A Gallup poll released this week shows the public rated journalists above lawyers in their perceptions of ethics and honesty. But not by much. For journalists, 25 percent of the public think we have high ethics and honesty, compared to 18 percent for lawyers. Of those distrusting us, 31 percent think journalists have low ethics. For attorneys, it’s 37 percent.

Trust in bankers fell amid the mortgage crisis. Despite making a mess of the economy, they ranked just behind journalists but still ahead of attorneys.

Nurses are perceived as having the highest ethics and honesty (84 percent), followed by pharmacists, teachers and doctors. Clergy, interestingly, were sixth on the list, behind police.

At the bottom of the list: members of Congress, auto salespeople, telemarketers and — dead last — lobbyists.

(via AM Law Daily)

Most of the people around the Sedgwick County Courthouse, and around Wichita, know I use Twitter to help cover hearings and trials live from the courtroom. You can even follow the updates if you don’t sign up, using the my Twitter feed at the left of this page.

But lawyers are using Twitter to do research and pass professional information.

I follow several lawyers, including Anne Reed — an expert on juries from Milwaukee, whom I met via Twitter when I began “tweeting” my first trial.

A former lawyer, Grant Griffiths, recently posted a series on his blog on “How to Use Twitter as a Lawyer.”

As Griffiths points out, JDScoop gets you started with “145 lawyers (and legal professionals) to follow on Twitter.”

And Kevin O’Keefe, another Wisconsin lawyer, has a post on how to use Twitter to market a law firm.

There’s apparently a lot of tweeting out on in, and outside, the courtrooms.

Update: For more on Twitter basics, see this report from fellow tweeter Anita Cochran.

U.S. District Judge Monti Belot said he didn’t get that call, or the documents he was seeking, after his staff phoned a lawyer for Linda Schneider.

Linda Schneider and her husband, former doctor Stephen Schneider, face more than 30 charges stemming from the prescribing of painkillers at their Haysville clinic.

“Let me make something clear to all counsel: when a member of my staff calls, the call will be returned the same day it is received,” Belot wrote in a letter dated today. “My staff will not deal with your confusing and unresponsive telephone answering systems. If the call is not returned, I will dispatch a U.S. marshal to bring to the courthouse the lawyer who did not return the call.”

Marshals typically escort people to the courthouse in handcuffs.

“Women Lawyers Have Higher Divorce Rates, Need Loving Husbands, Researcher Says”

My wife is a lawyer.