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Professionalism as Bar Politics: The Making of the Model Rules of Professional Conduct
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 December 2018
Abstract
Based on extensive archival research, this article offers a political account of the six-year process in which the ABA developed its latest ethics code for lawyers, the Model Rules of Professional Conduct. The article casts doubt on the validity of several functionalist and critical theories about the provenance and significance of professional ethics codes generally and the ABA's codes in particular. It evaluates the Model Rules process as an instance of de facto law making by a private group. And it identifies a lawyer's “professionalism-in-fact”—a set of common themes in the way lawyers currently think about the field of legal ethics. At the same time, however, the article stresses the ethical pluralism and structural differentiation of today's legal profession and roots the ethical preoccupations of various types of lawyers in the circumstances of their particular practices.
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- Copyright © American Bar Foundation, 1989
References
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73 See Model Rules 1.11(a); 4.1(b).Google Scholar
74 On the gradual opening up of state judicial rulemaking proceedings to interest groups other than the organized bar, see Charles W. Grau, Judicial Rulemaking: Administration, Access and Accountability 49–70 (Chicago: American Judicature Society, 1978) (cited below as Grau, Judicial Rulemaking). Until recently, the Wisconsin supreme court expressly delegated authority to the ABA to make ethics rules governing law practice in Wisconsin. Wis. S. Ct. Rules Rule 10.14 (1980) (rules of professional conduct set forth “from time to time” by the ABA shall be the standards governing the practice of law in Wisconsin).Google Scholar
75 See Head, Indian, Inc. v. Allied Tube & Conduit Corp., 108 S. Ct. 1931 (1988) (effort to influence professional association safety standards that are routinely adopted by state and local governments not immune from antitrust scrutiny); American Soc'y of Mechanical Eng'rs, Inc. v. Hydrolevel Corp., 456 U. S. 556 (1982) (restrictive professional code provisions actionable under federal antitrust law).Google Scholar
In 1976, the Justice Department sued the ABA for conspiracy to restrain trade by adopting, distributing, and (through ethics opinions) aiding in the enforcement of the CPR, which severely restricted lawyer advertising and solicitation. The suit was dropped in 1978, but only after the ABA promised no longer to promote or aid in the enforcement of the CPR. See “Justice Department Charges Code Advertising Provisions Violate Federal Antitrust Laws,” 62 ABA J. 979 (1976); “Justice Department Dismisses Antitrust Suit Against American Bar Association,” 64 ABA J. 1538 (1978).Google Scholar
76 This risk materialized in 1979, when ATLA decided to draft a rival code. See infra notes 193–220 & accompanying text. In most states, however, the ATLA code has never received serious consideration as a comprehensive alternative to the Model Rules.Google Scholar
77 See, e. g., Berlant, Jeffrey, Profession and Monopoly: A Study of Medicine in the United States and Great Britain 64–127 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975).Google Scholar
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79 In medicine, ouster from the AMA and local societies could have real economic consequences; for many years membership was a prerequisite for hospital privileges. Paul Starr, The Social Transformation of American Medicine 168 (New York: Basic Books, 1982).Google Scholar
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94 Being so well represented, the legal services community was able for the first time to place language in an ABA ethics code responsive to its distinctive problems. It is now clear, for example, that a lawyer may pay litigation costs for an indigent client without looking to the client for reimbursement. Compare Model Rules Rule 1.8(e)(2) with CPR DR 5103(B). Early Model Rules drafts contained a “good samaritan” rule that would have allowed lawyers to provide service, “despite limitations” on their competence, in situations of “emergency or special [client] need.” Legal services lawyers succeeded in removing the term 'special need,” fearing that administrators in legal services offices might use it to force them to provide second-class representation. See Journals, Kutak Commission, Aug. 25, 1978 [cited below as Journals]. (These journals contain the “minutes” of commission meetings, but they rarely show who on the commission favored or opposed particular positions, and do not always indicate the precise date on which a meeting was held.) See also Model Rules Rule 1.1 comment para. 3.Google Scholar
