How Extreme Laziness can Pay Off - Adam Avitable gets cited in a law review article

Clark Cunningham, a professor of Legal Ethics, had one of the worst designed classes I've ever seen in my life at Washington University in Saint Louis. He called it "Heroes and Villains", and obviously the villain was he. It was dreadfully boring, and he had less of a sense of humor than his lopsided haircut.

So, of course, I never paid attention, rarely attended, and never did a single page of reading. It's just my luck to get called to do this lawyer/client roleplay, where we are trying to explain the definition of "confidentiality" to the "client".

I have no fucking idea what I'm doing, so I wing it. I made everything up completely, 100%, off the top of my head. My sheer idiocy is videotaped and shown to the other groups for comments, and to have papers written on for the class.

At the end of the class, Cunny asks us to sign agreements saying that he can use the role playing parts if necessary. He also said that if we wanted to remain anonymous, we could. Most lawyers shun having their name published, I guess, so everyone asked for anonymity. Not wee lil Avitable. He offered himself up on a plate.

A few years later, I'm egotistically searching for my own name on Google - something I do more frequently than I'd care to admit. And what do I find? The law review article "How to Explain Confidentiality?" published in the Georgia State University Law Review! About half-way down he begins discussing the simulations, and lo and behold! There's Adam Avitable as the champion of the true essence of the meaning of confidentiality. I couldn't be prouder than if I restored fucking kids' beliefs in Santa.

And so I read about myself, and my head swells a bit, thinking about how unprepared I was, yet how smart I inadvertently sounded. I'm a lucky fuckin' bastard, I guess. Not everybody gets cited in a law review article as the reason to prompt an investigation into the Model Rules by this professor.

My only complaint: Professor Douchebag doesn't even give me props in the citations. And I emailed him about the article, and Fuckbag doesn't bother to reply.

Conclusion: Most law school professors would eat their own young before giving credit for one of their precious publications. Especially the ones who are horrible professors and teach dreadful classes.

Anyways, here is some of the content from his article. And you know what? I'm not going to fucking cite it! hahaha . . . boy that's lame.

How to Explain Confidentiality? 9 Clinical Law Review 579: "An excellent example of how my students' imaginativeness and insight have been teaching me is presented by Adam Avitable's explanation that confidentiality is guaranteed if the client is honest to the lawyer. I initially critiqued Avitable for proposing an inaccurate explanation of the client perjury exception, but Avitable is right that the confidentiality rules should in fact promote client honesty in communications with their lawyers. This desirable feature of Avitable's proposed explanation has prompted me to give greater attention to a version of the ABA confidentiality rules that pre-dates even the original 1984 Model Rules. The ABA Model Code of Professional Responsibility that preceded the Model Rules when originally adopted in 1969 had a rule that required a lawyer who knew that his client had 'perpetrated a fraud' upon a tribunal (such as perjury) to reveal the fraud to the tribunal if the client refused to do so. (89) In 1974 the ABA added a condition to this rule: 'except when the information is protected as a privileged communication.' (90) This amendment was controversial and only adopted by eighteen states. (91) As amended in 1974, the old Model Code provision actually came rather close to Avitable's explanation."

Added: 1/15/2005 12:20:00 AM
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