MCWG Partner Barry Temkin Was Quoted Extensively On The Topic of Legal Ethics in U.S. Law Week on January 3, 2012.

Mound Cotton partner Barry Temkin was quoted extensively on the topic of legal ethics in U.S. Law Week on January 3, 2012.  The article, entitled "Federal Courts play Catch Up on Ghostwriting as States Cheer Unbundled Legal Services," explains that ghostwriting is when lawyers draft pleadings and other legal documents on behalf of clients who sign the documents in their own names.  Ghostwriting "is part of an overall trend permitting limited-scope representation and unbundled legal services, by which clients can retain lawyers for specific individual tasks, and lawyers may explicitly limit the scope of their representation," according to Barry Temkin, the chair of the New York County Lawyers' Association Committee on Professional Ethics, which published a 2010 opinion favoring ghostwriting."  However, lawyers who ghostwrite pleadings for clients have "an ethical obligation to refrain from giving bad advice, and to refrain from promoting or participating in frivolous litigation."
 
For more information, see the annexed article.

Reproduced with permission from The United States Law Week, 80 U.S.L.W. 860 (Jan. 3, 2012).
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