95 Other charter members included Robert McKay and Samuel Thurman, law professors who (like Ehrlich and Hazard) may have exposed the commission to the charge of being too “academic,” and Howell Heflin, just off the Alabama supreme court and well enough connected in Democratic politics to leave the commission in a few months for the U. S. Senate. Heflin was replaced by Arno Deneke of the Oregon supreme court. Having a state supreme court “seat” on the commission was perhaps a concession to the ultimate goal of getting the Model Rules adopted at the state level.Google Scholar
Other lawyer-members added later were William Spann, from the end of his ABA presidency till he died in 1981; Robert Hetlage, an ABA leader and private practitioner who was appointed along with two nonlawyers; and L. Clair Nelson, house counsel for a large company.Google Scholar
96 Journals, Feb. 24, 1978. This meant that what had so far been an ABA committee had to be reconstituted as a commission. Under ABA by-laws nonmembers could not serve on ABA committees.Google Scholar
97 Id. Adding public members to its committees has become the bar's preferred way to bring lay opinion into bar deliberations. The practice is open to the charge of “tokenism” precisely because the lay members, in addition to being far outnumbered, typically have no clear constituency to represent. See generally Henry S. Kariel, The Decline of American Pluralism 264–65 (Stanford, Cal.: Stanford Univ. Press, 1961).Google Scholar
98 Interview with Geoffrey Hazard (Indianapolis, Mar. 30, 1985).Google Scholar
99 Journals, Feb. 24, 1978.Google Scholar
100 Interview with Geoffrey Hazard (cited in note 98).Google Scholar
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102 Journals, Feb. 23, 1979.Google Scholar
103 NOBC Proposed Amended Rules (cited in note 8).Google Scholar
104 At a public hearing in Atlanta on March 3, 1980, there were more members of the commission present than witnesses to testify, and all the witnesses were lawyers. Scott Slonim, “‘Lawyer as Cop’ Rule May Face Trimming,” 66 ABA J. 438 (1980).Google Scholar
105 Journals, June 29, 1979.Google Scholar
106 Letter from Geoffrey Hazard to Robert Kutak (Dec. 23, 1980).Google Scholar
107 Journals, Feb. 23, 1979.Google Scholar
108 Greenhouse, Linda, “Lawyers' Group Offers a Revision in Code of Ethics: Draft Says Client Interests Could Be Placed Second,”N. Y. Times, Feb. 2, 1980, at 6, col. 1 (late city edition).Google Scholar
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110 See Robinson, Timothy, “Proposed Ethics Code Gives Clients a Break,”Washington Post, Feb. 4, 1980, sec. C, at 1, col. 1 (emphasizing, however, unlike the Times, the draft's positive treatment of consumer protection issues).Google Scholar
111 “A License to Squeal?”Wall St. J., Feb. 11, 1980, at 20, col. 1. Otis Smith, vicepresident and general counsel to General Motors took the similar position that Model Rule 1.13 was crossing over the line between legal ethics and corporate governance. In his view the proper relationship between company and counsel is a matter for each company and its counsel to work out. Smith, “The Proposed Model Rules of Professional Conduct” (Oct. 8, 1980) (speech to the 19th Annual Corporate Counsel Institute).Google Scholar
112 CPR EC 5–18.Google Scholar
113 Model Rules Discussion Draft Rule 1.13.Google Scholar
114 Letter from Robert Kutak to the editors of the Wall Street Journal (Feb. 20, 1980).Google Scholar
115 Journals, Feb. 1978.Google Scholar
116 Nader, R. & Green, M., eds., Verdicts on Lawyers (New York: Crowell, 1976).Google Scholar
117 Journals, Apr. 1978.Google Scholar
118 See supra note 33 & accompanying text.Google Scholar
119 Memorandum from the Society of American Law Teachers' Liaison Committee to the ABA Commission on the Evaluation of Professional Standards (Dec. 1, 1978).Google Scholar
120 Id. at 2.Google Scholar
121 See Model Rules Rules 1.2(c), 1.16(b)(3).Google Scholar
122 Letter from Robert Kutak to Members of the ABA House of Delegates (Oct. 31, 1977).Google Scholar
