Did Winston & Strawn cross an ethics line in a copycat court filing? (Reuters)

Reuters, January 11, 2024 

Did Winston & Strawn cross an ethics line in a copycat court filing? 

A few bar associations, however, have clarified that using another lawyer’s work without attribution is not automatically deceitful. ‘The purpose of a litigation filing is to persuade the court, not to convey an original idea,’ the New York City Bar held in a 2018 opinion. If one lawyer cribs from another, the opinion reasons, it doesn’t harm the original author, who wrote the brief to serve the lawyer’s own client and was entitled to be compensated for the work. That compensation, the bar held, ‘is not diminished if some other lawyer later copies from the brief.’