This page contains materials and information related to professional conduct and ethical issues, including ineffective assistance of counsel and withdrawing or substituting counsel. Whether you need to know your duties to a client or you are raising an IAC claim in post-conviction, you have come to the right place.

This webinar focuses on the unique ethical challenges appellate attorneys encounter in their attorney-client relationships. Topics include the nature and scope of the client’s role and rights regarding the decision to appeal and the issues to be raised in the appeal, the attorney-client relationship when an attorney is pursuing an Anders brief, responsibilities when ending appellate representation, and overall communications with the client during the appellate process.

In this webinar, we address the ethical implications of government surveillance and client communications. Defense lawyers regularly use phone calls, texts and emails to communicate with clients, investigators, witnesses and others associated with their cases. Many of these communications are privileged, yet government surveillance programs can capture and store them. We explore how this happens, and how defense lawyers can keep their communications out of government hands.

In this webinar, we address the ethical implications of government surveillance and client communications. Defense lawyers regularly use phone calls, texts and emails to communicate with clients, investigators, witnesses and others associated with their cases. Many of these communications are privileged, yet government surveillance programs can capture and store them. We explore how this happens, and how defense lawyers can keep their communications out of government hands.

Patrick O’Donnell highlights some of the ethics issues that arise in internal investigations. How can competent counsel also take care to be ethical counsel?

Does a criminal defense lawyer have an ethical duty to advise the trial court during a proceeding if the defense lawyer determines that the trial judge did something or failed to do something which could cause error?

Should a criminal defense layer disclose to the Internal Revenue Service, as required by 26 U.S.C. § 6050I, Form 8300, information revealing the identity of a client who pays a cash fee in excess of $10,000?

What, if anything, must a lawyer advise a client paying in excess of $10,000 in cash of the requirements of 26 U.S.C. § 6050I, which requires the lawyer to file a Form 8300?

The question presented is whether it is ethical for a criminal defense lawyer to participate in a plea agreement that bars collateral attacks on convictions under 28 U.S.C. § 2255 in the absence of an express exclusion for claims based on ineffective assistance of counsel.

May we comply with a requirement to submit confidential attorney-client communications for review by a “Privilege Team” composed of law enforcement and intelligence officers without judicial oversight, and the provisions barring us from communicating on certain topics with our clients, whether or not those topics are directly related to our representation, consistent with our ethical obligations?

Whether the federal defender staff lawyers’ obligations to preserve client confidences and other confidential, privileged materials pursuant to Model Rules of Professional Conduct, Rule 1.6 is violated when a third party, the Administrative Office of the United States Courts (AO), takes over and manages the technology systems of the federal defender office, including specifically federal defender e-mail, case management programs, and statistical systems, that contain confidential and privileged information.

The duties of defense counsel and prosecution as to the representation of defendants being resentenced following changes from the U.S. Sentencing Commission retroactively reducing the base offense level for federal crack cocaine convictions, effective March 3, 2008.

Whether it violates Alabama Rule of Professional Conduct 3.7(a) for a sole practitioner to tape record a statement from a witness without having a third person present. The prosecutor seeks a hearing to disqualify counsel because the prosecutor intends to call defense counsel as a witness about the statement, apparently no matter what the statement says or whether there is a bona fide issue of voluntariness of the statement.

Whether a serious threat of violence by the client against the lawyer is a waiver of confidentiality, creation of a personal conflict of interest, and justification for the attorney’s withdrawal.

Whether a conflict of interest has been created by public defenders being legally required disclosure to the court and the prosecutor of the client’s stated intent to choke the prosecutor to death in court and then commit suicide, communicated to them by appellate counsel within the same public defender’s office. The case is back before the trial court, and the inquiring lawyers are counsel of record.