This is a partial open book exam. You may use any or all of the materials you were supposed to purchase to read for the class, plus class handouts, your class notes and an outline prepared by yourself. No commercial outlines or hornbooks are allowed.
 
This is a two hour exam. The 4 questions are weighted in proportion to the time suggested to answer each. I suggest you take about 15 minutes each on the first two questions. Then there is an hour-long essay question. Finally--don't forget to do it!--there is a 30 minute question.
 
In your answers to the longer questions--Questions 3 & 4--please, explain what the lawyer ought to do and why. Explain the part that the rules will play in your decision and explain what you believe the rules require or allow, but also explain in your decision in light of your own moral standards or any other factors that you believe should influence your decision.
 
If you feel that it is necessary that you make any assumption consistent with the given facts, you may do so, but identify the assumption as such.
 
Assume that the Minnesota Rules of Professional Conduct are the applicable rules.
 

1.Suggested time--15 minutes.
 

Attorney Jane Johnson recently began advertising her services on a Twin Cities-based radio show. She pays the station its standard rate for advertising. The advertising tape is as follows:

"Jane Johnson, 875 Main Street in Hudson, Wisconsin, is the attorney you've been looking for. She will handle bankruptcies for $200 and uncontested divorces for $300 plus the filing fee. She is more experienced than any other attorney in the east Twin Cities area in handling mortgage foreclosure defense, and she can wrap up most of those matters for $500 or less. If you are injured in an accident, Jane Johnson's fee is only 25% of anything that you recover. She earns nothing if you do not win your case. Jane Johnson offers a free consultation. Call (715) 290-6391 for an appointment today!"

>>Discuss briefly which parts of Johnson's advertisement are proper, and which parts, if any, are improper. Why?

[REMEMBER, THIS QUESTION IS WORTH ONLY 1/8 OF THE ENTIRE EXAM.]
 

2. Suggested time--15 minutes
 

Herman Winter, 27 years old, is in his last year of law school. After celebrating the completion of the last exam of law school, he drives home from Billy's (a bar) and hits a traffic signal. No one is hurt. Winter is charged with driving under the influence of alcohol: a field sobriety test showed that he had a blood alcohol level of 0.25, well over the 0.10 level at which intoxication is presumed. At the trial, the charges are dropped because the police officer who arrested him fails to appear to testify.
 
This is the second time Winter has been charged with driving under the influence (DUI). In the first case, which occurred five years ago on the night of his college graduation, the DUI charges were dropped after he successfully completed community service (picking up trash around the college).

Winter asserts that his overindulgence on this occasion was due to the rare circumstance of having finished law school exams. He has never been evaluated or treated for alcohol abuse.

Winter comes to you, a recently licensed attorney, and asks you to advise him on his application to the Minnesota Board of Law Examiners for admission to the bar. Other than these two arrests, his record as a law-abiding citizen is unblemished.

>>Is Winter's history of two DUI charges (but no convictions) enough basis for the Board of Law Examiners to deny him admission to the bar? What factors will the Law Examiners take into account with respect to the DUIs? What advice will you give him with regard to making the application for bar admission?

[REMEMBER, THIS QUESTION IS WORTH ONLY 1/8 OF THE ENTIRE EXAM.]
 

3. Suggested time--1 hour.
 

Tony Quinta is the lawyer for two women coaches at State College, BeBe Bensen and Linda Luck. He has been representing them in negotiations for higher pay from the Athletic Department, arguing that men coaches are paid much more than are the women coaches, and that federal law prohibits discrimination on the basis of gender.
 

The negotiations do have the threat of a lawsuit lurking in their background, but Quinta has spent a lot of energy trying to keep the discussions amicable. He is convinced that you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.
 
Earlier this week, the State College Athletic Department Director [the A.D.] fired BeBe Bensen, citing an inadequate win-loss record for the women's team that she coaches. Coming at the time that Bensen and her attorney had been pressing hard for gender equity in the coaches, pay scales, the job termination looks very much like retaliation. Employer retaliation against employees for asserting their legal rights is prohibited by state and federal law.

Quinta knows now that he will need to sue State College and the A.D. on Bensen's behalf for damages for wrongful termination, for reinstatement, AND for higher pay. Such a lawsuit has a good chance of succeeding, in Quinta's judgment. Bensen wants to proceed as quickly as possible with that lawsuit--she has no job and it is the middle of the school year!
 
Quinta believes, however, that suing State College and the A.D. will hurt his negotiations on Luck's behalf for a salary increase. Though last week's offer to Luck (which she rejected with his advice) was still thousands of dollars short of her goal, Quinta believes that the College wants to keep Luck and will eventually come much closer to his client's goal...if he can keep the negotiations from becoming acrimonious. The A.D. is kind of touchy and takes all of this personally.
 

Quinta's sister is a college athletics coach at a college in another state. (This is one of the reasons he has an understanding of the issues in women's college athletics that is better than almost any other attorney in the country.) For the last three years, his sister has had the distinction of being the highest paid women's college coach in the country. Quinta's sister has let him know that it is very important to her to maintain that distinction, and he has told her not to worry, he will not negotiate a better salary package for any of his women coach clients than she has. In fact, Luck's salary goal, formed during consultation with Quinta, is $5,000 less than his sister's salary.

The final factor that is troubling Quinta is that yesterday the A.D. called and told him that State College is ready to meet Luck's salary demands if he will drop Bensen as a client. The A.D. knows that Quinta is the best in this field, and wants to get him out of the picture.
 
>>What do the Rules of Professional Conduct require or allow Quinta to do next? Explain what you would advise him to do and why he should do it. If you consider and reject a possible course of action, explain what it is and why you did so. Explain also whether you believe that he has violated any Rule of Professional Conduct up to this point.
 
 

4. Suggested time--30 minutes.
 

This is another pretty much true story of a lawyer who does corporate work as a partner in a law firm in Metropolis. One of her clients is a chemical company engaged in making, among other things, defoliants for the Army. The factory is in a pretty brick warehouse by a river, but the neighbors complain about the smells and claim they cannot grow anything in their gardens anymore.
 
After negotiations fail, the City Attorney and the neighborhood association file suit against the chemical company for creating a nuisance. one way the chemical company has responded to the complaints and to the lawsuit is to put magnificent geraniums in window boxes across the front of the building, with the windows open and the fumes coming out. It is a visual argument against the neighbors' and city's complaints. But in order for it to work, the company must replace all the flowers every week because they die. A grounds crew does that every Monday morning about 3 a.m. No one but the lawyer and the chemical company client and its grounds crew employees know that this is done. The client began the geranium practice without consulting its lawyer, but has since told her about it.

Assume that discovery (in accordance with the Rules of Civil Procedure) in the lawsuit has been completed--without any violations of the discovery rules and without the city and neighbors finding out the secret of the geraniums. The lawyer and the client hope to settle the lawsuit without going to trial.

>>What ethical issues does the chemical company's geranium ruse pose for its lawyer? What ought the lawyer do and why?
 

--END OF EXAM!!