Exploring Attorney Professionalism: Common Sense and Decency in Law (Full Transcript)

Speaker 1: Good day, everyone. Welcome to attorney professionalism. There's more to it than just making a lot of money and having a lot of clients by Quimby. My name is Ken Kula. This presentation includes a number of course materials, including today's slides complete with detailed presenter notes. You can follow along with those slides or simply sit back and enjoy our introduction to attorney professionalism. When we talk about attorney professionalism, we are really talking just about common sense and decency. My favorite quotes about each come from three individuals. Two, who you may know, and one, who you most probably do not. Either way, they're good quotes and they will form the backdrop for this presentation. First, Robert Green Ingersoll, an American lawyer from the late 1800s and known as the great agnostic. He's not the one you probably don't know. He once said, quote, it is a thousand times better to have common sense without education than to have education without common sense. Next, the well-known but often criticized US Supreme Court Associate Justice William O. Douglas. He said, common sense often makes good law. True enough, but much like Justice Douglas himself, a little too simplistic. Finally, the individual who most of you will not know is Subrahmanyam Raja Krishnamoorthi, the US representative for Illinois' 8th Congressional District. He once said, quote, when the norm is decency, other virtues can thrive. Integrity, honesty, compassion, kindness, and trust. End quote. This course will help you deal with clients, opposing counsel, and the courts in a professional manner, using common sense to make good law, and at the same time, promote integrity, honesty, compassion, kindness, and trust. All right, let's begin. The introduction to the topic and presentation outline will follow. Today's introduction to attorney professionalism will focus on five specific American Bar Association model rules of professional conduct. Rule 1.6, Rule 1.9, Rule 4.4, Rule 5.6, and Rule 7.1. We'll also discuss one sample state's attorney's professional oath, the Texas Lawyer's Creed, which is directed to setting minimum standards for attorney civility, and we'll discuss a single real-world case entitled In Re AP, found at 9 Washington App 2nd, 1089, from the Washington Court of Appeals, handed down in 2019.