January 04, 2016
On "lawyer professionalism", John Roberts, say it ain't so.
Like Bill Clinton, and although a bit younger and obviously a different breed of cat, SCOTUS Chief Justice John Roberts is "one of ours." He's a baby boomer--and other baby boomers are very proud of him. Me, too. He's my age, a fellow Midwestern corporate brat and attended law school in Boston with a number of people I knew growing up or have met along the way. In his recent state of the federal judiciary message, he made most of the right noises about the new and potentially troublesome "proportionality" amendments--troublesome, because I think the changes will be less intuitive and more difficult to apply for lawyers and judges than the Advisory Committee or your CLE instructors may have you thinking--to the discovery provisions if the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. For reasons that aren't clear to me, this year Chief Justice Roberts stated:
As for the lawyers, most will readily agree—in the abstract—that they
have an obligation to their clients, and to the justice system, to avoid antagonistic tactics, wasteful procedural maneuvers, and teetering brinksmanship. I cannot believe that many members of the bar went to law school because of a burning desire to spend their professional life wearing down opponents with creatively burdensome discovery requests or evading
legitimate requests through dilatory tactics. The test for plaintiffs’ and
defendants’ counsel alike is whether they will affirmatively search out
cooperative solutions, chart a cost-effective course of litigation, and assume
shared responsibility with opposing counsel to achieve just results.
Posted by JD Hull at 10:05 PM | Comments (0)