Opening Day

After a week of rain, cold, snow, and general "when is this winter going to end" dreariness, the sun has stepped onto the deck in time for opening day, which just means I would rather be at the ballgame than in professional responsibility class. But it is a bit too early to start skipping class for baseball games. While I am here, I might as well start thinking about the assignment I have to turn in in a couple of weeks, which is a description on my own philosophy of lawyering. Maybe I could just hand in a link to this blog! Speaking of this blog and ethics, I have been wondering what kind of limits a lawyer has on blogging. Certainly, there are plenty of legal blogs, but most of those focus on the state of the law in a certain area. The rules of professional conduct prohibit a lawyer from revealing information relating to the representation of a client. I think blogging about pending litigation would probably be off limits, but what about all of the crazy things I see in court on a daily basis? Because the court is an open public forum, it is probably OK to recount what happens in court, but on the other hand, prosecutors have special duties. The Washington rules of professional conduct 3.8 (f) states:

except for statements that are necessary to inform the public of the
nature and extent of the prosecutor's action and that serve a legitimate law
enforcement purpose, refrain from making extrajudicial comments that have a
substantial likelihood of heightening public condemnation of the accused and
exercise reasonable care to prevent investigators, law enforcement
personnel, employees or other persons assisting or associated with the
prosecutor in a criminal case from making an extrajudicial statement that
the prosecutor would be prohibited from making under Rule 3.6 or this Rule.

That would seem to indicate that writing about all of the humorous things that happen in court might fall under the category of extrajudicial comments that have a substantial likelihood of hightening public condemnation of the accused, which is really too bad because there are some stories that I would really like to share, but long before I started this class I had determined that a lawyers ethical commitment is the most important part of being a lawyer. This class is incredibly boring, but ethics seems to be to be so indispensable to the practice. However, getting that down on paper as a philosophy is not easy. It would be easier to just recount the humorous things that people say in court.