Massachusetts's Solution to Everything Scuttled Over Ethics Concerns

[WSJ_law_blog]

In some ways, Massachusetts seemed to come up with a perfect solution to a two-fold problem: deferred law-firm associates and an understaffed judiciary. The solution: lawyers whose law-firm start dates were pushed back but were still being paid a stipend by their firms could go work judicial clerkships for the year at no cost to the state judiciary. The students would get good experience, the firms would ultimately get fledgling lawyers who’d seen the inside of a courtroom, and the state judiciary, well, free labor! Click here for our June post on the proposal for the program.

Just one glitch: it may well be unethical.

According to an article in the Boston Globe, the state judiciary has abandoned the program. Robert A. Mulligan, chief justice for administration and management of the trial courts, scuttled the proposal after receiving a written opinion he had sought from the state ethics commission.

According to the Globe, the commission did not provide a “definitive ruling.’’ But after Mulligan received the letter, which was not made public, he reportedly spoke to a few of the chief justices who head trial-court departments and shelved the plan.

We’re not sure exactly what was unethical about the program. But according to the Globe, some legal specialists had said an arrangement that involves a law firm paying a judicial employee raised thorny ethical questions; firms that donate lawyers to the courts might appear to be currying favor or expect preferential treatment.

The judiciary had 105 full-time clerks in June. But as a result of budget cuts, it will have about 75 full-time clerks and about a dozen part-time ones, not enough, it seems, the keep the wheels of justice well oiled.

Suffolk Superior Court Judge Carol S. Ball, who heads a committee that screens prospective law clerks, said the smaller contingent will make it hard for judges to do their jobs.

“I just got off the bench, and I’ve got a stack of research and writing to do,’’ Ball said late yesterday afternoon. “When am I going to do that? You might as well take away our books.’’