123 Letter from Robert Kutak to Members of the Kutak Commission (Nov. 30, 1978). See also “Lawscope,” 65 ABA J. 887 (1979).Google Scholar
124 Letter from Robert Kutak to Selected Readers of the Commission's first complete “precirculation” draft and List of Readers (Aug. 2, 1979).Google Scholar
125 Letter from Robert Kutak to commission members (Feb. 19, 1979) (noting the “lag” problem).Google Scholar
126 Journals, Dec. 1977.Google Scholar
127 Letter from Donald Evans to Robert Kutak (Feb. 16, 1978).Google Scholar
128 Interview with Robert McKay (Indianapolis, Mar. 30, 1985).Google Scholar
129 The Discussion Draft provided that if the highest authority in an organization insists upon action or a refusal to act that is “clearly a violation of law and is likely to result in substantial injury to the organization,” the lawyer may take further remedial action, including disclosure of confidential information as necessary, if the lawyer reasonably believes such action will be “in the best interest of the organization.”Model Rules Discussion Draft Rule 1.13(c).Google Scholar
130 See Letters from Charles Halpern, Director of the Georgetown Institute, to Robert Kutak (Feb. 26, 1979; Dec. 14, 1979). In the late 1970s the Institute proposed that the SEC adopt rules requiring corporate counsel to (among other things) report company illegalities to the agency. In 1980, the SEC rejected the Institute's proposals pending ABA adoption of ethics rules on the subject. Bill Winter, “Whistleblowing Rule Rejected by SEC,” 66 ABA J. 704 (1980); Ruth Marcus, “SEC: Ethics Dilemma a Bar Issue,”Nat'l L. J., May 12, 1980, at 3, col. 1.Google Scholar
The Kutak Commission always rook Rule 1.13 as a statement of duty to organizational clients which, because they are artificial entities acting solely through agents, sometimes present difficulties analogous to those lawyers face in representing incompetent clients whose guardians may be acting against their interests. Compare Model Rules Discussion Draft Rule 1.13 with id., Rule 1.14 (client under a disability). The Georgetown Institute, on the other hand, sought to impose disclosure duties on corporate lawyers in order to protect the investing public and perhaps the general public from corporate wrongdoing.Google Scholar
131 Interview of Geoffrey Hazard (cited in note 98).Google Scholar
132 Letter from Donald Evans to Robert Kutak (Aug. 27, 1980).Google Scholar
133 See Aultman, Mark, “Legal Fiction Becomes Legal Fantasy,” 7 J. Legal Prof. 31, 44 (1982).Google Scholar
134 Model Rules Rule 3.2(a)(3)(iii) (Jan. 25, 1979 draft).Google Scholar
135 See, e. g., CPR DR 7–106(B).Google Scholar
136 See Frankel, 123 U. Pa. L. Rev. 1031, 1057 (cited in note 92). Signs of Frankel's influence in the final version of the Model Rules are few: a novel but specialized adverse disclosure duty for lawyers in ex parte proceedings, Model Rules Rule 3.3(d), and perhaps a negative pregnant in the Preamble statement that “when an opposing party is well represented, a lawyer can be a zealous advocate on behalf of a client and at the same time assume that justice is being done.”Id., Preamble para. 7.Google Scholar
137 See Frank, 17 Stan. L. Rev. 683, 698 (cited in note 51).Google Scholar
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139 Journals, Aug. 27, 1978.Google Scholar
140 See supra notes 42–43 & accompanying text. Comments in the January 1979 draft made a crucial reference to uncontested divorce as an area in which an intermediary would sometimes be appropriate. The intermediary concept survived the Model Rules process; the divorce reference did not. See Model Rules Rule 2.2 & comment. It was opposed by the NOBC on the ground that it would complicate enforcement of the conflict-of-interest rules, and by divorce lawyers in the ABA Family Law Section on the ground that it is nonsense to speak of “representing” two clients in their dealings with one another if they are at least formally adversaries. Letter from Richard Crouch to Robert Kutak (July 7, 1981).Google Scholar
141 Model Rules Rule 4.4 (Aug. 1979 draft).Google Scholar
142 CPR DR 7–102 (A) (7).Google Scholar
143 See supra notes 45–47 & accompanying text.Google Scholar
144 See Schwartz, Murray, “The Professionalism and Accountability of Lawyers,” 66 Cal. L. Rev. 669 (1978). The counselor's and negotiator's stepped-up duty to third parties was dropped by 1981 on the ground that unconscionability is so vague a standard that its use in a disciplinary rule might chill appropriate conduct and give lawyers too little notice of what could subject them to discipline. Letter from Geoffrey Hazard to Robert Kutak (Jan. 12, 1981).Google Scholar
