Do you have an obligation, whether of professional ethics or just of human ethics, to stress in various contexts (demand letters, advertisements, campaign literature, op-eds, and the like) that you’re not actually a judge, whether current or retired?
What if someone is citing your law review article; does he have an obligation (of whatever sort) to note that “Judge” is your name rather than your title?
Not the most important ethical question in the world, for obvious reasons, but I thought it might be an interesting hypothetical nonetheless.
UPDATE: Some commenters suggest that the lawyer change his name, whether formally or by using abbreviations (so “Judge Ernest Reinhold,” for instance, might call himself “J.E.”). That’s certainly an option, but I take it that many people like their names and prefer not to change them (or change what they’re called, even if they don’t formally change their names). The question, then, would be how serious the ethical problems of using the full name are, and whether they’re serious enough that people ought to feel obligated to change their names.
Note that Judge Reinhold, the example that comes to many people’s minds (though he’s an actor, not a lawyer), was — according to Imdb — born Edward Ernest Reinhold Jr.