Ellen C Brotman

March 14, 2019 | The Legal Intelligencer

On Feb. 8, former Centre County District Attorney Stacy Parks Miller was suspended from the practice of law for one year and one day.

By Ellen C. Brotman

8 minute read

December 07, 2018 | The Legal Intelligencer

What is a JDA? What protections does it provide to its members? What Rules of Professional Conduct govern it? How is the JDA affected by the subsequent cooperation of one of its members?

By Ellen C. Brotman

8 minute read

November 07, 2018 | The Legal Intelligencer

Conflicts and confidences are the ethical tripwires of our profession. What may seem like a reasonable assumption about the alignment of parties and the necessity of maintaining confidences at the outset of a case can quickly become a quagmire, especially in the context or organizational or joint representations.

By Ellen C. Brotman

8 minute read

June 15, 2018 | The Legal Intelligencer

As lawyers watching the spectacle of the investigations surrounding the Trump administration, we get to sit in the good seats. We understand the rules of the game and we can follow the action.

By Ellen C. Brotman

1 minute read

March 29, 2018 | The Legal Intelligencer

Despite appearances, it's spring and Donald Trump and his attorney Michael Cohen have provided us with a brand new crop of ethics issues. Let's take a look at the issues that have come up and how they would be treated under the Pennsylvania Rules of Professional Conduct.

By Ellen C. Brotman

6 minute read

December 06, 2017 | The Legal Intelligencer

If you are interested in ethics, white-collar crime, and the way they overlap, Christmas has come early this year. Your gift is the array of ethical issues inherent in the latest twist in the investigation into the Trump campaign's connections to Russia's interference with our presidential election; it provides a fascinating hypo for ethics professors.

By Ellen C. Brotman

15 minute read

October 27, 2017 | The Legal Intelligencer

On Oct. 21, there was a news report that Donald Trump would be personally providing a legal defense fund of several hundred thousand dollars for White House staffers and campaign aides in need of legal representation.

By Ellen C. Brotman

14 minute read

June 20, 2017 | The Legal Intelligencer

On April 13, Jennifer Barnes, ­disciplinary counsel of the Executive Office of Immigration Review, (EOIR) a federal agency within the Department of Justice, sent a cease and desist letter to a nonprofit organization in Seattle, Washington. If enforced, the cease and desist letter would effectively prevent the nonprofit from fulfilling its mission. The nonprofit at issue is the Northwest Immigration Rights Project (NWIRP), founded in 1984, and its mission is to assist undocumented immigrants through legal assistance, advocacy and education.

By Ellen C. Brotman

7 minute read

March 09, 2017 | The Legal Intelligencer

Less than two weeks before this ­column was scheduled to be published, I fulfilled a career-long dream of mine and opened my own firm: Brotman Law. I planned to write this, my very first column as a solo practitioner, on the practical and ethical issues that I had encountered on the path to solo practice. But then, as has been happening quite often lately, I got distracted by current events.

By Ellen C. Brotman

13 minute read

December 14, 2016 | The Legal Intelligencer

As 2016 comes to an end, attorneys all across Pennsylvania are taking a moment to pause and reflect on the passage of another year. Nationally, the Trump presidency brings in an era of uncertainty and change that will impact our practices and the world for years to come. But 2016 also saw the resignation of a Pennsylvania Supreme Court justice for his participation in an email scandal and the conviction and sentencing of our attorney general. Another change, reflected locally and nationally, is the steady move toward legalization for marijuana. While unrelated, all these events touch on cultural shifts and caused rule changes that we focus on here.

By Ellen C. Brotman 
and Christine E. Weller

12 minute read