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146 Model Rules Rule 9.1 (Aug. 1979 draft).Google Scholar
147 Many lawyers considered the proposal a misguided effort to turn professional virtue into necessity. Others saw the shortage of legal services to the poor as a social, not a professional, problem; they thought lawyers had no greater duty to represent the needy than grocers have to feed them. Some even said mandatory pro bono was unconstitutional peonage. See Humbach, John H., “Serving the Public Interest: An Overstated Objective,” 65 ABA J. 564 (1979). And so, when the August 2, 1979 draft was leaked and published in the trade press (see “The Record: Text of Initial Draft of Ethics Code Rewrite Committee,” Legal Times, Aug. 27, 1979, at 26 col. 1), the reaction within the bar was dramatic. By the January 1980 Discussion Draft, the mandatory rule had been watered down to require only an annual report of one's pro bono work, with no clear definition of what counted and no floor on the time to be given. Model Rules Discussion Draft Rule 8.1. When it became clear that many lawyers were still “furious” about the rule (Journals, June 28, 1980), even the reporting requirement was dropped. See Model Rules Rule 6.1 & Comment.Google Scholar
148 Memorandum from L. Ray Patterson to Robert Kutak (Jan. 30, 1979).Google Scholar
149 Walzer, Philosopher Michael argues that effective social or political criticism typically avoids novel arguments and “external” norms and relies instead on reinterpreting the texts and principles of the community being criticized, as when Martin Luther King, Jr., invoked the Christian principles of whites and blacks alike in calling for desegregation. Walzer, Michael, Interpetation and Social Criticism (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1987).Google Scholar
150 Letter from Monroe Freedman to the editor of the National Law Journal (Sept. 2, 1979).Google Scholar
151 “Ethics Draft Ignites Uproar,”Nat'l L. J., Aug. 27, 1979, at 1 col. 1.Google Scholar
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153 “Ethics Draft Ignites Uproar,”Nat'l L. J., Aug. 27, 1979, at 1, col. 1.Google Scholar
154 Interview with Geoffrey Hazard (cited in note 98).Google Scholar
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156 See Comm. on Code of Professional Ethics, Final Report, 33 ABA Rep. 567, 570–71 (1908).Google Scholar
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158 Letter from Robert Kutak to bar leaders (Dec. 5, 1980).Google Scholar
159 Id. at 3–5.Google Scholar
160 See Shklar, Judith N., Legalism (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1964).Google Scholar
161 Id. 1–2, 8.Google Scholar
162 Halliday, Beyond Monopoly 227–45 (cited in note 58); Terence Halliday, “The Idiom of Legalism in Bar Politics: Lawyers, McCarthyism, and the Civil Rights Era,” 1982 ABF Res. J. 911.Google Scholar
163 Letter from Robert Kutak to bar leaders, at 3–5 (Dec. 5, 1980).Google Scholar
164 See CPR DR 7–106 (B) (1).Google Scholar
165 Model Rules Discussion Draft Rule 1.7(b).Google Scholar
166 Letter from Robert Kutak to bar leaders, at 5 (Dec. 5, 1980).Google Scholar
167 The CPR permitted but did not require lawyers to disclose a client's intention to commit any crime. CPR DR 4–101(C)(3).Google Scholar
168 Tarasoff v. Regents of Univ. of California, 17 Cal. 3d 425, 551 P.2d 334 (1976).Google Scholar
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170 17 Cal. 3d 425, 442–43, 551 P.2d 334, 347. See AMA Principles of Medical Ethics sec. 9 (1957) (doctor may disclose patient confidences when necessary “in order to protect the welfare of the individual or of the community”).Google Scholar
171 Cf. Comment, “Evans v. Jeff D. and the Proper Scope of State Ethics Decisions,” 73 Va. L. Rev. 783 (1987).Google Scholar
172 See supra note 130 & accompanying text.Google Scholar
173 Cooney, Gordon, Memorandum to Committee on Counsel Responsibility and Liability, ABA Section of Corporation, Banking and Business Law 6–7, 38–40 (Aug. 4, 1978) (emphasis added).Google Scholar
174 See supra notes 127–32 & accompanying text.Google Scholar
175 Letter from Loeber Landau to Robert Kurak (Jan. 18, 1982).Google Scholar
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177 Report of Comm. on Corporation Law Departments, ABA Section of Corporation, Banking and Business Law (n. d.) (enclosed with the letter cited in note 175).Google Scholar
