Caleb Stephens '23
Technology Editor
Photo Credit: https://twitter.com/ABAesq/status/1264889050420449283, https://marketingbs.substack.com/p/dont-be-evil-google- australia-and
In the most hotly anticipated announcement of the legal world, the American Bar Association (ABA) has published a completely revised Model Rules of Ethical Conduct, hereinafter known as the Revised Model Rules of Ethical Conduct. The commission tasked with the revision acknowledged the difficulty of the task. “Well, we knew that the Model Rules just kept growing and getting more complicated as time went on. Turns out, making rules for lawyers is really difficult, so we decided to simplify things.” The new text of the Model Rules is simple and easy to follow, as demonstrated by Revised Rule 1.1: “Don’t be a jerk.” When questioned about the clarity of this rule, the ABA spokesperson said, “We needed to make the rule catchy and easy to remember. The world keeps getting more complicated, and we had already added so many rules that no one could possibly remember all of them, so we decided to move to a standard.”
The MPRE will also be revised to fit the updated content of the Model Rules. Sample questions provided to the press for review include such difficult topics as the proper protocol for the amount of hard liquor to consume at firm cocktail events, the line between plagiarism and quotation, and shopping on Amazon during classes. In a less surprising result, the correct answers are to not worry about it if you’re still conscious, always use quotation marks, and to skip Amazon to look at Zillow instead. When asked if this would make the MPRE easier, the spokesperson was doubtful. “We’ve always felt that the MPRE was too idealistic; we needed something that would really push law students’ ethical boundaries in real-world scenarios, not these ridiculous hypotheticals where people actually listen to anything a first-year associate says.”
Unfortunately for those worried about simplicity, the present Model Rules will be merely relegated to the comments for the Revised Rules, where they will be enforced as if they were fully adopted by each state. While this may undermine the efficacy of the simplified rules, the ABA remained optimistic, saying that the change will make it much easier for students to study for the MPRE and maintain their ethical obligations as members of the legal community. No response was given to queries regarding the procedure for editing the comments to the Revised Rules, other than mocking laughter and profanity. Confidential sources inside the ABA suggest that future changes may add rules recognizing the propriety of billing time spent in the restroom to clients, charging time spent commuting to overhead, and removing all need to check for potential client conflicts.
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cs8ws@virginia.edu