Stand Up CLE – The Dirty Dozen (Part Three) December 1, 2016 Zachary S. McGee Written Materials 1. Presentation Script 2. ABA Model Rule 8.4 3. ABA Model Rule 1.3 4. California Rules of Professional Conduct 3-110 5. People v. Crawford, 259 Cal.App.2d 874 (Cal. App. Ct, 1968) 6. People v. McKenzie, 34 Cal.3d 616 (1983) 7. Standing Committee on Discipline v. Yagman, 55 F.3d 1430 (9th Cir. 1995) 8. ABA Model Rule 3.4(c) 9. California Business & Professions Code § 6103 10. California Attorney Guidelines of Civility and Professionalism, Section 4, July 20, 2007 11. ABA Model Rule 4.4 12. California Rules of Professional Conduct 5- 200(B) 13. The Florida Bar v. Bailey, 803 So.2d 683 (Fla. Sup. Ct. 2001) 14. In re Bailey, 439 Mass. 134 (2003) 15. Bailey v. Board of Bar Examiners, 90 A.3d 1137 (Me. Sup. Ct. 2014) 16. ABA Model Rule 1.6 17. ABA Model Rule 1.7 18. ABA Model Rule 2.1 19. People v. Steinberg, 79 N.Y.2d 673 (1992) 20. Matter of Steinberg, 137 A.D.2d 110 (1st Dep’t 1988) 21. Launders v. Steinberg, 39 A.D.3d 57 (1st Dep’t 2007) Stand Up CLE – The Dirty Dozen (Part Three) By Zachary S. McGee December 1, 2016 © 2016 New Media Legal Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved. Hi. My name is Zach McGee. I’d like to welcome you to the latest installment in our Stand Up CLE series where we repeatedly attempt the impossible – teaching you something about the law while being slightly more entertaining than your average CLE program. As we are fond of saying here at Stand Up CLE, we like to set the bar as low as possible. Today’s program is part three of a legal ethics program focusing on “The Dirty Dozen” by which I mean the 12 dirtiest, most unethical lawyers in the history of lawyering in the United States. In part one, we introduced you to Mel Weiss and Bill Lerach, numbers 11 and 12 on our list, two infamous plaintiff’s securities lawyers who went to prison for submitting false testimony and obstruction of justice. Next, we met Rod Blagojevich, number 10 on our list, the former Governor of Illinois, who went to prison for trying to sell the U.S. Senate seat vacated by Barrack Obama and for other misconduct while in office. Finally, we discussed the fate of I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, number 9 on our list. Scooter, who was Dick Cheney’s Chief of Staff, would have went to prison if President George W. Bush hadn’t commuted his sentence, after he was convicted of lying to federal investigators and obstructing justice in the aftermath of the “Valerie Plame Affair.” In part two, we exposed – forgive the pun – President Bill Clinton, number 8 on our list, who lost his law license, and of course, was impeached by the House of Representatives, for perjury and obstruction of justice. Number 7 was Alberto Gonzalez, the first Attorney General of the United States appointed by the second President George Bush, who orchestrated the political firing of 7 U.S. Attorney’s and lied about it to Congress, and more importantly, wrote disingenuous legal memoranda justifying the CIA’s use of torture techniques such as waterboarding on suspected terrorists and 1 authorizing the NSA to listen to phone calls involving U.S. citizens without a warrant. Next, we met John Dean, who served as White House Counsel to President Richard Nixon, and was number 6 on our list. Dean pled guilty, went to prison and lost his law license for obstruction of justice for his role in the Watergate cover up. Finally, we met colorful New York attorney Roy Cohn, number 5 on our list, who was disbarred for a lifetime of misconduct, culminating in his obtaining a signature on a will from a person who was near death and mishandling property held in trust. Now we’re ready to reveal the top -- or really, the bottom -- four lawyers on our list of the 12 most unethical lawyers in United States history. We’ll take you through what each of these guys did that got him into hot water, which laws and ethics rules they broke in the process, and give you some insight into how these guys went from legal eagles to legal turkeys. In what probably comes as no surprise to many of you, the last four names on our list are all criminal defense lawyers, including our No. 1 most unethical lawyer, who turned out to be a plain-old criminal, who just happened to be a lawyer. Number four on our list is Johnnie L. Cochran, Jr., who of course is famous for having been lead counsel for O.J. Simpson