178 430 F.2d at 1104.Google Scholar
179 CPR DR 5–18.Google Scholar
180 Report of the Committee on Corporation Law Departments (cited in note 177).Google Scholar
181 Model Rules Rule 1.13 Comment para. 3. Garner, however, has received a vote of confidence in early drafts of a proposed Restatement on the law of lawyering. See Institute, American Law, Restatement of the Law Governing Lawyers sec. 134 & Comments (Tentative Draft No. 2, Apr. 7, 1989) (cited below as ALI Restatement). If this holds up in later drafts, it may suggest either that the ALI drafting process is significantly different from the ABA's, or that power in the ABA and ALI is distributed differently, with the ALI perhaps relying more heavily on legal scholars. Either hypothesis, if correct, might have policy implications for how and where lawyers' ethics codes should be prepared in the future.Google Scholar
182 “Unlawful obstruction” here presumably referred to laws on obstruction of justice as well as the rules of civil discoverv. See Model Rules Rule 3.4 Comment 2.Google Scholar
183 Ass'n of the Bar of the City of New York, Executive Committee, Statement Concerning the Substance of the Model Rules of Professional Conduct 22 (Mar. 3, 1982). The extra “unlawfully” found its way into the final version. See Model Rules Rule 3.4(a).Google Scholar
184 The power to expedite, wrote one legal services lawyer, must never be used to “expedite a disadvantageous result for the client.” Letter from Alan Houseman, Director of the Legal Services Corporation Research Institute, to Geoffrey Hazard 5 (Nov. 29, 1979). Overall, legal services lawyers were as committed as any interest group within the bar to the Standard Conception. They argued, for example, that lawyers for a defendant in a civil action (say, a suit for back rent) should have as much latitude to put plaintiffs to their proof as criminal defense lawyers have to put prosecutors to theirs. Id. at 5.Google Scholar
185 Journals, Dec. 15, 1978.Google Scholar
186 See Carrizosa, Phillip, “Kutak Rules are Totally Rejected at Bar Convention,”LA. Daily J., Sept. 30, 1980, at 1, col. 2; Letter from Board of Governors, State Bar of California to ABA House of Delegates (June 8, 1982); Angel Castillo, “New York Bar Group Rejects Overhaul of Ethics Code,”N. Y. Times, Nov. 2, 1980, at 45, col. 4 (late city edition).Google Scholar
187 Government agencies had to make similar decisions. A few including the U. S. Department of Justice filed comments on the published Model Rules drafts, but none made a sustained effort to influence the development of the Model Rules. The Antitrust Division of the Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission had a special interest in rules on fees, advertising, solicitation, group legal services, and law firm ownership, yet they did little lobbying. But see Letter from Ass't Attorney General Jonathan Rose to Robert Kutak (July 23, 1984). Perhaps reluctant to participate in making rules it might later have to challenge, the Antitrust Division saved its criticisms for a 1984 letter to the state supreme courts, which were then considering the Model Rules for local adoption. See Taylor, Stuart, Jr., “U. S. Criticizes ABA's Lawyer Code,”N. Y. Times, Sept. 25, 1984, sec. D, at 17, col. 1 (late city ed.). The letter expressed concern about Model Rule 1.5, which requires legal fees to be “reasonable.” The division thought the Rule might stifle price competition. When an ABA ethics opinion read Rule 1.5 to impose a fee ceiling but no floor, the division withdrew its criticism. See “News and Background: Antitrust Division, ABA Move Toward Agreement on Rules,” 1 Lawyers' Manual 612 (Current Reports No. 27, Jan. 23, 1985) (cited in note 13).Google Scholar
188 Slonim, Scott, “Kutak Commission Ethics Draft Draws Early Fire,”Bar Leader, Mar. -Apr. 1980, at 2. For one such standard, see supra note 134 & accompanying text.Google Scholar
189 See NOBC Proposed Amended Rules (cited in note 8). See also National Organization of Bar Counsel, Report on a Study of the Proposed ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct with Recommendation (Aug. 2, 1980) (critique of Model Rules Discussion Draft).Google Scholar
190 See National Organization of Bar Counsel, Report of the Special Review Committee on the Proposed Final Draft of the Model Rules of Professional Conduct 1 (June 4, 1982).Google Scholar
191 Id. at 3.Google Scholar
192 Id. at 15.Google Scholar
