ethics

Lawlessness and Trump’s Lawyers

/ BC Law Impact Guest Posts / Leave a comment

BC Law Professor R. Michael Cassidy serves as Chair of the Board of Bar Overseers in Massachusetts. The views expressed in this essay do not represent an official position of the Board, or of BC Law. This op-ed originally ran in Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly.

Events since January 20, 2025 have called into question the ability of attorneys to safeguard the rule of law. President Donald Trump has sought retribution against law firms that previously opposed him or represented the Democratic National Committee. He has called for the impeachment of federal judges who issued orders against him, labelling one of them a “radical left judge” and a “lunatic.” He has commenced an investigation into law firms that engage in diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. Most recently, he called upon Department of Justice lawyers to refer for discipline any lawyer who opposes a Trump policy on grounds the DOJ alone deems frivolous or unfounded.  

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What Exactly is the Multistate Professional Responsibility Exam?

/ Sangeeta Kishore / Leave a comment

This past week, like many of my 2L peers, I took the Multistate Professional Responsibility Exam or the MPRE. This exam is a vital prerequisite or co-requisite to the bar exam for admission in most U.S. jurisdictions. So why have many people never heard of it before? 

What is the MPRE? 

The MPRE is a 2-hr, 60-question, multiple-choice exam, administered three times a year (March, August, and November), designed to test knowledge of the rules related to a lawyer’s professional conduct. There are two important things to note. There is no negative scoring so it doesn’t hurt to guess. And while you answer 60 questions, only 50 questions are graded. The remaining 10 are used for testing purposes and are indistinguishable from the graded questions on the test. In other words, answer every question. As for the material tested, while each state has its own set of ethical standards, the MPRE tests on the ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct so only worry about that. 

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“The Firm” Movie Review: “Off the Rails” Entertainment

/ Eddie Godino / Leave a comment

When it comes to legal movies and TV shows, few of them get points for realism, and The Firm is no exception. While the film does capture some aspects of the associate lifestyle that may cause legally-trained viewers to point at their screen and whistle like Leonardo DiCaprio, the story goes somewhat off the rails by the third act – which is arguably where it becomes the most entertaining.

Spoilers ahead . . .

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Four Ways ‘Suits’ Breaks ABA Rules

/ kristievhoang / Leave a comment

This summer, I binge watched eight seasons of “Suits.”

I’m in company alongside millions of others who tallied over 12.8 billion minutes of streaming the Big Law drama across Netflix and Peacock. “Suits” earned a record-breaking second-life this past summer, becoming the most-watched acquired title in Nielson history from June 26 to July 2. It also became the first show to amass over 3 billion minutes watched for seven straight weeks.

It’s slightly sadistic for me to obsess over “Suits” after clocking in hours as a summer associate. But perhaps what’s worse is drawing analogies between “Suits” episodes and Moral Professional Responsibility hypotheticals.

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How Law Students Can Use ChatGPT (Ethically)

/ Fiona Maguire / Leave a comment

ChatGPT, an artificial intelligence chatbot developed by OpenAI, has garnered much attention since its launch in November 2022. The program has the capability to generate text that closely mimics human writing in response to a given prompt, and its application has spanned across a range of fields from customer support to legal research. 

In an academic context, the conversation often revolves around how students are using the program to write their essays, final exams, and other assignments (Take a look at our recent Impact post In Re: ChatGPT). As a result, many educational institutions have established specific prohibitions on using the chatbot, with Best Colleges even publishing a list of bans. However, I think there is real value in ChatGPT for law students–as long as you use it appropriately.

“Used in the right way, ChatGPT can be a friend to the classroom and an amazing tool […], not something to be feared.”

– Adam Stevens, History Teacher
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