Ask Ms. Ps & Qs

Dear Readers:

We’re now at the season where things go a bit wacky, and one thing that can go wacky has to do with people who are represented by counsel who want to talk with you.  “Let’s cut out the middleman,” they think. After all, what harm could it be to save time?

Plenty of harm, actually:  Model Rule 4.2 doesn’t let us communicate with persons who are represented by counsel.  That rule says:

In representing a client, a lawyer shall . . .

It looks like you are not signed in or registered! This content is only available to members.

Or Sign In Below:

NBR cropped 2

UNLV Distinguished Professor, Garman Turner Gordon Professor of Law, Boyd School of Law, and Affiliate Professor of Business Law & Ethics, Lee Business School, William S. Boyd School of Law, University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Nancy B. Rapoport is a UNLV Distinguished Professor, the Garman Turner Gordon Professor of Law at the William S. Boyd School of Law, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and an Affiliate Professor of Business Law and Ethics in the Lee Business School at UNLV. After receiving her B.A., summa cum laude, from Rice University in 1982 and her J.D. from Stanford Law School in 1985, she clerked for the Honorable Joseph T. Sneed III on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and then practiced law (primarily bankruptcy law) with Morrison & Foerster in San Francisco from 1986-1991. She started her academic career at The* Ohio State University College of Law in 1991, and she moved from Assistant Professor to Associate Professor with tenure in 1995 to Associate Dean for Student Affairs (1996) and Professor (1998) (just as she left Ohio State to become Dean and Professor of Law at the University of Nebraska College of Law). She served as Dean of the University of Nebraska College of Law from 1998-2000. She then served as Dean and Professor of Law at the University of Houston Law Center from July 2000-May 2006 and as Professor of Law from June 2006-June 2007, when she left to join the faculty at Boyd. She served as Interim Dean of Boyd from 2012-2013, as Senior Advisor to the President of UNLV from 2014-2015, as Acting Executive Vice President & Provost from 2015-2016, as Acting Senior Vice President for Finance and Business (for July and August 2017), and as Special Counsel to the President from May 2016-June 2018.

Her specialties are bankruptcy ethics, ethics in governance, law firm behavior, and the depiction of lawyers in popular culture. Among her published works are CORPORATE SCANDALS AND THEIR IMPLICATIONS 3d (Nancy B. Rapoport and Jeffery D. Van Niel, eds. West Academic 2018), which addresses the question of why we never seem to learn from prior corporate scandals, LAW SCHOOL SURVIVAL MANUAL: FROM LSAT TO BAR EXAM, co-authored with Jeffrey D. Van Niel (Aspen Publishers 2010), and LAW FIRM JOB SURVIVAL MANUAL: FROM FIRST INTERVIEW TO PARTNERSHIP, also co-authored with Jeffrey D. Van Niel (Wolters Kluwer 2014). She is admitted to the bars of the states of California, Ohio, Nebraska, Texas, and Nevada and of the United States Supreme Court. In 2001, she was elected to membership in the American Law Institute, and in 2002, she received a Distinguished Alumna Award from Rice University. In 2017, she was inducted into Phi Kappa Phi (Chapter 100). She has served as the Secretary of the Board of Directors of the National Museum of Organized Crime and Law Enforcement (the Mob Museum) and currently serves as a Trustee of Claremont Graduate University. In 2009, the Association of Media and Entertainment Counsel presented her with the Public Service Counsel Award at the 4th Annual Counsel of the Year Awards. In 2017, she received the Commercial Law League of America’s Lawrence P. King Award for Excellence in Bankruptcy, and in 2018, she was one of the recipients of the NAACP Legacy Builder Awards (Las Vegas Branch #1111). She has served as the fee examiner or as chair of the fee review committee in such large bankruptcy cases as Zetta Jet, Toys R Us, Caesars, Station Casinos, Pilgrim’s Pride, and Mirant.

She has also appeared in the Academy Award®-nominated movie, Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room (Magnolia Pictures 2005) (as herself). Although the movie garnered her a listing in www.imdb.com, she still hasn’t been able to join the Screen Actors Guild. In her spare time, she competes, pro-am, in American Rhythm and American Smooth ballroom dancing. In 2014, she won the national U.S. Open Pro/Am Rising Star American Smooth Competition B Division, and in 2017, she came in 2ndin the “C” Open to the World Pro/Am American Style 9-Dance Championship. The most interesting thing about her is that she is married to a former Marine Scout-Sniper. The best way to reach her is to call her on her cell phone.

