Updates to our Terms of Use

We are updating our Terms of Use. Please carefully review the updated Terms before proceeding to our website.

Thursday, March 28, 2024 | Back issues
Courthouse News Service Courthouse News Service

Sex With Clients?

I've got to hand it to the editors of California Bar Journal - they know how to grab my attention.

This was in a box on the front page of the November issue: "Your personal life and sex with clients.... Earn one hour of MCLE self-study in legal ethics. See page 9."

Wow! Sex with clients and MCLE credit. Could it get any better any than that?

Well, no.

Imagine my disappointment when on page 9 I was told - repeatedly - that lawyers shouldn't have sex with their clients. It's probably OK with other people's clients so you might be able to work out a trade, but sex with your own clients is definitely out.

The only exception to this rule is that, apparently, you can have sex with a client if you were having it with that person before being hired as their lawyer.

So make certain you're having sex with someone before agreeing to represent them.

The best part of this, though, is the MCLE credit part. In order to get an hour's worth of credit, you need to be able to answer 20 true/false questions.

Consider the enormous challenge here - how do you come up with 20 questions about an article that just says don't have sex with clients?

It's a practically impossible task.

If you don't believe me, just check out what they came up with. At some point, there must have been serious drinking and heads banging against walls by the people who had to create this exam.

The last true/false question is my favorite. I'm picturing wailing and gnashing of teeth by the authors as they composed this final one:

"A client is someone who consults a lawyer for the purpose of retaining the lawyer in his or her professional capacity, not personal capacity."

I'm not going to give away the answer. You need to earn your MCLE credit yourself.

NON-CLASSY ACTION. Speaking of sex and clients, imagine being a lawyer with a client who wants to file a class action against the manufacturer of a "penis enlargement supplement."

Yes, there was indeed such a proposed class action filed in Los Angeles last week. It seems, allegedly, that the maker of Magna-Rx+ was falsely claiming that "in just a few short weeks. you'll be amazed as you watch your penis grow into the biggest, thickest, hardest...."

Those ellipses are in the lawsuit. I have no idea what more embarrassing thing they could possibly be shielding us from. I think I don't want to know.

Be that as it may, is litigation really the best course for the client here? Should a lawyer be advising his or her client to march into court to assert a lack of penis size? Hasn't this client been humiliated enough already?

Now think about the possibilities for discovery.

Next month's California Bar Journal/MCLE topic: should lawyers represent clients who don't have sex?

I think not.

I'M SO GREAT. Schadenfreude is always a lot of fun and I certainly got a kick out of the allegations in a recent cross-complaint against actor Nicolas Cage that described how he went into debt by spending millions on yachts and houses and jewelry and even a couple of castles.

But for me the best part was the brief description of the period in which Cage, at least according to the suit, briefly came to his fiscal senses and sold some stuff - including a $1.6 million comic book collection.

$1.6 million for a comic book collection?

No wonder he needed two castles.

Why does this make me happy?

Because I've still got my comic book collection.

I feel so superior.

Categories / Uncategorized

Subscribe to Closing Arguments

Sign up for new weekly newsletter Closing Arguments to get the latest about ongoing trials, major litigation and hot cases and rulings in courthouses around the U.S. and the world.

Loading...