ASSIGNMENT EIGHT: Please read this decision by the Iowa Supreme Court in an attorney

discipline case.

Questions for you to answer:

[a] Why should judges care if attorneys submit plagiarized legal briefs or motions? Please
explain your answer.

[b] Attorney Peter Cannon was punished by the court and by the attorney disciplinary
board. Do you think these punishments (taken as a whole) were too lenient, too severe, or
about right? Please explain your answer.

[c] The Iowa Supreme Court referred to another case involving attorney plagiarism (Iowa
Supreme Court Board of Professional Ethics & Conduct v. Lane). In that case, the
punishment for attorney Lane (suspension of his license to practice) was more severe than
the punishment imposed on attorney Cannon. What distinction did the court make between
these two cases? Do you agree with the court’s reasoning?

[d] The state of Florida requires “personal appearances before the [disciplinary] board for
public reprimands for disciplined lawyers” [italics added]. Do you think this kind of public
shaming is too harsh? Explain.

ANS: a) Judges should be cautious regarding the possibility of the attorney

plagiarizing legal briefs, as Plagiarism is regarded as an ethical violation.
Plagiarism involves using another person’s work for one’s own use without
giving that person due credit for his work. This case involving Peter Cannon, was
one such instance where the plagiarism charges didn’t deal with imperfect
citation, rather they involved seventeen pages being completely copied from an
article. Such falsification is a violation of ethical rules and morals and the
attorney himself admitted that his activity was a representation of his
dishonesty. A crime as heinous as this should be dealt accordingly with
appropriate measures by the judge.

b) There are several forms of plagiarism that exist. Some more extreme cases
involve material copied and used word to word without citation of the source,
while plagiarism on a lesser degree can also include cases where material is
paraphrased and the source is not properly cited. In the case of attorney Cannon,
he used seventeen pages of the nineteen pages of a report, word to word with
only changes in the format and omitted material that could be unfavorable for
Cannon’s position in his brief. On top of this he never cited the source, thereby he
not only committed acts of plagiarism but also misrepresentation. Cannon did
acknowledge his plagiarism immediately and he did accept it as being his
misconduct rather than his negligence. He also charged an unreasonable fee.
Therefore Cannon put himself in this critical situation and its just about right for
him to face a penalty as severe as a Public Reprimand so that his peers could
learn from the misconduct committed by him and avoid it in the future.

c) The two cases that deal with attorney plagiarism have their similarities and
some fine distinctions that caused a more severe decision for one of the
attorneys. The similarities are the fact that both attorneys were involved in
extreme cases of plagiarism. Where as Cannon copied seventeen of nineteen
pages from an article without any citation, Lane was also involved in wholesale
copying of the material that he used. They both charged unreasonable and
excessive fees for their services and both also engaged in misrepresentation of
the information they plagiarized by deleting material that would be unfavorable
to their respective positions. Now the distinction between the two lies in the fact
that during the court proceedings, where Cannon immediately accepted
responsibility for his actions and also conveyed his client about his mistake.
Whereas, Lane on the other hand decided to hide the misconduct he committed
from the court. Firstly, he never responded to the court for several months, and
also tried to bury the plagiarized material. Hence these details make Lane’s case
worse off as compared to Cannon’s, who accepted responsibility for plagiarizing
as a misconduct rather than an incompetence. Therefore, the judges decided on
suspending Lane’s license for six months and penalizing Cannon with a public
reprimand.

D) Plagiarism is a violation of the ethical and moral principles of any

professional. Hence, an individual should be penalized accordingly depending on
the severity of the charges. When it comes to attorneys plagiarizing and
receiving punishments like Public Reprimands, I feel that public shaming is a
retribution that is far severe when it comes to penalizing an attorney for
plagiarism. I feel that the punishment of a Public Reprimand is less serious than a
suspension, but it is still sufficient enough to end a career. On top of this, public
shaming will only destroy the spirit of an individual who wants to recover or
bounce back from a fall as low as a public reprimand. We all deserve another
chance to prove that we can improve ourselves and like a phoenix, rise from the
ashes of our own downfall.