in the world of legal ethics.
Hello from Arizona. And happy early Thanksgiving. I’ve been fortunate to start the week with two of my best girlfriends, wrapping up our long weekend getaway in the Santa Catalina Mountains. This rainbow greeted us on our first day!
Many of us—but not all of us—will enjoy a break from work or school over this holiday week. Time with family and friends can be a respite for some, but others may be separated from or missing loved ones. Wherever you find yourself, I wish you many moments for gratitude.
I hope you know how grateful I am for this community. Thank you for reading, subscribing, sending me your thoughts, and sharing the LER with others.
We are wrapping up November with a week of many, many legal ethics headlines. So you get an extra five. Read on below.
Highlights from Last Week – Top Ten Fifteen Headlines
#1 “The Unraveling of the Justice Department. Sixty Attorneys Describe a Year of Chaos and Suspicion.” From The New York Times: “President Trump’s second term has brought a period of turmoil and controversy unlike any in the history of the Justice Department. Trump and his appointees have blasted through the walls designed to protect the nation’s most powerful law enforcement agency from political influence; they have directed the course of criminal investigations, openly flouted ethics rules and caused a breakdown of institutional culture. To date, more than 200 career attorneys have been fired, and thousands more have resigned. …We interviewed more than 60 attorneys who recently resigned or were fired from the Justice Department. Much of what they told us is reported here for the first time.” Read more here (gift link).
“They didn’t want the ethics office calling them up and telling them what to do.”
Joseph Tirrell, former director of the Departmental Ethics Office
#2 “Trusting the Machine: Legal Ethics in the Era of Automated Decision-Making.” From Legal Reader: “Imagine a world where algorithms set bail, draft legal briefs, and issue sentences. As court systems explore automation in law, ethical considerations, questions about fairness, accountability, and transparency come to the fore. Can we trust machines with decisions that affect liberty and justice? This shift raises urgent ethical issues in automated decision-making and tests our commitment to legal ethics in artificial intelligence.” Read more here.
#3 “Former SCOTX Chiefs Make Case for Judicial Independence.” From The Texas Lawbook: “In a recent joint appearance at a public policy forum in Austin, three former Texas Supreme Court chief justices discussed encroachments by the legislative branch on judicial independence and an increase in hot-button issues being directed into state courts.” Read more here. (Full disclosure – I’m married to one of the former SCOTX Chiefs — Wallace B. Jefferson. If you don’t know our “Loving” story, check it out here.)
#4 “Judge Horrified as Lawyers Submit Evidence in Court That Was Faked With AI.” From Futurism: “Lawyers across the country have been landing themselves in hot water for submitting botched court documents written with the help of AI, in blunders that were clear signs of the tech’s rapid inroads into the courtroom. But it was only a matter of time before AI wasn’t just producing clerical errors, but actual submitted ‘evidence.’ That’s what recently played out in a California court over a housing dispute — and it didn’t end well for the AI-fielding party. As NBC News reports, the plaintiffs in the case, Mendones v. Cushman & Wakefield, Inc., submitted a strange video that was supposed to be witness testimony. In it, the witness’s face is fuzzy and barely animated. Aside from the rare blink, the only noticeable movement comes from her flapping lips, while the rest of her expression remains unchanged. There’s also a jarring cut, after which the movements repeat themselves. In other words, it was obviously an AI deepfake. And according to the reporting, it might be one of the first documented instances of a deepfake being submitted as purportedly authentic evidence in court — or at least one that was caught.” Read more here.
#5 “Jerry’s Jeremiad: A Wild Dissent Roils Texas Redistricting Debate. You’ve Never Seen a Judicial Burn Quite Like This One.” From Politico: “When a judge warns readers to ‘Fasten your seatbelts!’ before a 104-page legal diatribe — best to buckle up. Jerry Smith, a judge on the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, delivered that admonition before launching into an invective-laden, unusually personal excoriation of a legal decision Tuesday throwing out congressional boundaries Texas just redrew at the urging of President Donald Trump.” Read more here.
#6 “How a Top DC Lawyer and High-Stakes Poker Player Risks Losing It All.” From Washingtonian: “[Tom] Goldstein’s problems have caught the local legal community off guard. ‘The whole thing is extremely shocking, to have a prominent lawyer be indicted for federal crimes,’ says one Supreme Court lawyer. ‘I would say it’s less shocking that it was Tom than if it was some other lawyer, just in the sense that he’s always been an unorthodox guy. He’s always been a risk taker.’ But why did one of Washington’s top lawyers risk everything to play cards?” Read more here.
#7 “Federal Judge Blasts Potential ‘Government Misconduct’ in Comey Case.” From the Washington Post: “A federal judge on Monday offered a blistering assessment of the Justice Department’s case against former FBI director James B. Comey, detailing what he described as a ‘disturbing pattern of profound investigative missteps’ and possible misconduct that could imperil the prosecution. U.S. Magistrate Judge William Fitzpatrick criticized authorities for their “cavalier” attitude toward the rights of Comey and others. Lindsey Halligan, the Trump-appointed U.S. attorney overseeing the case, also appeared to have made ‘fundamental misstatements of the law’ to the grand jury that indicted Comey on charges of lying to Congress, he wrote.” Read more here (gift link).