Nancy B. Rapoport
Garman Turner Gordon Professor of Law, William S. Boyd School of Law
Affiliate Professor of Business Law and Ethics in the Lee Business School
[email protected]
(c) 713-202-1881
SSRN author page: http://ssrn.com/author=260022
IMDB.com page: http://imdb.com/name/nm1904564/

Related Articles

July 26, 2020
By Henry E. Hildebrand, III, Chapter 13 Standing Trustee for the Middle District of Tennessee (Nashville) Chapter 13 debtor may include a provision in the Chapter 13 plan that only estimates the duration of the plan and, absent an objection, such provision would cause the debtor’s plan to terminate and the debtor receive a discharge when the claims have been...
Members
February 21, 2021
By William J. Purdy III (Soquel, CA) Got an EDD tax form 1099 but no benefits? At this moment, POTENTIALLY hundreds of thousands of California taxpayers are enjoying the ghastly experience of receiving a Form 1099G courtesy of the California EDD for unemployment benefits the taxpayer never received. The problem is not confined to California; it’s so prevalent, the IRS...
Members
May 31, 2020
By The Honorable William Houston Brown (Retired) Only bankruptcy court issuing discharge order can enforce injunction. The Fifth Circuit held that only the bankruptcy court issuing a discharge order has authority to enforce the discharge injunction. The opinion reviews pre-2005 Code provisions and current 28 U.S.C. § 1963, citing other Circuits that “have insisted on a return to the bankruptcy...
Members
April 25, 2021
(Song by Joni Mitchell – first recorded by Judy Collins in 1968) By Merideth Akers, CPA, PHR, Comptroller for Bradford W. Caraway (Birmingham, AL) In the simplest terms, bankruptcy has two sides. The debtor is on one side, and the creditor is on the opposite side. Although there are opposite sides in bankruptcy, the system is designed to be non-adversarial....
Members
ACH-headshot
February 19, 2023
Creditors may now be subject to more preference actions, especially for those cases filed in Indiana. The Seventh Circuit recently overturned long-standing precedent that the preference period on garnishment of attachment would no longer run from the date of service or knowledge of the attachment but when the funds were paid over. The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals in Mark...
Members
stevenson
May 8, 2022
My life in 1982 was in a bit of turmoil. I had recently gotten married and was working as in-house counsel for a regional furniture retailer. My position included a lot of collection work – beating up on debtors in state and bankruptcy courts. I was not unhappy but I was not comfortable with my work – it was clear...
judgebaxter
August 20, 2023
Passing of Retired Ohio Judge Judge Baxter was appointed United States Bankruptcy Judge for the Northern District of Ohio on December 16, 1985, and served in the Court’s Cleveland, Ohio location until his retirement in 2011. He served as Chief Judge between 2004 and 2008. Click here for obituary.
January 20, 2019
On October 1, 2018, Dynele L. Schinker-Kuharich was appointed as a Chapter 13 Standing Trustee for the Northern District of Ohio. She maintains her offices in Canton. Ms. Schinker-Kuharich replaces retiring Toby Rosen who served in this position for 30 years. Prior to her appointment as a Standing Chapter 13, Schinker-Kuharich was on the panel of Chapter 7 Trustees for...
Members
bridgingrelationships
Chapter 13 Trustees occupy unique positions.  Every day they work with the courts, clerks’ offices, debtors, creditors, and their attorneys, and the Office of the United States Trustees.  Within ethical bounds, it is important that Chapter 13 trustees build and maintain relationships with each of these constituents.  Civility, professionalism, and trust are the mainstays for all of these interactions. We...
Members
ahern_larry_regular
May 14, 2023
Introduction This series reviews developments in bankruptcy procedure during the past year.One new rule and amendments to 16 rules took effect December 1, 2022.  Many reflected changes necessitated by the Small Business Reorganization Act of 2019 (SBRA), and had been in place in the same or similar form on an interim basis since that legislation took effect.
Members