Faculty Publications

The Compendium is a unique resource that provides ethics information specifically focused on the work and issues impacting lawyers and organizations engaged in the practice of immigration law. The Compendium provides an in-depth analysis of the ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct from the point of view of the immigration lawyer. Each chapter contains a different rule with a deep dive into the rule, real world hypotheticals, and analysis. There are other rules referenced as well, including those from the federal Professional Conduct for Practitioners Rules and Procedures promulgated by the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR), Title 8 of the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR), and others. Because it is easy to fall behind in keeping up with current case law, regulations, and technology, and because the ethical dilemmas can arise from the complexity, high stakes, and relationships inherent in the profession, every immigration lawyer—new or experienced—needs a reference tool for ethical issues common to the practice of immigration law.

In Fall 2023, Hofstra Law School hosted a Symposium on the accountability, or lack thereof, at the United States Supreme Court.1 The Symposium was the second public event at Hofstra devoted to this topic in a twelve-month period, and among numerous panels, symposia, and presentations around the country taking a hard look at the Supreme Court’s lack of an ethical code or accountability of any kind.
Academics, politicians, the media, and the public were all reacting to, among other things, Justice Clarence Thomas’s failure to recuse himself from a case which involved a subpoena of his wife’s text messages to the White House on January 6; the evisceration of stare decisis in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization; 2 and the current liberal-conservative imbalance on the Court. At the Fall 2023 Symposium, eight experts on the Supreme Court provided their insights and views on three key aspects of the accountability crisis: the history and context for the current scrutiny; the role of the media and the public in holding the Court accountable; and what solutions (if any) should be implemented to address the acountability crisis.

Lawyers know how to tell a good story and are expected, en-couraged, and even ethically required to use that skill on behalf of their clients. In this article, the authors identify the benefits to the legal profession and the public of the use of client stories in legal scholarship and highlight the ethical issues raised by such publication. It is the interplay between these values-the improvement of the legal system versus the protection of client confidentiality-that is the focus of this paper.

As advocates for immigrants, we work with some difficult cases, including matters involving humanitarian-based relief for children who have been abused, abandoned or neglected. Unfortunately, there is an immigration quota system and a huge backlog of visas for children under this special category that is making that advocacy even more difficult than it already was.

Available to AILA members, only.
Professor Liebmann is author of the chapter on Communication. Read this specialized AILA publication to understand and navigate ethical complexities in immigration law.