About a month ago, I posted a note on the fact that the ABA made a pretty major mistake in drafting the recently approved amendment to Model Rule 1.10. The Legal Ethics Forum is now reporting that the ABA Rules Committee has rejected a request by the ABA's Standing Committee on Ethics and Professional Responsibility for a housekeeping amendment to fix the problem (by making it clear that the screening provision applies only to laterally hired attorneys). That is crazy! The rule can still be fixed but it will have to go back to the ABA's House of Delegates in August, where the correction would have to be formally adopted by the House. If that does not happen, we will end up with a very problematic rule that will allow firms to purposely represent clients with concurrent conflicts of interest.
To see my posts on the process of approval of the new Model Rule 1.10 click here.
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