The VLW Blog

The Virginia State Bar Committee on Legal Ethics has trouble imagining a circumstance when sex with a client would not be a violation of legal ethics but stops short of finding such a relationship to be unethical per se in Legal Ethics Opinion 1853.
After outlining the manifold ethical problems created by having sex with a [...]

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Today is “Lawyer Professionalism Day” and, not coincidentally, the 266th birthday of the state’s most famous lawyer, Thomas Jefferson.
The Virginia Bar Association’s Commission on Professionalism is rolling out its “Principles of Professionalism” by providing electronic copies of the principles to bar organizations, law schools and law firms to e-mail to attorneys and law students.
In case [...]

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The Supreme Court of Virginia has adopted three multijurisdictional practice measures more than two years after the Virginia State Bar Council first recommended them to the high court. The court suggested revisions to the initial proposals, and the VSB sent the reworked provisions back to the court earlier this year.
One is a new Rule 1A:7, [...]

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A Virginia judge can pass the collection plate at church, but the judge may not want to preach during the stewardship campaign, according to a new ethics advisory opinion for judges.
Virginia’s Canons of Judicial Conduct clamp down on fund-raising activity for fear the prestige of the judge’s office will be perceived as leverage to solicit [...]

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With so many mediators out there mediating, ethical issues are bound to arise.
Over the past few years, mediator complaints and ethics issues have prompted governing bodies to consider revisions to the various guidelines, standards and procedures related to certification of mediators, mentors and training programs, according to the Virginia Supreme Court’s Office of the Executive [...]

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A lawyer might understand a distinction between “illegal conduct” by a judge and a lack of statutory authority for judicial action, but everybody at a Republican breakfast in Virginia Beach on Feb. 3 probably wasn’t a lawyer.
Or maybe it’s a distinction without a difference to Virginia Beach’s nine circuit judges.
The Virginian-Pilot reports that Bryant acknowledged [...]

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Roanoke lawyer David Nixon claimed that two senators – Ken Stolle and Tommy Norment – broke the conflict of interest of rules when they worked to rewrite Virginia’s eminent domain laws during the past General Assembly session. Their firm, Kaufman & Canoles, represents a number of local governments that could benefit from the changed condemnation [...]

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