Modern Litigation and Professional Responsibility Handbook: The Limits of Zealous Advocacy, Second Edition

Find practical answers to hard questions about professional conduct -- and avoid wrong answers that could set back your firm -- with this authoritative guide to legal ethics. Drawing on statutes, standards, and actual cases, the authors show you how to:

• Evaluate tactics for possible ethical consequences
• Understand and comply with statutes, procedural rules, and standards of professional conduct while zealously representing your client
• Prevent your opponents from turning the rules to their own advantage

You'll find concise, authoritative discussion of ethical problems that arise in such critical areas as:

• Investigation of claims
• Abuse of discovery
• Conflicts of interest
• Burdensome interrogatories
• Trial in the media
• Voir dire and juror investigation
• Deposition tactics
• Special fee arrangements
• Settlement negotiations
• Withdrawal and client confidentiality
• Arguing false inferences based on inadmissible evidence, plus detailed attention to the special problems that arise in criminal defense, insurance defense, and class actions.

Part I: Proceedings Before Trial

• Commencing Litigation: Ethics and Accountability
• Commencing Litigation: Judicial Sanctions
• Conflicts of Interest
• The Advocate-Witness Problem
• Investigation
• Discovery
• Lawyers, Free Speech, and the Media
• Trial Tactics - Some Opening Moves

Part II: The Trial

• Relations with Jurors
• The Direct Examiner
• The Cross-Examiner
• Closing Argument

Part III: Special Problems

• Special Problems in the Criminal Defense
• Special Problems in Class Action

Part IV: Some Final Matters

• Negotiation and Settlement
• Withdrawal
• Appeal
• Disciplines, the Court, and Ethics Committees

Table of Cases

Bibliography

Index of Errata

Index