193 Association of Trial Lawyers of America, “Join the Most Effective Lawyers' Association Bar None” (n. d.) (promotional brochure).Google Scholar
194 But not the sharp differences over business-getting activities such as solicitation that the “conflict” critics of the earlier ABA codes might have predicted. See supra notes 38–40 & accompanying text.Google Scholar
195 “Trial Lawyers Group Parts Company with ABA on Ethics Code, Specialization,” 65 ABA J. 1299 (1979). Through the 1970s ATLA and the ABA had often disagreed on another political front-how to respond to calls for federal no-fault automobile legislation. See Philip B. Heymann & Lance Liebman, The Social Responsibilities of Lawyers: Case Studies 309–35 (Westbury, N. Y.: Foundation Press, 1988).Google Scholar
196 See Letter from Richard Lempert to Geoffrey Hazard (June 25, 1979).Google Scholar
197 ACC Discussion Draft (cited in note 8).Google Scholar
198 “Trial Lawyers Group Parts Company with ABA on Ethics Code, Specialization,” 65 ABA J. at 1300 (1979). Kutak was implying that only the ABA could successfully promote an ethics code for adoption by the state supreme courts.Google Scholar
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202 See id., Preamble at 3 (defining the public as “the actual and potential clients whom we serve”).Google Scholar
203 Koskoff, Theodore J., “Introduction to the American Lawyer's Code of Conduct,” Trial, Aug. 1980, at 46, 47 (emphasis added).Google Scholar
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205 ACC Discussion Draft at 5.Google Scholar
206 Koskoff, Theodore J., “President's Page,” Trial, Jan. 1980, at 4, 6.Google Scholar
207 Model Rules Discussion Draft Rule 1.7(b).Google Scholar
208 Id, Rule 1.7(c)(2).Google Scholar
209 ACC Discussion Draft Rules 1.2, 1.4 (Alternative “A”).Google Scholar
210 See Model Rules Rule 1.6.Google Scholar
211 Lumbard, 30 Cath. U. L. Rev. 249, 271 (cited in note 37).Google Scholar
212 For an attack on Frankel and his disclosure-oriented influence on early drafts of the Model Rules, see Freeman, Milton V., “Lawyer's Duty Should Be to Client, not Government,”Legal Times, Aug. 25, 1980, at 11, col. 1.Google Scholar
213 Remarks of Kutak Commission member Robert Hetlage on the Acceptance of the Model Rules around the Country (ABA National Conf. on Prof'l Responsibility, May 31, 1985). See also Pendlebury, L. J., “ABA Model Conduct Rules Rejected by New York Bar,”Legal Times, Nov. 11, 1985, at 3, col. 1.Google Scholar
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217 S. 485, 98th Cong., 1st Session (1983).Google Scholar
218 See The Lawyer's Duty of Disclosure Act: Hearings on S. 485 Before the Subcomm. on Criminal Law of the Senate Comm. on the Judiciary, 98th Cong., 1st sess. (Apr. 28, 1983) (statement of Kutak Commission member Robert Hetlage); id. (statement by George Bushnell on behalf of the ABA).Google Scholar
219 Letter from Theodore Koskoff to Ellen Dreibilbus (Mar. 24, 1983). Meserve denies this. Interview with Robert Meserve (Chicago, May 2, 1986). Koskoff charged in the same letter that the Kutak Commission regularly tried to get ABA delegates to accept its positions by arguing that failure to do so would invite outside intervention in the regulation of the bar.Google Scholar
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224 Landau, W. Loeber, “Section Supports Adoption of Proposed Model Rules of Professional Conduct,”Business Law Memo, Nov.-Dec. 1982, at 1.Google Scholar
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226 See letter from Hector Reichard de Cardona, Att'y Gen'l of Puerto Rico, to Robert Meserve (Feb. 10, 1983); Letter from Robert Meserve to Geoffrey Hazard (Feb. 17, 1983) (“I think we are going to have to do something for our friends who are attorneys general, etc. I would be glad to have your ideas as to how we can keep them happy”); Model Rules, Scope para. 4.Google Scholar
227 See Letters from Antonin Scalia, Section Chair, to Robert Kutak (May 28, 1982); to Judith Smith of the ABA staff (June 9, 1982).Google Scholar
228 See ABA Judicial Administration Division, Report to the ABA House of Delegates 1 (June 1982); Model Rules Rule 8.2 Comment.Google Scholar
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231 See Model Rules Proposed Final Draft Rule 5.4 (cited in note 10).Google Scholar
