Michael Cohen secretly recorded Trump. Does that make him a bad lawyer? (Washington Post)
Washington Post, July 26, 2018
Michael Cohen secretly recorded Trump. Does that make him a bad lawyer?
The answer is furthered muddled in New York, where Cohen was practicing law in 2016. The state has more than 20 bar associations that are not in 100 percent agreement with one another. Some, like the New York City Bar Association, say that “undisclosed taping as a routine practice is ethically impermissible” and absent an exception, lawyers may not do it….Ellen Yaroshefsky, executive director of the Monroe H. Freedman Institute for the Study of Legal Ethics and a member of the New York City Bar Association‘s Ethics Committee, suggested a few scenarios: If a lawyer believed the client was engaging in illegal conduct; suspected the client was attempting to use the lawyer to commit a crime or as a scapegoat; or intended to include the client’s words in a complaint or legal filing.
