Purpose of Assignment: The purpose of this assignment is for students to explain their opinions on the appropriate course of action to take when confronted with ethical situations.

Course Competency: Apply the highest standards of professional conduct to legal scenarios.

Instructions:

Content:

• You work at a large law firm with its own new in-house ethics committee (consisting of attorneys and paralegals), which investigates ethical issues internally. You are concerned after a discussion with your supervising attorney. Your attorney has decided to take a last-minute trip to Las Vegas with some of his college roommates. However, his neighbors are coming into the office while he is away to finalized their uncontested divorce. He is good friends with them, and agreed to represent them and guide them through the process. He filed a divorce action and the final hearing is impending while he is planning on being away. He forgot to have the clients sign a fee agreement in the beginning, so he has asked you to prepare a fee agreement for his “usual hourly rate” and meet with both the husband and wife to have them sign the agreement. He has instructed you to prepare the final judgment entry and sign his name to it, as you have prepared these entries before, and he is quite confident in your skill. He would like you to go to court with the clients to ensure they are in the right place and make them comfortable, and if there are any issues with the entry or the judge needs any information, to provide the necessary counsel to the clients. He has advised that this should all be easy and no more than ten minutes, as the Judge is good friends with both your supervising attorney and the clients, and she will allow you to appear and assist the clients in his absence. He also has no worries about any issues, as your co-worker Melissa, a fellow paralegal, performed the same tasks for her supervising attorney before the same Judge just two weeks prior.
• Write a memorandum to your firm’s ethics committee addressing your concerns over the conversation.

• Explain each ethical violation you’re concerned about, including a legal analysis for each violation using case law and the ethical rules that apply to both attorneys and paralegals. An in-text citation to each specific rule that applies should be included.
• Address concerns related to the unauthorized practice of law, fee setting, conflicts of interest, competence, confidentiality, and the duty to report, as well as any other ethical issues you perceive.
• Consistent with the firm’s practice regarding ethical concerns, you should also provide your recommendation for the proper course of action from this point forward
  • (i.e. should the attorney be reprimanded, should the attorney or any other individuals be reported to the state investigatory body? Is there a duty to report the attorney or any other individuals to any other third parties?)

Format:

• Your assignment should be formatted as a memorandum to the firm’s ethics committee. Your memorandum should be 3-4 pages in length, with proper formatting, spelling and grammar. You should use at least 3 primary legal sources in your memorandum, including case law, as well as citations to the ethical rules for paralegals and attorneys.
• Your memo should contain the following sections:

• • Heading or Caption
  • Facts
  • Issue(s) Presented
  • Answer to Issue
  • Reasoning or Discussion
  • Conclusion

• Answer preview

Answer preview

: Ethics Committee

From: Your name

Date: 01 November, 2019.

Subject: A Memorandum on Ethical Issues

Caption

Laws are a set of rules that are meant to govern a specific community or state (Barents, 2019). They are implemented to direct people in the right way to live and render punishments if the laws are broken. But in some cases, rules are not followed up in the proper procedure they should be. This means that there are other advanced…