232 See Schaefer, C. Barry, “Proposed Model Rule 5.4: Is It Necessary for Corporate Staff Counsel?” 15 Creighton L Rev. 639 (1982); Letter from William Beringer, vice-president and general counsel of Siemens-Allis, Inc., to ABA (Oct. 30, 1981). The rule was also opposed by the ABA Patent Law Section, many of whose members are in-house lawyers.Google Scholar
233 Schaefer, “Proposed Model Rule 5.4,” passim (cited in note 232). See also Schneyer, Ted, “Professionalism and Public Policy: The Case of House Counsel,” 2 Geo. J. Leg. Ethics 449, 481–83 (1988) (pointing to signs of status anxiety and heightened status consciousness among today's house counsel).Google Scholar
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241 See Stewart, James B., The Partners: Insidee America's Most Powerful Law Firms 23 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1983).Google Scholar
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256 Model Rules reporter Geoffrey Hazard stresses the difference between the ACTL and the ABA Corporation Section perspective on issues of confidentiality. See note 131 & accompanying text supra.Google Scholar
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272 Model Rules Rule 1.6 Comment (withdrawal, para. 3).Google Scholar
273 Rotunda, Ronald, “The Notice of Withdrawal and the New Model Rules of Professional Conduct: Blowing the Whistle and Waving the Red Flag,” 63 Ore. L. Rev. 455 (1983).Google Scholar
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276 Thus, in response to the criticism that some CPR restrictions on representing clients with potentially conflicting interests amounted to featherbedding, the Model Rules expressly permit lawyers to serve at times as “intermediaries” between two or more clients. See Model Rules Rule 2.2.Google Scholar
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280 See National Organization of Bar Counsel, Report of the Special Review Committee on the Proposed Final Draft of the Model Rules of Professional Conduct 15–16 (June 4, 1982) (calling for reinstatement in the Model Rules of CPR rules sanctioning: “illegal conduct involving moral turpitude”; conduct involving “dishonesty, fraud, deceit or misrepresentation”; and conduct “prejudicial to the administration of justice”).Google Scholar
281 E. g., New Mexico Childrens' Code sec. 32–1–15 (Michie 1986); Okla. Crim. Code sec. 846 (v. 21 West Supp. 1985–86).Google Scholar
282 26 U. S. C. A. sec. 6050 I (1984).Google Scholar
283 Letter from Daniel Goelzer to Special Committee of the D. C. Bar Studying the Model Rules of Professional Conduct (Jan. 25, 1984).Google Scholar
284 Journals, Aug. 25, 1978. The rule was ultimately adopted. See Model Rules Rule 1.4.Google Scholar
285 Interview with Geoffrey Hazard (cited in note 98). The solicitude may have been unnecessary. Working through the ABA General Practice Section, sole practitioners and small-firm lawyers had enough clout to kill a proposed rule to facilitate the delivery of legal services by allowing lawyers for the first time to form law partnerships with nonlawyers. They did so by raising the specter of department store lawyers replacing the traditional forms of small-firm practice. “Midyear Meeting” at 2493 (cited in note 215).Google Scholar
286 See Heinz, John P. & Laumann, Edward O., Chicago Lawyers: The Social Structure of the Bar (New York: Russell Sage Foundation; Chicago: American Bar Foundation, 1982).Google Scholar
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289 Legislative History 20–21 (cited in note 223). The final version provides that the Model Rules “are not designed to be a basis for civil liability…. [N]othing in the Rules should be deemed to augment any substantial legal duty of lawyers or the extra-disciplinary consequences of violating such a duty.”Model Rules Scope para. 6.Google Scholar
290 See ABA Commission on Evaluation of Professional Standards, Report t o the House of Delegates 6 (Jan. 30, 1982) (commission revised “Scope” section in response to suggestions by the Standing Committee and the New York State Bar Ass'n).Google Scholar
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292 Cf. Peterson v. City of Long Beach, 24 Cal. 3d 238, 155 Cal. Rptr. 360, 594 P.2d 477 (1979) (sued for wrongful death on theory that policeman who shot deceased violated rules in the police manual, city argued unsuccessfully that manual should not be used to set standard of care since that would deter police departments from making rules).Google Scholar
293 Journals, Oct. 1, 1977.Google Scholar
