[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 Boar 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 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?

A.  Judges needs to be wary as it relates to the possibility of the attorney plagiarizing legal briefs, as Plagiarism is regarded as an ethical violation. Plagiarism involves the practice of taking someone else's work or ideas and passing them off as one's own without giving the original author due credit for his work.

This case arose when an alert judge noticed something suspicious about attorney Peter Cannon's legal briefs. The rest of the story is told by the Iowa Supreme Court:

"[A lower court judge in a bankruptcy proceeding], having found Cannon's briefs to be of unusually high quality, issued an order directing Cannon to certify that he was the author of the two briefs in question. Cannon filed a response indicating that both briefs were his sole responsibility and that they "relied heavily" upon an article entitled Why Professionals Must be Interested in "Disinterestedness" Under the Bankruptcy Code by William H. Schrag and Mark C. Haut. Cannon further admitted that his initial brief "exceeded permissible fair use without attestation" of the source. He reported he had informed his client about his mistake as well as the bar association.

The bankruptcy court initiated sanction proceedings against Cannon. The bankruptcy court concluded that seventeen of the nineteen pages of legal analysis in the initial brief were verbatim excerpts from the article, with only variations for format and deletion of matters detrimental to Cannon's position . . .

In light of its conclusion that Cannon committed plagiarism and charged an unreasonable fee, the bankruptcy court ordered Cannon to (1) complete a law-school-equivalent course in professional responsibility, (2) disgorge the fee charged to his client for the briefs' preparation, (3) formally notify the authors of the plagiarized article and provide the court with a copy of the correspondence, and (4) provide copies of the sanction order to Chief Judge Pratt and the [disciplinary] board."   (Iowa Supreme Court Attorney Disciplinary Board v. Peter Cannon 2010 ). A crime as heinous as this should be dealt accordingly with appropriate measures by the judge.

B.     Plagiarism occurs in a wide range of forms and sverity. Some extreme cases that involves dirrectly copying and use word for word without citation of the source. Plagiarism can also be as mild as praphrasing infomation on a source document without properly giving the original author due recognition. In the case of attorney Cannon, he used seventeen pages of the nineteen pages of a report, word for word making changes in the format and excluded only does unfavorable for Cannon’s position in his brief. Also, he failed to cite the source, as a result he plagiarised. He acknowledged his plagiarism and admitted it was a misconduct rather than his negligence. Therefore, Cannon put himself in this condemnatory situation and its just about right for him to face a penalty as severe as a Public Reprimand to ensure that his peers learns from the misconduct committed by him and avoid future occurence.

C.    The two cases of attorney plagiarism have their similarities and as well  distinct on there own which caused a more severe ruling for one of the attorneys. The similarities are  that both attorneys were involved in extreme cases of plagiarism. In the case of Cannon, he copied seventeen of nineteen pages from an article without any citation, as for Lane he partook  in wholesale copying of the material that he used. They both charged unreasonable and more than necessary fees for their services andalso involved in misrepresentation of the information they plagiarized by deleting material that would be unfavorable to their respective positions.  The distinction between the two cases is the fact that during the court proceedings, where Cannon immediately accepted responsibility for his actions and also conveyed his client about his mistake, Lane decided to conceal his misconduct from the court. He  tried to bury the plagiarized material. Hence these details make Lane’s case worse 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.   An individual should be penalized accordingly depending on the severity of the charges as plagiarism is a violation of the ethical and moral principles of any professional. As it relates to attorneys plagiarizing and being punished e.g Public Reprimands, I feel that public shaming is a purnishment that is far extreme when it comes to penalizing an attorney for plagiarism. I believe that the punishment of a Public Reprimand is less serious than a suspension, but it is still ample to ruin a career. We all deserve another chance to prove to the world that we can be a better person.  

Explanation:

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