What kind of legal trouble would have a law firm that called its defeated opponents assholes? Say a new law firm wants to come up with a fresh and juicy marketing strategy to win a share of local law market. They adopt a moral code which, although could be seen arguable, is nevertheless coherent and is consistently adhered to. In a nut shell, they only take clients that they think are good people and refuse to represent cheats, crooks and similar people that they call "assholes". When they win yet another case, they put the defeated party (proved in court to be in breach or even convicted) on a page on their website called "The Assholes" where they summarise cases for each of them. They avoid labelling opponents not yet defeated in order to minimise claims of slander. What kind of legal trouble would such a law firm face? Would it still be slander/defamation? Would they rather quickly lose their bar accreditation, or would they only become controversial but otherwise stand well? (Any English-centric common law jurisdiction)
Calling someone an &quot;asshole&quot; is, at least in the US, an expression of opinion and so is not defamation. Saying that someone has committed a crime may be defamation, but not if that person has in fact already been convicted of that crime. In general if a statement is provably true, it is not defamation. If all that this hypothetical firm does is to post facts as found in court decisions, along with their unfavorable opinions of losing parties who they did not represent, it is hard to see any defamation case being valid. And I don't see any other obvious legal problem with doing this. It would probably anger other lawyers, and might make it harder to negotiate settlements or do other deals. If this firm announce that they refuse to accept as clients &quot;cheats, crooks and similar people&quot; and then make it public that they refused to represent some specific person, A, then A might claim that this portrayed him or her as a &quot;cheat or crook&quot; and was defamatory. The exact wording of their publicly announced policy, and of any announcements that they decline to represent A, would matter a good deal, as would the jurisdiction's exact law of defamation. In some places, codes of ethics promulgated by a Bar Association might be violated by such a policy, but such codes are usually not enforceable in the general case. I don't see any obvious grounds for disbarment proceedings.
The purpose is to avoid the possibility that the solicitor will inadvertently end up providing advice to more than one side of the same dispute or transaction, putting the solicitor in a conflict of interest situation. In the simplest case, the solicitor might already represent the landlord that the tenant is seeking to discuss legal rights vis-a-vis. Even if the advice is merely hypothetical, this is not O.K. A solicitor has a very high duty of loyalty to the solicitor's clients. Providing aid of any kind to someone adverse to the solicitor's clients that benefits that person, even if another solicitor would probably say the same thing, is a serious breach of that duty and is forbidden and sanctionable. It could get the solicitor kicked out of the profession in a worst case scenario. The duty of loyalty includes a duty to take reasonable care not to inadvertently or negligently act disloyally. There is also a risk of a more subtle sort of conflict that has to be evaluated since many disputes and transactions are not just two sided. For example, perhaps a solicitor a big commercial tenant client on the brink of a settlement with a particular landlord after lengthy and extensive negotiations (perhaps in a business lease renewal deal), and another prospective tenant client might, for example, have an interest in leasing the same property as your existing client at a higher rate. Representing both tenants/prospective tenants could creating a conflict between your two tenant clients. Screening clients based upon their landlord relationships helps solicitors to identify these conflicts and to prevent them from arising. More generally, the best practice is for a solicitor to make sufficient inquiry prior to providing any legal advice to a prospective new client, to avoid having clients that have a conflict of interest with each other. This regulation (to the extent that it is really as specific as suggested) is simply a codification of this general rule in a specific, commonly recurring situation. In large law firms, every single legal professional in the firm typically spends the first half hour or so of every day reviewing lists of new prospective clients and parties related to them in order to screen for potential conflicts of interest. (I used to have to do that when I worked in a large, international law firm for a while.) There would typically be one or more paralegals or administrators in the firm who do nothing but manage that conflicts of interest screening process. Obviously, however, this requirement is a lot less burdensome if you are solo practicing solicitor who almost entirely represents individual human being and family tenants with isolated residential leases, and works in a large city where few clients have any connections to each other.
The old saying: Being your own lawyer means you have a fool as the lawyer and a fool as the client. If one fool calls the other fool as a witness, that's even more foolish. And the worst crime is annoying the judge with your antics. Opposing council will just take note of every question you ask and your replies, and then call you as witness themself. And assuming they are a proper lawyer, everything they ask will be hurting you. No need to accuse you as &quot;leading&quot; or &quot;badgering&quot; the witness.
There are three main aspects to this: Its their website, and their terms of service. They can enforce those terms, or change them (in some appropriate manner). You have no recourse if they remove you, block you, or delete your account, for example. That's the measure that you would probably have, virtually every time. To claim damages, or litigate beyond just website access control, requires a legal claim. But there's a catch there. To claim damages, they need to show actual damage, which they wish to be compensated for. If you misused their website but no actual harm can be shown, the total damage claimable is zero, whether or not you followed their rules. Merely entering dishonest information isn't by itself harm. So they would have to show they suffered damage/harm because of that, which is directly attributable to your behaviour, was foreseeably harmful etc, or similar. They also need to consider legal costs, and ability to enforce, especially if you are in a different country. If for some reason the computer use was also illegal, then a criminal act could be committed and they could notify law enforcement. For example suppose you did this in the little known country of Honestania, where the law says that to prevent trolling and online abuse, anything posted on social media under any but your own legal name is a crime. Or suppose you'd been banned from the system and ignoring/evading such a ban was criminal computer use or criminal trespass due to the forbidden/unauthorised access (which can happen in several places). But this is purely for completeness; I guess you'd know if you were taking it further, into criminal computer use.