294 In early 1979, the chair of the ABA Standing Committee on Association Standards for Criminal Justice informed Hazard and Kutak that his committee would propose no changes in Defense Function Standard 4. 7–7, dealing with the problem of client perjury, until the commission had time to tackle the problem. Letter from Ken Hodgson to Geoffrey Hazard (Jan. 1979). For the commission's solution to the problem see Model Rules Rule 3.3(a), (b).Google Scholar
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299 This general bias became quite explicit at the ABA's Midwinter 1989 meeting, when the House of Delegates approved a resolution sponsored by the ABA Special Coordinating Committee on Professionalism. The ABA resolved to oppose “all regulation of the practice of law by executive or legislative bodies, whether national, state or local.” See “American Bar Association Midwinter Meeting,” 57 U. S. Law Week 2478, 2480 (Feb. 21, 1989).Google Scholar
300 In 1976, the ABA president crusaded for a bar-administered mandatory pro bono program. His pitch for the program ended this way: “[T]imely actions by the organized bar recognizing that each and every lawyer must do some public service are essential if substantial self-regulation by lawyers is to continue.” Smith, Chesterfield, “Lawyers Who Take Must Put–At Least a Bit,” 1 J. Legal Prof. 27, 31 (1976).Google Scholar
301 John Curley, “Lawyers Squabble about a New Code of Ethics,”Wall St. J., Feb. 6, 1981, at 44, col. 1.Google Scholar
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303 “Report of the Joint Conference of the American Bar Association and the Association of American Law Schools on Professional Responsibility,” 44 ABA J. 1159 (1958).Google Scholar
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306 Model Rules Rules 3.1–3.9.Google Scholar
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308 Id., Rule 2.2.Google Scholar
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310 See, e. g., Kaufman, Andrew, “A Critical First Look at the Model Rules of Professional Conduct,” 66 ABA J. 1074, 1076 (1980); Letter from Professor Thomas Morgan to Geoffrey Hazard (Oct. 8, 1979) (tentative division of lawyer's role into a set of specific functions not proving to be successful).Google Scholar
311 The commission itself recognized the drafting problem even before its Discussion Draft was completed. See Journals, Apr. 27, 1979. They wondered, for example, whether a lawyer negotiating a personal injury settlement is like the negotiator of business contracts or should instead be considered an advocate since the matter has already ripened into a lawsuit. Id. Google Scholar
312 Journals, Oct. 27, 1979 (commission decided to “retreat from its functional analysis” to the extent of consolidating the rules on conflict of interest). See Model Rules Rules 1.1 (competence), 1.6 (confidentiality), 1.7 (conflicts).Google Scholar
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315 See ALI Restatement sec. 117 Comment b para. 2 (cited in note 181); Lawyers' Manual 01:11–01:30 (No. 75, Mar. 15, 1989) (cited in note 13).Google Scholar
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317 See, e. g., Schwartz, Murray L., “Death and Regeneration of Ethics,” 1980 ABF Res. J. 953 (noting the modern proliferation of specialty bar organizations, and their relative advantiage in achieving ethical comsensus among members). Of course, when it comes to adoption of the Model Rules at the state level, the support of the state bar association remains crucial. The ABA was able to produce the Model Rules despite full-scale opposition from the California State Bar and the New York State Bar associations, but the Model Rules are unlikely to be adopted in California and New York. See “Model Rules Jolted: New York Rejects ABA Proposal,”ABA J., Jan. 1986, at 18. In 1982, when the Board of Governors of the California State Bar resolved to oppose the Model Rules in toto and forwarded their resolution to the ABA House of Delegates, they assumed that without State Bar approval California would never adopt the Model Rules. They purportedly took an interest in the Model Rules only because “such rules will have an impact upon the California lawyer who practices in other state jurisdictions and in federal courts.” Letter from Mary Wailes, Secretary of the State Bar of California, to the ABA House of Delegates (June 8, 1982).Google Scholar
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323 See id., Rule 6.2 Comment (no duty to represent any particular client).Google Scholar
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