in his 1994 trial for the murders of Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman. The O.J. Simpson case is often referred to as the “Trial of the Century” and Cochran led a "dream team" of high-priced defense lawyers who won that case for O.J. resulting in a complete acquittal for a man that most people believe killed Nicole Brown, the mother of his two young children, and her boyfriend, Ron Goldman, by slashing their throats in a horrific double homicide. We are going to spend most of our time talking about the unethical conduct Cochran and his team committed in the O.J. case but first, we should say a little bit about who Cochran was apart from his starring role in the People vs. O.J. Simpson. According to Cochran, he decided to become a lawyer after seeing how lawyers could be a force for good following Thurgood Marshall’s landmark legal victory in Brown versus the Board of Education. As Cochran was fond of saying, he worked “not only for the O.J.’s but also the No. J.’s” – meaning people who didn’t have money or weren’t famous. It is true that Cochran handled several high-profile police brutality cases where 2 he secured large monetary awards for African-Americans who were killed or beaten by the police in the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s, including Ron Settles, a black college football player who was killed by the LAPD and Abner Louima, a Haitian immigrant who was sodomized with a plunger by the NYPD while in custody. Cochran also became the first African-American assistant district attorney in Los Angeles County when he joined the office in 1978, taking a pay cut to do so and saying at the time that he hoped to change the system from the inside. Certainly, that career move was a praiseworthy one by Cochran, and as we’ve learned from prior programs in this series, it’s good that the first black ADA in Los Angeles County was in fact black, unlike Bill Clinton who some people liked to call the “first black President” or Rod Blagojevich who liked to call himself the “first black Governor of Illinois.” While Cochran fought police brutality and did a stint in public service as an ADA, for most of his career, Cochran built a legal empire – at one point, his law firm employed hundreds of lawyers and had offices in 15 states – and great wealth – he was reportedly worth at least $25 million at the time of his death in 2005 – defending the rich and famous in criminal cases including Sean “Puff Daddy” Combs, Michael Jackson, Tupac Shakur, Snoop Dogg and many others. It’s hard to find a social justice or groundbreaking legal precedent angle to these cases. For example, Cochran won an acquittal for former child actor, Todd Bridges, who played “Willis” on Diff’rent Strokes, after he was accused of attempted murder for shooting his crack cocaine dealer. Not sure representing former child actors as they are circling the drain is a good use of time for someone as talented as Cochran who could have been a lot more like his hero Thurgood Marshall had he chosen to do so. Nor was Cochran bashful about showing off the money he made from his wealthy clients – he drove a Rolls Royce to work and he owned four homes in Los Angeles, plus a condo in Manhattan. When you have four homes in the same city, how exactly do you use them? Do you spend a half day in each for four days or live in one house a week over the course of a month? Cochran was reputed to have had several mistresses at various points in his life so maybe he used his four homes to keep them away from each other. I think Thurgood Marshall probably had just one house and that suited him just fine. 3 Cochran is also well known to lawyers and the general public for his flamboyant suits – here’s a shot of Cochran wearing a very expensive and very 1990’s suit to court in the O.J. trial. Here's another shot of an actor who played a famous parody of Cochran as attorney Jackie Chiles that appeared in several episodes of Seinfeld. Cochran also is known for the famous line from his closing argument in the O.J. case: “If the glove don’t fit, you must acquit.” As we will learn in a moment, Cochran and his co- counsel, F. Lee Bailey, goaded prosecutor Christopher Darden into asking O.J. to try on the bloody gloves in open court and – whether due to shrinkage from the blood, skillful acting on O.J.’s part or a combination of the two – the gloves appeared to be too small for O.J.’s hands.