Each case is decided on its own facts I know you want a clear answer to where the bright line between illegality and legality but there simply isn’t one. The reason you feel there is a “legal grey area” is because there’s a legal gray area. The way the common law works is that there are some acts and omissions that are clearly crimes/torts/breach of contract, some that aren’t and some that live in that grey area. When someone brings a case in the grey, the court will make a ruling that will apply to similar facts and we get a little light on the subject. Then the legislature changes the law and it all goes dark again. Each of your bullet points is simply too vague and encompasses so many fact patterns that it’s impossible to say. For example, “Using a fake name/birthday”: do the ToS prohibit this? is there an intent to mislead or deceive? are there laws that prohibit this? is a benefit being received dishonesty? etc. If you come with a specific, detailed fact pattern there might be case law that is specifically relevant that will allow an answer with a high chance of being right. However, nuances matter and no two fact patterns are exactly the same and the difference might be enough to distinguish your case from the precedent. Or there might not be a relevant precedent because no one has sued/prosecuted on this fact pattern before. Then we are in virgin territory and even experts are only making educated guesses until the judge (and the appeals court(s)) hand down their decision. These are the most interesting cases to watch but the most terrifying to be part of. If you need to ask the question”where’s the legal line on this?”, there’s a decent chance you have a foot on each side.
This is largely congruent with* the doctrine of laches. The basic idea, under common law, is that you can lose rights by failing to assert them. This is generally important for many reasons, but specifically in the case of appeals: The argument should have been brought before the trial court. Justice is not a game, but it's important to recognize that the party trying to raise the argument had an opportunity to do so already. They have given up their right to raise this argument, and extending them the privilege of doing so is (for the following reasons) not good for the system. Courts of appeals are typically not well-equipped to evaluate factual evidence. It is not their area of expertise. Witnesses or evidence may be less available. It's just not practical to try to adjudicate factual issues on appeal, most of the time. If anyone could get an appeal by bringing new factual arguments, then everyone would do that. You'd bring your strongest argument before the district court, and then if that fails, bring the second strongest before the circuit court. That way, you get an extra trial. This is inefficient. Allowing factual arguments on appeal would encourage attorneys and their clients to strategically bring different facts before different courts. This kind of forum-shopping is harmful because it has little to do with who has the stronger overall case, and more to do with who has the better lawyer. * "Congruent with" is not the same as "an instance of"; this rule is not formally an application of laches. It just happens to share the same justification.
So as per recent Supreme Court decision in Matal v. Tam, the phohibitation of the registration of trademarks that may "disparage" persons, institutions, beliefs, or national symbols was ruled Unconstititutional. At issue, Tam, the bassist and founder of an all Asian-American band that was named after a slur for Asians (the linked article contains the Band Name, but to avoid a possible rule violation, I will not use the actual term). Tam was unable to register the trademark for his band due to the term being a slur, despite the bands intention to use the term in a re-appropriated manner. SCOTUS held that the act was unconstitutional and that Trademark protection did not constitute government speech beyond that the specific mark was registered with the government and thus protected. The decision found 9-0 in favor of Tam. (The case gained some fame as it immediately ended litigation on the name of Washington D.C. NFL football team as well). The other famous case is that of Jacobellis v. Ohio which held obsecenity is not protected speech, but that obscenity is to be determined by the most local levels of government. After all, what is Not Obscene to Los Angeles could be highly obscene to the Amish in Pennsylvania (Basically, no opinion was agreed too, but this was concurred with and every Justice held a concurring opinion). This case is famous for Justice Potter Stewart's concurring opinion, in which he stated obscenity should be limited to only Hard Core Porn, but famously did not offer a legal definition of that term beyond "I know it when I see it [and the motion picture involved in this case is not that]." Basically, check your local limits for guidance, as there is no federal or state law to help discuss this. Finally, as a small aside, the specific name of the establishment in the OP may be on it's face a little naughty, but "Dick" is a diminutive name for "Richard" and this gets all sorts of playful puns on it's other vernacular uses. For example, in one comic featuring Batman's young ward Robin (Dick Grayson), who was admonishing other heroes for not protecting their secret identity, one character comments to another that "Robin is being such a -" only for the second character to interrupt and remind the first "No real names." Another example is the stage name of a famous parody artist who sepcializes in singing modern pop songs in the style of a Vegas Crooner or Lounge Singer, Richard Cheese. The pun relies on knowing this nickname. For one that is not punning on the body part, The Red Green Show once had a sketch where Red Green (the character's name) was talking with the town's notorious liar, Hap, who in this particular sketch dropped the time he went whaling and chased after the "Great White Whale Moby Richard." Red asks if he meant the titular whale from the novel Moby Dick, to which Hap responds, "I didn't know him that well, Red."
If the patent lawyer &quot;hears about&quot; such failed patents from clients, and then uses the client's work and modifies them into successful patent filings, that would seem to be a clear conflict of interest, just as a business lawyer cannot use info learned from a client to make his own business deals, unless the client grants an OK. But if the patent lawyer just hears through shoptalk, or through communication by, perhaps, patent examiners that the lawyer works with, I don't see any conflict of interest, although as the comment by Eugene Styer suggests, there is likely to be enough prior art to make the patent invalid.