#8 “ABA to Review Law School Standards, May Drop Diversity Rule Amid Pressure.” From Reuters: “The American Bar Association will undertake a sweeping review of its standards for law schools as states weigh dropping the organization as an accreditor and critics blame its regulations for driving up student costs. The ABA may also eliminate its diversity and inclusion requirement for law schools, which has placed the ABA in the crosshairs of the Trump administration and other conservatives who claim it is discriminatory.” Read more here.
#9 “Ousted Immigration Judge Describes Deepening Court Backlog.” From PBS: “Dozens of immigration judges have been fired by the Trump administration with no explanation. From coast to coast, nearly four dozen judges have lost their positions as the courts face a record backlog. Many had worked in immigrant defense, prompting questions about whether the firings are part of the administration’s hardline approach. Geoff Bennett discussed more with former judge Emmett Soper.” Read more and listen here.
#10 “McDermott’s Outside Investor Talks Augur Big Law Transformation.” From Bloomberg Law: “The possibility of outside investors taking a stake in McDermott Will & Schulte nudges rivals to consider a similar step and possibly change the way the legal industry operates. Small firms have already begun to embrace the idea of having non-lawyer investors own back-office operations, said Fredric Litwiniuk, chief growth officer at Litco LSO. His Phoenix-based company handles functions such as accounting, technology, and marketing for three firms and plans to add two more by the end of the year, he said.” Read more here.
#11 “Judge Gets Sacked for ‘Routinely’ Wearing Elvis Wig & Glasses on Bench and Playing Icon’s Legendary Music at Hearings.” From The Sun: “A judge has been forced to resign after he routinely dressed up as Elvis Presley and played the King of Rock and Roll’s greatest hits in court. A disciplinary committee found that Matthew Thornhill would often don a pompadour wig, aviator shades and a robe during hearings to cosplay as Elvis. The St. Charles County Circuit judge dressed up as the music icon for rulings around Halloween season in Missouri, court documents state. He was also accused of constantly slipping in irrelevant Elvis references during hearings and swearings-in.” Read more here.
#12 “Court Rules That Crime-Fraud Exception Strips Firm’s Privilege Claim.” From JD Supra: “Otherwise privileged communications between lawyers and their clients that further ongoing or even contemplated criminal conduct can lose their protection under the so-called ‘crime-fraud exception.’ Courts disagree about this worrisome doctrine’s expansion to communications about fraudulent, or sometimes even willfully tortious, conduct. In Eletson Holdings Inc. v. Levona Holdings Ltd., No. 23-cv-7331 (LJL), 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 184584 (S.D.N.Y. Sept. 19, 2025), defendant pointed to the crime-fraud exception in moving to compel Reed Smith to produce documents. … The court noted that even if the firm ‘was a victim of its client’s fraud rather than complicit in it, the crime-fraud exception would apply if the communications at issue were in furtherance of the fraud.’ Id. at *8-9.” Read more here.
#13 “The Neuroanalytics Of Using Legal Tech: Clio’s Joshua Lenon On A First-of-its-Kind Cognitive Study.” From LawSites: “Legal technology company Clio recently released the 10th edition of its Legal Trends Report, its annual analysis of data and survey responses on legal practice and emerging trends, and this year’s report ventured into new territory. For the first time, the report included a neuroanalytics study of legal professionals, analyzing electrical brain activity in legal professionals as they performed various work-related tasks, in order to paint a picture of their emotional strain and mental focus as they worked.” Read more here.
#14 “Lawyers Need Lifelong Training in Ethics, Say Peers.” From the Law Society Gazette: “Lawyers should receive training in professional ethics throughout their careers, peers have concluded after a wide-ranging inquiry into threats to the rule of law in the UK. In its report Rule of Law: Holding the Line Between Anarchy and Tyranny, the House of Lords constitution committee, states that ‘trust in the legal profession has been undermined by high-profile examples of unethical practice’. This distrust, accelerated by ‘negative rhetoric in the media and by politicians’ and exacerbated by ‘massive inequalities and lack of access to legal advice’, undermines respect for the rule of law. The report cites the Post Office Horizon scandal and Legal Services Board research showing ‘a lack of understanding and/or due regard to the significance of what upholding professional ethical duties means in practice’.” Read more here.
#15 “Detecting AI Misconduct by Opposing Counsel Is a Lawyer’s Duty.” From Bloomberg Law: “Much discussion about artificial intelligence has centered on a lawyer’s duty to competently and ethically use it. A recent California court decision raises a critical, additional question: Do attorneys have a responsibility to detect and report an opponent’s use of AI, especially when that use results in fabricated or ‘hallucinated’ legal authority? In Noland v. Land of the Free, L.P., the California Court of Appeal, Second District, determined that proactive detection is best practice and a form of financial self-defense. The court’s denial of fees establishes that attorneys who fail to identify AI fraud may not qualify for recovery, even when opposing counsel’s misconduct deserves sanctions.” Read more here.
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Renee Knake Jefferson holds the endowed Doherty Chair in Legal Ethics and is a Professor of Law at the University of Houston. Check out more of her writing at the Legal Ethics Roundup. Find her on X (formerly Twitter) at @reneeknake or Bluesky at legalethics.bsky.social.
The post Legal Ethics Roundup: ‘Judicial Burn’ Dissent, High-Stakes Poker Player Lawyer Risks It All, AI-Faked Evidence, DOJ Misconduct & More appeared first on Above the Law.