Sometimes it's 1% who give the other 99% a bad name

[vaskidmark]

Paging Mr. Ned Hamford.  Mr. Ned Hamford, please pick up the white courtesy phone.


From Glenn Reynolds (Instapundit): LEGAL ETHICS CASE OF THE YEAR: Lawyer Falls For Nigerian Inheritance Scam, Gets Suspended. “Please, people, refrain from the Iowa jokes. Lawyers in Iowa aren't the only ones who fall for Nigerian email scams; it’s more common than you might think among attorneys.” Really? Really? Good grief.

http://abovethelaw.com/2013/12/lawyer-falls-for-nigerian-inheritance-scam-gets-suspended/

Which is worse: to be unethical or to be stupid — really, really stupid?

Who says you have to choose? That’s the lesson of today’s story about a lawyer who fell for a Nigerian inheritance scam, dragged his clients into the mess as well, and just got his law license suspended by the Iowa Supreme Court.

Dear Friend: Please permit me to make your acquaintance in so informal a manner. This is necessitated by my urgent need to reach a dependable and trust wordy partner. We do not know each other, it does not matter.

My tale will not cause discomfort or embarrassment in whatever form, except to a monumentally moronic lawyer — who got cleared on some (but not all) of the ethics charges against him because he genuinely believed that a trunk full of money was going to magically show up on his office doorstep….

He really and truely believed that?  Really?

I'm gonna hire this guy as my next criminal defense attorney.  If he can make the Iowa Supreme Court believe he really and truely believed a trunk fuill of money was going to show up, he should be able to convince a jury of folks who could not get out of jury duty that I didn't do it.

stay safe.

[Ned Hamford]

I've got a theory...
Drug and Alcohol Abuse & Addiction in the Legal Profession

http://www.benchmarkinstitute.org/t_by_t/mcle/sa.pdf

A fun bit of legal knowledge from my recent ethics update. Attorneys who commit malpractice cannot subtract their own fee (or what their fee would have been if they did the job right, or at all ect) from what is awarded against them. http://www.hinshawlaw.com/newsroom-publications-alerts-555.html

The questions answered are from the questions raised; whose very origins bespeak a world view quite distant from my own.   

[lee n. field]

The typical Nigerian come-on is a scheme I can picture a bad (and maybe not too bright) lawyer going for.

[Hawkmoon]

Good grief! This was no rookie.

Our calibration of the sanction also requires us to consider the fact that Wright is an experienced lawyer with more than thirty years of practice behind him. Iowa Supreme Ct. Bd. of Prof’l Ethics & Conduct v. Wagner, 599 N.W.2d 721, 730 (Iowa 1999).

I wonder if he's a friend of Nancy Grace:

We consider Wright’s prior record of three private admonitions and two public reprimands as an additional aggravating factor affecting our decision. See Iowa Supreme Ct. Bd. of Prof’l Ethics & Conduct v. McKittrick, 683 N.W.2d 554, 563 (Iowa 2004).

[MechAg94]

Other than being stupid, it sounds like he flat out lied to the other client. 

[vaskidmark]

Other than being stupid, it sounds like he flat out lied to the other client. 

How can you lie when you truely believe in unicorn farts, fairy dust and the President of Nigeria?

Reminds me of Rich v. Bruce, where the 4th Circuit got a prison guard off the hook for several million dollars over some inmate being beaten within a quarter-inch of his life based on a judicial ruling that he (the prison guard) was stupid.  Go look it up - they honestly called him stupid.

stay safe.