Ethics and Lawyering Today - Volume 1, Number 3
June 2001
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Ethics and Lawyering Today, an email newsletter published by William Freivogel and Lucian Pera, delivers pithy, practical updates for lawyers on the many ethics rules and other laws that govern how lawyers practice today. Subscriptions are free, and you can visit our website to subscribe. Feel free to pass on this email to anyone you think might be interested. ANOTHER INVITATION FROM THE AUTHORS Welcome, friends, to the third issue of our newsletter. As you may recall, it’s free, only available by email or on the web, will come out about once a month, and is intended as a quick way for busy practicing lawyers to keep up with significant developments about ethics and lawyering. We try to stick with short blurbs about new cases, opinions, or developments, and we’ll give you links to the full text of the documents where we can. Just two things we would ask of you: First, FORWARD THIS EMAIL to anyone you think might be interested. Second, TALK TO US. Let us know what you think. Bill Freivogel CONFLICTS: Tennessee Supreme Court Approves Lateral Screening, But Disqualifies Firm. In what can only be described as a mixed victory for screening of laterally-moving lawyers, the Tennessee Supreme Court, construed a version of the old ABA Code of Professional Responsibility and generally approved the use of screening devices to avoid the disqualification of laterally-moving litigators. Nevertheless, the Court disqualified the law firm involved in the case at bar under the Code’s "appearance of impropriety" standard. It was, however, undisputed that the screen was effective and that no confidential information has been disclosed. The Court noted that the Tennessee Bar Association has a petition pending with the Court seeking to have Tennessee adopt a set of ethics rules patterned after the Model Rules and specifically rejecting the "appearance of impropriety" standard. Clinard v. Blackwood, 2001 Tenn. LEXIS 443 (Tenn. March 18, 2001). http://ethicsandlawyering.com/Issues/files/clinard.pdf Bill discusses this decision at his conflicts site, in the "What’s New" area: http://www.freivogelonconflicts.com MDP: ABA To Debate Lawyer Referral Agreements Responding directly to the task delegated to it by the ABA House of Delegates’ August 2000 adoption of anti-MDP Resolution 10F, the ABA Standing Committee on Ethics and Professional Responsibility has just filed for debate by the House at its meeting this August proposed amendments to the comments to Model Rules 1.7 and to the text and comments of Model Rule 7.2. The proposed amendment appears to seeks to regulate actual agreements (as opposed to informal arrangements) between lawyers and other lawyers or non-lawyer professionals to refer clients. Hard to know if these amendments will be perceived as innocuous or as opening the old MDP wounds one more time. Tune in to the House in August! http://ethicsandlawyering.com/Issues/files/housereport.pdf ETHICS 2000: Final Proposal for Model Rule Changes Set for August ABA House Debate After four years of debate and discussion, the ABA Ethics 2000 Commission, charged with updating the ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct, has filed its final proposal for changes. As discussed last month in this space, these proposals span most of the Model Rules and are likely to be vigorously debated by the 532-member policymaking House of Delegates. Debate will begin during the House’s August 6-7, 2001, Chicago meeting, but will almost certainly continue at the House’s next meeting in Philadelphia in February 2002. Some changes have been made by the Commission to its proposals since the release of its November 2000 initial report, including, for example, the broadening of screening for laterally- moving lawyers and the deletion of law firm discipline. By approximately June 11, 2001, the final report, including a line-by-line comparison of the proposal to the current Model Rules and a description of changes the Commission has made since its November report, will be posted on the Commission’s web site at: http://www.abanet.org/cpr/ethics2k.html Real Online News: Model Rules Now Available on the Net After years of requests, the ABA has posted the ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct on its website. Hooray! http://www.abanet.org/cpr/mrpc/mrpc_home.html Beach Reading: The Restatement in Paperback Last time, we told you about the new Restatement of the Law Governing Lawyers, and we told you how to get it. Turns out it’s now available in paperback (it’s still not available online) at the greatly reduced price of $75. To order, call the ALI at 1-800-253-6397, or go to: http://www.ali.org/ali/NEWPRDS.HTM#lgl New Frontiers in Advertising: St. Petersburg Lawyer Buys Every Phone Book Page In a new turn of events for lawyer advertising, St. Petersburg lawyer Jeanette Secor’s smiling face graces a two-inch-square ad in the top outer corner of every page of the St. Petersburg, Florida, white pages, in all 324,000 copies. (Sorry for the long URL, but we don’t make this stuff up…) http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/sptimes/ And, Finally, a Contest Idea: How Long Was My Email Disclaimer? A British website has announced the plethora of responses to its appeal to readers for the world’s longest email disclaimer. Surely, American lawyers can give these guys a run for their money: Send us your entries - either from your firm or from your competition! Winners get a free subscription . . . er, well, we’ll think of something for the "winners." http://www.theregister.co.uk/35/19057.html ASK YOUR ETHICS PARTNER: REVISITED Last month, we considered whether there was any specific authority on the question of whether a law firm might ethically represent a bank as trustee, while at the same time acting adversely as to the bank on behalf of another client. http://www.ethicsandlawyering.com/Issues/0401.htm A few readers apparently slightly misunderstood our comments to suggest that we thought such conduct was OK. We obviously were not clear enough, meaning only by our citations to suggestion how little authority there was on this subject, but not meaning to suggest that we think such conduct is either ethically appropriate or risk-free. Please keep talking to us, so we know where we get off the tracks. Ethics and Lawyering Today Ethics and Lawyering Today, an email newsletter published by William Freivogel and Lucian Pera, delivers pithy, practical updates for lawyers on the many ethics rules and other laws that govern how lawyers practice today. Subscriptions are free, and you can visit our website to subscribe. Feel free to pass on this email to anyone you think might be interested. THE USUAL DISCLAIMERS This newsletter and the related website are copyrighted by William Freivogel and Lucian Pera. Any reproduction of Ethics and Lawyering Today, portions of this newsletter, or the website is permitted for non-commercial purposes, provided the reproduction contains our copyright notice and correct attribution to us. Needless to say, this newsletter and the site are for informational purposes only, do not constitute legal advice, and are certainly not intended to create any attorney-client relationship of any kind. You’ve been warned. SUBSCRIBING UNSUBSCRIBING CONTACTING US We value your input tremendously. Send us your comments, criticisms, ethics cases (published and unpublished), ethics opinions, questions, or anything else of interest: Ethics and Lawyering Today To reach the authors, contact: William Freivogel Lucian Pera |
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